“E’en now by faith we join our hands
with those that went before,
and greet the blood-besprinkled bands
on the eternal shore.”
-Charles Wesley, Come, Let Us Join Our Friends Above, (1759).
Truth Is Powerful
This week, amid spooky jack-o-lanterns and grimly painted trick-or-treaters, we prepare candles, bells and photographs of the dead. Names are spoken and tears are shed again for the loss of those we love. Even as years pass, the pain of death can creep up on you when you least expect it. All Saints is a Holy Day to celebrate the God who has worked wonders in the lives of those before us. We tell our children about the relatives they have forgotten. We listen to memories, not to get stuck in death, but to celebrate Christ’s ongoing and final victory.
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. – 1 Corinthians 15:55-57, NRSV
Victory is rarely on our minds when a loved one dies. Death seems so final, so painful for us left here to grieve. We only see death as punishment, as an unnatural force introduced after the first sin. And yet, Christ calls disciples to carry their cross, the very emblem of untimely death. Indeed, it seems the heart of Christian faith is that each one must pass through death in order to experience true life. It is at once a believable mystery.
Yet death remains so painful, we cannot sustain facing it head on indefinitely. So we go through stages of grief. We set aside days to remember so that we do not allow Death to consume our every thought and moment.
Sojourner Truth once said, “Truth is powerful, and it prevails.” Herself a Methodist abolitionist, Truth spoke to power, insisting on the fullness of her humanity to a society that refused to listen. The struggle against sin has always been one fought against powers and principalities, social structures and tacit assumptions of inherent superiority.
On All Saints Day, we speak the powerful truth of those who have struggled against sin before us, who now prevail in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We name the broken vessels, the heroes and heroines, the Kings and the Truths, the Wesleys and the Luthers, the Aunts, Uncles, and the Complicated. They inspire us, they motivate us to take up the hammer for another year, and nail on death’s door 95 theses of full freedom in Christ.
One day, the Trumpet of Final Judgment will sound…a judgment we have already faced in the cross of Jesus Christ. It’s blast echoes backward in time to us in the present, announcing a victory over this present darkness. So press your face firmly towards Christ’s cross that you may taste that Resurrection. Feel your fingers grip the edge of that hammer that announces the death of Death. Join the saints before you who lived in kindness and humility and yet still spoke truth to power. Remind yourself today, “Truth is powerful, and it prevails.
Liturgical Calendar
My image today is the fourth poster for the Liturgical Calendar, Year A (2020). Modeled after a glass painting by Russian abstractionist, Wassily Kandinsky, I wanted my saints to prominently feature historical heroes of civil rights.
Kandinsky hoped to make a spiritual statement with each abstraction, allowing interpreters to glean their own meaning and narrative from the combination of images. Civil Rights giant Fannie Lou Hamer said in 1971, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” While Christ is the source of all true freedom, the Body of Christ suffers with each suffering brother and sister. As Christ’s ambassadors, our work of reconciliation is lifelong and often painful.
Our flawed heroes give us courage to trust that the Gospel remains true even today. Trusting that truth creates a bravery to get up and face whatever comes next, to choose Christ again and again even when all else fails you.
Pictured above (Clockwise from Center): Oscar Romero, Richard Allen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther, Ida Wells, John & Charles Wesley, William Joseph Seymour, Jarena Lee, Frances Willard. (Sojourner Truth bears the Angel’s Trumpet).
These calendars are now on sale with free shipping, and Patreon supporters who pledge $10 or more receive a free liturgical calendar every year (they just shipped to you this week, friends!).
I also wanted to announce a Book Release Party this Sunday, Nov. 3, at University UMC, Chapel Hill at noon. I will also have a booth at NCC Pilgrimage November 8-9 with all Wesley Bros merchandise, so I hope to see a lot of you there!