Of All the Saints

This past Sunday, All Saints Day, we beheld the outward and visible evidence of the vitality of this venerable place and of its faithful people. The music and the liturgy and our joyful participation in it were emblematic of a church that matters. Over the past one hundred years parishioners have gathered here for nurture and empowerment and rest in order to live lives of integrity for the good of the community we serve. All Saints has the reputation of being a welcoming community; a community of gracious hospitality; a place to which the stranger is invited; a place in which there are no outcasts; an informed people who care for their neighbor and the least fortunate and least dignified among us….these the characteristics and demands of the Gospels. There is not a week that goes by in which I am not thanked for the work you do in Mobile and beyond. I am proud to be part of such a community.

The challenges and demands of the next one hundred years for All Saints will be many. I see the role of the church as compassionate advocacy; a predisposition of profound relevancy and action. As people of conscience, people of faith, people of the way of Christ, we are duty bound to call for justice and peacemaking; duty bound to be advocates for healing, duty bound to be enlightened critics… duty bound to enact compassion and dignity where there is despair and dishonor. Churches that sit impassively on the sidelines on the matters that face us as world citizens will cease to be. The Gospels require us to be advocates for, and bearers of, goodness wherever the potential for such transformation exists. The Gospels require us to live a life for the good of the whole, the sustainable and mutual commonweal that our God, as recounted by our wise forbears, envisions… God’s coming kingdom but a collaborative communion of equals, and to bring it to birth is our life’s work.

In this century we will as a people of faith have to address intelligently the shocking realities of a world grown small and intensely interrelated. As people of faith we have to address the truth about climate change and its disproportionate harm to the poor. Why? Because we are named in scripture as stewards of Creation and friend of the least….We will have to address the fast growing disparity of wealth. Why? Because the Gospels teach us that we are to live in God’s abundance through self-giving and sacrifice for the other…We will be duty bound to heal the sick and feed the hungry, and give water to the thirsty and stop the violence of our world…The Gospels demand that our faith lives and moves in the public sphere as God’s transforming love…love incarnate in the world in our very hands, hearts, minds and bodies. And we will for another hundred years continue to gather as often as we can to praise our God who calls us into such a high vocation…We will as a liturgical community gather and name as beautiful this life of faith that changes our world for the better. What gracious responsibility and honor God bestows upon us…something worth celebrating…Rise up you saints of God…there is much yet to do….and so little time…even if a hundred years.