Vicar Karla
Acts 16:11-15, 40
This time of year is my favorite. The “ber months” or September, October, November, and December. There’s just something about what feels like a universal invitation to slow down and to notice. As the days grow shorter, the air grows cooler, I feel something internal, something ancient, shift my perceptions. It’s an invitation to stop and to notice, to turn both inward and outward, celebrating the awareness of how much is shared across time, space, and belief structures, of the realization that maybe, just maybe, we’re not as different from one another as we have been led to believe.
From a liturgical standpoint, we commemorate All Saints Day on November 1st, or whatever Sunday comes closest. It’s traditionally a day where we stop to remember members of our communities and families who have passed away in the last year as well as all the saints who have gone before us. It’s a day that is both somber as it honors our sadness that they are no longer physically here on Earth with us, and it is a joyful day to celebrate that any earthly suffering they might have experienced has ceased and that they have risen to eternal life through Christ. We join our neighbors around the world, across geography, cultural traditions, and spiritual practices in taking this opportunity for simultaneous remembrance of the past and looking forward to the future.
Halloween comes from the ancient celtic and pagan festival of samhain, where the veil between worlds is thinnest at the end of October into early November, where the ancestors are free to return to us. This is a time to note the changing of the year, of a clear shift. The season of harvest has ended, the transition to the darkness and the cold and introspection begins, of an openness to a new way of thinking of things. Like maybe, just maybe, the crossing over of our loved ones could be a celebration in equal measure to grief.
Coco has become my favorite Disney movie over the last couple of years, and if you haven’t seen it, I really can’t recommend it highly enough. It so beautifully shows the celebration of Dia de Muertos, or Day of the Dead in Mexico. It’s a huge celebration of welcoming the ancestors back to walk alongside their loved ones. The festival goes on for several days and begins on October 27th when it is believed that departed beloved pets return to their humans and stay with them throughout the festival’s culmination on November 2nd. The Disney movie, Coco, shows this celebration and offers explanations for the importance of being incredibly intentional about celebrating the lives of our loved ones who have gone before us, remembering their spirit remains with us. We give thanks for the ways they shaped us and continue to walk alongside us.
Yes, I know that All Saints Day was on Sunday, November 1st this year, so you haven’t traveled back in time, but I was incredibly lucky to be in Mexico for Dia de Muertos. Oaxaca is widely considered to be sort of the epicenter of the celebration in Mexico, so my husband and I decided to take the opportunity to cross off this mutual bucket list trip for our honeymoon. It was absolutely incredible. The entire city came alive with color and ceremony, the streets filled with marigolds which are the traditional flower that creates the pathways for departed loved ones to find their way back to the land of the living. This celebration originated with the ancient Mesoamerican populations of the Maya, Aztecs, Zapotechs, Toltecs, and more and was eventually fused with the Catholic celebration of All Saints Day as Dominican monks colonized central America.
On October 31st, Halloween, we found ourselves on a cemetery tour to see all of the altars and decorated gravesites. Incidentally, we signed up for what we thought was going to be a one or two hour walking tour of a cemetery, which ended up being a 9 hour excursion on a bus that included a tour of a marigold farm and multiple cemeteries. We got back to our hotel at 4 am and it’s now one of our very favorite stories from our honeymoon. We wandered throughout the cemeteries, intending to put flowers and candles on the gravesites that were empty, meaning they didn’t have loved ones to visit or keep the vigil. The thing was, though, we couldn’t really find very many gravesites that were empty as we learned that there are many people who make it a habit of placing flowers and candles on graves of those without loved ones or on the graves of people who have been gone so long that they no longer have any surviving loved ones to visit. I found myself getting pretty emotional thinking about this dedication to taking time to remember those not personally known or named and yet still honored.
Today’s story in the book of Acts brings us to one of my very favorite characters in the entire bible- Lydia. There is a lot I love about Lydia. She is the embodiment of Paul choosing women to shape the early church. She was eager to earn and eager to serve. To put a finer point on it, she helped to bankroll the early church. As a dealer in purple cloth as the book of Acts describes, she would have been wealthy, someone who connected the wealthy of the time to fine, luxury clothing. She demonstrates and openness to exploration, of service, of hospitality. She along with so other early disciples laid a foundation that they would not see come to fruition, one that is still coming to fruition. Lydia did not open her home to these travelers and boom the new church as it exists today appeared. No, it was a beginning point, a road begun out of generosity with a trust and belief in the need of Jesus’ teachings in a world that so desperately needed it.
We can see these guiding principles exemplified today. As we look to a hopeful shared future with our new creation partners, we cling tightly to our ancestors who came before to make us what we are now and we look with hope to what we could be because we know that while the church itself might be changing, the work of the church must remain a constant for a world in such desperate need. So many of you have been integral parts of this community for generations. You can see those who came before you to shape this community. You know the names and the stories of the ones who gave of their resources- their time, the financial resources, their trust, to empower this community to do God’s work in the world. They did not, at the time, see the ending, but they moved forward with trust.
Even though I never met her, I think all the time about Carolyn Lageson, the longtime member of Faith Lilac Way whose actualized planned gift makes my presence here possible. As a faith community, you decided that your intern before me was going to be the last intern here in order to earmark those dwindling financial resources for other important expenditures. A very reasonable decision was made with a plan for the future. And then, all in the same week, Pastor Pam received an inquiry from the Contextual Ed office at Luther Seminary asking if perhaps you might be open to a half time intern because she had another job she was looking to keep, if perhaps that might be more financially feasible. At the same time, Carolyn, who left this land of the living had included Faith Lilac Way in her estate plan in basically the exact amount of an internship stipend. As the gift was earmarked for scholarships at the time she wrote it, Pastor Pam went to her family to inquire if perhaps this would be an appropriate place to direct these funds. Her children said that, yes, as a lifelong educator, she loved that Faith Lilac Way has long been committed to being a teaching congregation and this was absolutely an appropriate place to direct her resources. And here I am. She never knew me, and yet she plays a pivotal role in my communion of saints. Lydia and the early church supporters and believers could never envision us or what the church would grow to be, and yet they still generously stepped forward with a leap of faith.
I hope you all will continue generously continue to step forward in faith, for all that God is doing within and through this community of faith and for all that God will continue doing within and through this community of faith. We honor all that has come before and we ground ourselves in the hope of the resurrection of what came come, of what could be possible if we keep our hearts open to God working through us.