November 5, 2023
All Saints Sunday – George Yandell
I believe in the invisible. Some years ago in the Memphis paper, a leading nationally televised local preacher responded to a question about the appropriateness of Halloween. The preacher said, “The church appropriated the pagan observance of Samhein [Sow’an] and renamed it “Allhallowmass” and kept its emphasis on the dead. It is not an appropriate observance for Christians because it’s not biblical.”
That preacher, and many Christians today, turn their backs on the invisible relationships that lie behind how we practice our faith. They want clear, handy explanations given to them. They want it simple, packaged. All hallows/all saints may be hard to understand. It’s all about connectedness. There have been only 69 generations of Christians since the resurrection of Jesus. At any point during those 1993 years the connections could have been severed. The church could have died.
The word samain in Gaelic means simply “end of summer.” The ancient Celts observed the beginning of winter on this holiday in early November. A very old custom dictated that all folk would put out their hearth fires. Then families kindled a central bonfire and went from hearth to hearth, and from burial chamber to burial chamber, carrying the new fire. Each hearth and family burial chamber had its fire re-kindled from the one flame. The Celts made a communal effort to light the dark against the coming short days and long dark, cold nights. As they processed around their homes,
November 1, 2023
All Souls Day – All Faithful Departed – Ted Hackett
Today we are celebrating “All Souls Day”… In the Prayer Book it is called “All the Faithful Departed.” I prefer the old, Medieval term “All Souls” Because I don’t believe that our eternal future all depends on how faithful we are in this life. I know that sounds a little…well…Heretical But for now… let’s leave it at being faithful certainly helps! More about that later…
All Souls’ comes the day after All Saints’ Day… Hallowe’en is All Saints’ Eve… It is the celebration of what early medieval people believed about the dead… They thought the dead who were in an “Intermediate State”… That is those who were not good enough for Heaven but not bad enough for Hell… Came back in ghostly form on All Saints Eve to beg for our prayers… And if we didn’t take pity on them…they would play malicious tricks on us! It started in Ireland in the 19th century and came to this country with Irish immigrants. Which explains my Irish grandmother’s Hallowe’en superstitions!
But we have moved All Saints day… One of the Church’s four main Holy Days…which comes on November first… To the next Sunday after All Souls to make it easier for folks to get to Church… So we’ll do All Saints’ next Sunday… That’s convenient…but it disconnects Hallowe’en, All Saints’ and All Souls’ day… They really all go together… Because they all deal with the same thing…
October 29, 2023
Proper 25A – George Yandell
Today’s gospel has Jesus stating the great commandment of the Law: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ In short- Love God totally with your whole self. He added, ‘A second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ and summed them up, ‘On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ It is striking that Jesus was asked for one command and delivered two. He doesn’t mean that loving neighbor is similar to the first command, but is of equal importance and inseparable from the first. To love God is to love neighbor and vice versa. [The 3 sentences above adapted from The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol.8, p. 426, Abingdon Press, 1994.] Love passionately.
When Christians use the word love with reference to God, to the deepest of human relationships, and toward the world, ‘love’ comes from the understanding of God’s nature as made known in Jesus. As it is revealed in the crucified and resurrected Jesus, we come to know love as unmotivated and unmanipulated, unconditional and unlimited. This love is not a feeling, but is commitment and action. [ibid. p. 425]
Loving this way is sacramental- love is to be the outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace-filled response to God loving us, and it’s demonstrated with actions of love to God and neighbor.
October 22, 2023
George Yandell
In Jesus’ day the people of Galilee had only recently come under Jerusalem’s rule. Previously they had not owed tithes & other dues to the temple. The peasants in Galilee had borne the brunt of repeated Roman conquests of Palestine, with major massacres in the areas of Nazareth, Magdala & Capernaum around the time of Jesus’ birth. After Herod the Great died in 4 BCE, the Romans had imposed his son Herod Antipas as ruler. He was the first ruler in history to live in Galilee. He pushed tax collections with rigor. He followed his father’s practice of massive building projects & constructed two new Galilean capital cities in a 20-year period. His construction efforts imposed a crushing economic drain on the peasants in Galilee precisely during the lifetime of Jesus. Radical Pharisees & other teachers spearheaded a refusal to render the Roman tribute, claiming that God was their true & only Lord & Master. These movements, along with the kingdom movement of Jesus, show that the ancient Israelite traditions of popular resistance & independence were very much alive in Judea & Galilee at the time of Jesus. (adapted from Jesus & Empire: The Kingdom of God & the New World Disorder, Richard Horsley, 2003, pp. 85-86.)
Why don’t you pull out a coin or bill? What do you see? [LIBERTY- & In God we trust] & [e pluribus unum= out of many, one] & whose images? // The inscriptions &