23rd Sunday After Pentecost

The Revised Common Lectionary passages for the Lord’s Day are:

First Reading: Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10, 22
Second Reading: I John 3:1-3
Gospel Reading: Matthew 5:1-12

The liturgical color for the day is: White

John looks up and sees a crowd too large to count, gathered from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne in white robes, waving palm branches. It is a vision of the scattered made whole.

To remember is more than recalling. It is to re-member: to put the members back together, to return to the body what was lost from it. On All Saints Sunday, as we speak the names of those who have died, we are not only calling up memories. We are confessing that they still belong to the body of Christ, and that death has not cut them off from it.

And what are we to remember? John’s vision answers by showing us. We remember that the saints came “out of the great ordeal.” They were not spotless people. They knew grief, hunger and scorching heat, and their robes were washed, not kept clean. We remember that God was faithful to them in all of it. And we remember the promise that the Lamb will shepherd them, lead them to springs of living water, and wipe away every tear.

Remembering in this way is something we do again and again. Each time we gather at the Table, we re-member Christ’s body, and we are re-membered into it, joined to those who have gone before us and those who will come after. The multitude John sees is not only behind us. It is the community we are being gathered into even now.

So this Sunday, when the names are read and the candles are lit, we are not looking back at an empty past. We are remembering forward, toward the day when the whole family of God stands together, and no one is missing.

—

Rev. Dr. Daris Bultena
Executive Presbyter and Stated Clerk