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Every early Sunday morning, when I arrive here at the church about 6:00 AM, I take a moment to pause outside the Columbarium as I walk between my car and the office. And there, in the dark silence of the new day, I say, “Good morning!” to the spirits of those dear friends whose ashes are interred there. It is a moment that has come to mean quite a bit to me as I remember their names and faces, and their friendship, and the families who love them, and the vitality of their lives, and their faithfulness to God and our church. And in that little moment of remembrance there in the darkness of every Sunday morning, I find myself inspired for the journey into the day.

They are the saints of God. And they strengthen me.

I suppose that is why the Christian Church has a Sunday called All Saints Day. It is a special time set aside simply for the purpose of thinking about those who have gone before us. Today you and I are encouraged to remember the lives of people we never knew – like Noah and his family, Abraham and Sara, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Rahab, Ruth and all those people of faith who walked with God in Old Testament times. And likewise, we can bring to memory the apostles, and the Mary’s, and St. Paul and the faithful disciples of New Testament days. And we can go on to think about Augustine and St. Francis and Martin Luther and John Wesley.

And then there are the saints we have personally known and loved. Our grandparents. And our own parents. Our sisters, brothers, children, grandchildren, neighbors, and friends who have gone home to God but who are still with us in deep and profound ways.

The writer of Hebrews once described it in a wonderful way. He said we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses – all these saints who have gone on before us – who testify to the faithfulness of God and cheer us on as we find our own way through life. A seminary professor of mine once said you can picture it like a great stadium – say, Neyland Stadium – and the stands are filled with the saints – wearing orange I’m sure –  cheering us on, and giving us strength to carry on as we face life in the present moment.

And as I look up from the field of life into those stands, I see familiar faces – there are my mom and dad, and my grandparents, and so many others. Who are some of the people you see today, cheering you on and surrounding us all as we worship on All Saints Sunday?

One of the truly beautiful dimensions of this Christian Faith is the promise that Jesus Christ holds us together even when we are apart. In today’s passage from Ephesians 1, Paul prays a beautiful prayer that the eyes of our hearts might be enlightened so that we might understand the hope that is ours in Christ. This is the hope that is reflected in the saints because in them we see the immeasurable greatness of God’s power in those who believe.

And to me, the greatness of God’s power is seen in two special ways in the saints.

I’m told that there is a church in the center of London called St. Martins-in-the-Fields. It is a very old church, with records going back many centuries. And one of the ancient records is sort of funny to the modern person. It is an edict put forth by the church vestry – the equivalent of our Church council – prohibiting people from burying their dead relatives in the dirt floor of the church’s basement without the permission of the powers-that-be. This is how the order reads:

“By Order of the Vestry,

no one is to bring any more bodies into the basement of this church.

The foundations of the church have been disrupted because of so many bodies.

The stability of the building is being curiously impaired.

No one is to bring a body into this basement for burial without the express approval of the Vestry.”

Do you get the picture? All the burying of bodies in the dirt floor of that church has undermined the foundation and the whole rest of the church building is affected!

And therein lies a great truth: every church is built upon the foundation laid by the saints. Even a young church like ours.

When Carl Burke and Bob Puckett – our founding pastors – conspired together with God to dream this church into being, it was not a decision or a work isolated to that one moment in time. Carl brought to that ministry a lifetime of shaping experiences – from his parents, his Sunday School teachers, from the experience of being a prisoner of war during World War II, and from the loss of both a wife and a daughter. Carl brought to the ministry here his service as chaplain at Attica State Prison during the riots there, and the experience of pastoring several churches.

The foundation he helped lay here was built upon the lives of many saints who shaped his life.

And Bob Puckett – a mother who loved him – a father who did not go to church until that day he agreed to go and hear Bob preach, and then came down the aisle at the end of the service to be baptized by his son. There were professors who led him from narrowness and judgment to inclusive love and ministry – the countless parishioners who influenced him in churches both North and South. All these saints came with Bob when he and Carl and God  dreamed up this church.

And the small handful of new Tellico Village residents who joined the cause – they brought with them the gifts of their families, Sunday School teachers, and the complex experiences of life when God is encountered in miraculous ways.

And all these beautiful people together built Tellico Village Community Church upon the foundation of the saints.

We can never think of this church as ours alone. It belongs to a higher power, and to a broader constituency, many of whom greet us every Sunday as we walk past the Columbarium. And seeing ourselves as a part of this company of saints is so important!

