I
John 3:1-3
(All
Saints' Sunday)
The United Methodist Book of Worship suggests that funeral
services start with these words:
“Dying, Christ destroyed
our death.
Rising, Christ restored
our life.
Christ will come again in
glory.
As in baptism [this
person] put on Christ,
so in Christ may [this person] be clothed with glory.”
It
continues with the words we heard earlier today from the first letter of John
[3:2-3]:
“Here
and now, dear friends, we are God’s children.
What
we shall be has not yet been revealed;
but
we know that when he appears, we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.
Those
who have this hope purify themselves as Christ is pure.”
This
morning we have celebrated a baptism, and we are holding our yearly remembrance
with thanksgiving for those who have gone before us into death. This scripture is key in connecting the dots
for us today, because they are connected in a deep way.
Both baptisms and memorials are
reminders that we are on a journey that moves us forward toward a destination
we haven’t seen yet, but that lies somewhere ahead in God’s eternity. We know where we come from. We have some idea of where we are. We trust God for where we will end up.
Where we come from is that we are
part of God’s creation. God made
everything and called it good. Don’t
ever let anybody tell you that Christianity says that people are born
sinful. What we say is that babies are
born into a sinful world, and that all human beings who live in this world are
connected to one another, which means that we begin to get messed up from the
earliest point onward. We need help from
one another and from God to muddle through.
“With God’s help we will
proclaim the good news
and live
according to the example of Christ.
We will surround these
persons
with a
community of love and forgiveness,
that they
may grow in their trust of God,
and be found
faithful in their service to others.
We will pray for them,
that they may
be true disciples
who
walk in the way that leads to life.”[1]
All
human beings are children of God, but baptism brings us from the yard into the
house and sets us down at the table, and says, “Here you go. This is what you need to grow strong. Mind your manners. Now, eat up, and then you can have seconds.”
We need that. We need it, because we are meant to grow. Baptism is a beginning, not an endpoint. It tells us where we are. We are tangled up in the world’s
shortcomings, but they are not what define us.
If we want to know who we are, we don’t see it in ourselves, we see it
in Jesus, the one person who lived successfully free of their constraints, free
of sin. That is who we emulate because
that is who we also were meant to be. We
were meant to be people who embody God’s love, as he totally and completely
embodied it.
“Here
and now, dear friends, we are God’s children.
What
we shall be has not yet been revealed;
but
we know that when he appears, we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.”
No,
we are not there yet. But that is the
direction that we are headed, the direction that God points us, and the place
that, by God’s grace, we will go. So we
are expected to do our part, too.
“Those
who have this hope purify themselves as Christ is pure.”
The value in taking time to remember
people whose earthly lives have run their course is in recognizing just how
much God has done in and through them.
It isn’t that we celebrate people as being perfect or sinless. It is that we celebrate how much good God
does though the ordinary, flawed, sometimes loveable and sometimes aggravating,
sometimes beloved and sometimes annoying people that are part of our own
ordinary, flawed, loveable, aggravating, beloved, annoying lives.
The promise of where we are going is
summed up in that. If God can and does
build his kingdom on earth through people like us, then we can expect amazing
things even of ourselves when we are more fully in God’s presence after death
and better able to live by his grace alone.
“Here
and now, dear friends, we are God’s children.
What
we shall be has not yet been revealed.”
Or,
as Paul said,
“For
now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see
face
to face. Now I know only in part; then I
will know
fully,
even as I have been fully known.” [I Corinthians 13:12]
[1]
Prayer from “The Baptismal Covenant I” in The
United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House,
1989), p. 35.
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