November 1 All Saints’ Day
I am not entirely sure who I’m rooting for, the Phillies or the Yankees. I hadn’t watched a single baseball game this season until the World Series started. I’m not what you would call an avid baseball fan. And with no particular connection to either team, I am simply enjoying the games, more or less happy with any outcome. Even though I don’t follow baseball, I do love watching the World Series. It’s one of the few times in the year when my husband and I can agree on what to watch on TV. And it’s sort of like the Olympics or the Superbowl… you can’t help but get caught up in all the excitement.
And even for us non-baseball people, there is something almost nostalgic about watching the game. I have a few memories of baseball growing up, like seeing my first Oakland A’s game, or going to Candlestick Park to watch the San Francisco Giants. But I don’t have lots of bucolic memories of playing catch with my dad. I didn’t spend hours pouring over baseball cards and learning stats. I never played in Little League. But even with my lack of childhood baseball memories, I still get swept up in the game. There’s an undeniable emotional something about watching baseball that seems to transcend time. The green grass, the rumble of the crowd, the crack of the bat, the exhilaration of a home run … these are things almost every American can relate to in some way. Whether we have extensive history with the game, or just a casual acquaintance, generation after generation, we are somehow all connected to the great American pastime.
I’m not one to quote sports movies very often, much less preach a sermon with a sports theme. But there is a baseball movie that captures this phenomenon of connection better than any other. Perhaps you remember “Field of Dreams,” staring Kevin Costner. I’ll never forget watching that movie in the theater with my father and seeing him tear up during the final scene. A father, who had died years ago but becomes alive again in a magical baseball field, is reunited with his grown son in a game of catch. Baseball brought them back together again. I’ve watched it since with my husband, who also can’t make it through the movie without tearing up at this reunion. It’s an amazing moment of reconnection across the boundaries of time and death.
Baseball is a constant in our American history. It is a tie that binds generations together: mothers and grandfathers, fathers and sons, the past, the present, and the future. Over the years, the particular players have changed, but it is still the same game. Baseball is woven into the fabric of our culture, a common thread we can all recognize. As it turns out, baseball as a kind of constant is a lot like what we celebrate on this particular Sunday in the church: the communion of saints.
All Saint’s Day is one of the major feast days in the church year in which we honor generation after generation of Christians. We acknowledge that our loved ones who have died are very much a part of the communion of saints, and so are we. We recognize the way in which we as Christians are all bound together into one timeless relationship, past, present, and future, in heaven and on earth.
From generation to generation, we have said the same prayers, confessed our sins together, professed the same creed, and gathered around the same altar to receive the bread and wine of communion. Christians coming after us will do the same. Like us, they will share in the body of Christ, taking their place in a relationship with God and all of us across the ages. We are all connected through Christ, a sacred tie that binds generation after generation, connecting the living and the dead. On days like this, we glimpse an eternal life that stretches behind us and ahead of us.
In today’s gospel, Jesus dramatically reveals this communion of saints as he raises Lazarus from the dead. The story is full of incredible detail: the weeping of Mary, Martha, and the crowd; the compassionate, deeply moved Jesus; the earthly stench coming from the tomb as the stone is rolled away, the burial cloth around Lazarus’s face. But the overarching message of today’s gospel is about the need for all of us, Mary, Martha, the crowd, you, and me, even Lazarus, to recognize the constant in our lives, the tie that binds us all together: Jesus. It is through Jesus that Lazarus is raised. It is through Jesus that the dead are reunited with the living. And it is through Jesus that we realize that the kind of death Lazarus died and the kind of death we all will die is not the end. As members of the communion of saints, we are eternally bound to one another, generation to generation, through Christ. Death cannot break that bond.
Today, on this All Saints’ Day, we have the joy of welcoming three new saints into this communion through baptism. [At the 10:30 service] In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we will baptize Claire, Luke, and Catherine into the body of Jesus Christ, the constant that binds us all. Prior to the baptism we will all commit to support them in their new life in Christ. That means we will need to tell them our stories. Guide them as they learn about this Jesus person. Teach them to hold out their hands as they gather at the altar for communion. Today these three children will become the newest members of Christ Church and the newest saints in the eternal communion of saints.
Yesterday, we took our two little boys to the local park to toss the ball around and give them their first glimpse of baseball. They are too little to use a real baseball and a mitt, and they had some trouble staying focused on the game at hand. It will be a few years before they can swing a bat, but they seemed to get the concept of playing catch. I watched them as they began to take their places in a long line of baseball players and fans. It was a momentous beginning. Some fall, when they’re older, I’m sure we’ll sit on the couch together and watch the World Series, able to reflect on this tie that binds generation to generation.
Like taking up baseball for the first time, Luke, Claire, and Catherine are taking their place in a long line of Christians, past, present, and future. Someday they will be able to reflect on their baptism and on being a part of the church. But for now, let us welcome them into the communion of saints, giving thanks for the one who has brought us all together. Amen.