One of the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had was to visit the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. It is more than just a memorial. It is an experience – an encounter with those who gave their lives. You know, of course, that the names are not listed in alphabetical order, but in the chronological order of the day they died. The visitor begins the journey at a low point in the wall as the war was just beginning. There are but a few names. But then the wall grows until it towers over you and you cannot even count the names of those who died at the height of the war. And, for me, the most remarkable thing about the experience is that when you look over the names engraved into the polished black granite, you see your own face reflected there among the names of the dead.

And this is as it should be – especially in the church. Because when we become connected to the past we see our own connection to the future. You see, one day OUR names will be on a memorial stone and the members of a future generation will be ministered to because of what we and God did together in OUR time.

To be a church is to receive a gift from the saints, and then – after refining it, and deepening it, and strengthening it during the time of our stewardship – to pass it on as a beautiful gift to those who will come later and one day see their own faces reflected in our names. That’s one of the lessons of the saints.

But there’s something else God wants us to see in the saints as well.

Paul prays that we will come to know through the saints the greatness of God’s power that is ultimately manifested in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In other words, each one of those saints whose faces we remember today is a testimony to the power of the resurrection. Each one is an individual work of resurrection that God has accomplished, and God wants us to trust him and his promises that he will do the same for you and me.

To remember the saints is to claim the future for ourselves by placing our trust in the God who is the resurrection and the life – able to subject even death to his rule so that his people – my dad, your husband, his wife, our friend, their grandchild – may be saved from death and into life!

And each one of the saints is a story of God’s faithfulness in the valley of the shadow of death.

Although the circumstances of our dying may be very different, the heart of the story of those who belong to God is the same as the story the great African-American poet James Weldon Johnson wrote about Sister Caroline. This is how it goes:

Weep not, weep not, She is not dead;

She’s resting in the bosom of Jesus.

 Heart-broken husband – weep no more;

 Grief-stricken son – weep no more;

 Left-lonesome daughter – weep no more;

She’s only just gone home.

Day before yesterday morning,

God was looking down from his great, high heaven,

Looking down on all his children,

And his eye fell on Sister Caroline,

Tossing on her bed of pain.

And God’s big heart was touched with pity,

With the everlasting pity.

And God sat back on his throne,

And he commanded that tall, bright angel standing at his right hand:

Call me Death!

And that tall, bright angel cried in a voice

 That broke like a clap of thunder:

 Call Death! – Call Death!

 And the echo sounded down the streets of heaven

Till it reached away back to that shadowy place,

 Where Death waits with his pale, white horses.

And Death heard the summons,

And he leaped on his fastest horse,

Pale as a sheet in the moonlight.

Up the golden street Death galloped,

And the hoofs of his horse struck fire from the gold,

But they didn’t make no sound.

Up Death rode to the Great White Throne,

And waited for God’s command.

And God said: Go down, Death, go down,

Go down to Savannah, Georgia,

And find Sister Caroline.

She’s borne the burden and the heat of the day,

She’s labored in my vineyard,

And she’s tired – She’s weary – Go down, Death, and bring her to me.

And death didn’t say a word,

 But he loosed the reins on his pale, white horse,

And he clamped the spurs to his bloodless sides,

And out and down he rode,

Through heaven’s pearly gates,

Past suns and moons and stars;

On Death rode,

And the foam from his horse was like a comet in the sky;

On Death rode,

Leaving the lightning’s flash behind;

Straight on down he came.

While we were watching round her bed,

 She turned her eyes and looked away,

She saw what we couldn’t see;

She saw Old Death.

She saw Old Death coming like a falling star.

But Death didn’t frighten Sister Caroline;

He looked to her like a welcome friend.

And she whispered to us: I’m going home,

And she smiled and closed her eyes.

And Death took her up like a baby,

And she lay in his icy arms,

But she didn’t feel no chill.

And Death began to ride again –

Up beyond the evening star,

Into the glittering light of glory,

On to the Great White Throne.

And there he laid Sister Caroline

 On the loving breast of Jesus.

And Jesus took his own hand and wiped away her tears,

And he smoothed the furrows from her face,

And the angels sang a little song,

And Jesus rocked her in his arms,

And kept a-saying: Take your rest, Take your rest, take your rest.

Weep not – weep not,

She’s not dead;

She’s resting in the bosom of Jesus.

Paul prayed that you and I would have the eyes of our hearts enlightened that we may know what is the hope to which God has called us and made possible for us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And so today, on All Saints Sunday, we gather with familiar faces. I hope you can sense them all around! And through the saints, we grasp the importance of our work in the Church while we are still alive. And we hear about a God who can be trusted with all that we are and hope to be.

Would you place your trust today in this loving, saving, redemptive, resurrecting God?

I pray that you will.

And I invite you to express that trust by coming with me now as we gather with the saints at the Table of the Lord.