Pastor Darren: Well, friends, uh jumping right in, all Saints Day, right?
Pastor Darren: A day that we are remembering all the saints who have gone before us uh in this life.
Pastor Darren: Uh it's an interesting thing.
Pastor Darren: We saw it in the kids talk this morning.
Pastor Darren: We kind of wrestle with uh our full understandings of what the afterlife might be like, right?
Pastor Darren: And we're sort of limited in what we know.
Pastor Darren: I I say sort of limited.
Pastor Darren: We are absolutely limited.
Pastor Darren: Uh and you know, there's only one person who uh went there and came back, I guess, or went there and gave us some message of what is there.
Pastor Darren: Uh otherwise, we're kind of have to just go by faith.
Pastor Darren: And in the midst of that, we've got a lot of different images of what that is, the afterlife looks like.
Pastor Darren: You know, you start from uh a lot of um what I would call the more existential understandings, right?
Pastor Darren: The idea that maybe there's nothing there, and and this is, this is the life, this is what it is, and there's nothing beyond this, and we ought to live our lives in that way.
Pastor Darren: And at least maybe even in our consciousness, that's all we really know, right?
Pastor Darren: You've got that on the one side, and then you have faiths like Christianity, who have u images of what we understand to be real and true about what happens after we die, right?
Pastor Darren: Uh a stronger understanding of something that awaits us when we pass, some new existence with God, with maybe some new connections to the world that that would be with God.
Pastor Darren: And even introducing uh these concepts of ghosts and angels and saints out there.
Pastor Darren: And it's really weighted beliefs, right?
Pastor Darren: These are not without uh a certain level of importance to us, especially as we start talking about those who have passed before us, those who have touched our hearts, have been part of our lives.
Pastor Darren: We're invested in what we believe about what happens after we die, right?
Pastor Darren: It matters to us.
Pastor Darren: You know, I remember when my dad passed away, I had the very first feelings of, hmm, I might not be too upset about when my time comes.
Pastor Darren: Because at that point, I might get to go see my dad again and be reconnected with him in whatever existence lay beyond this.
Pastor Darren: I can't know what happens after we die, but that belief, that belief itself is is very comforting.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: I can I can rest and have and find comfort in that belief about what happens in the afterlife.
Pastor Darren: One day I'll pass and I'll see my dad again.
Pastor Darren: I'll see other people who have been meaningful to me again.
Pastor Darren: Maybe you have similar feelings.
Pastor Darren: Maybe there's someone like that for you.
Pastor Darren: It's in that spirit that we enter into this passage from Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, right?
Pastor Darren: So another letter coming from the Christian part of the Bible, the New Testament, many of them from Paul or written by people who knew Paul or walked with Paul.
Pastor Darren: This is one of them.
Pastor Darren: It's the second letter.
Pastor Darren: This one's probably a disciple of Paul that wrote it.
Pastor Darren: And he's addressing some concerns, this writer, about persecution.
Pastor Darren: Early in Christianity, uh, when it was just a movement and there weren't that many people who were part of it, there were concerns about one's safety in that small movement.
Pastor Darren: You had to worry about governmental factors, kings and others who might be concerned about you worshiping something other than the kings and others.
Pastor Darren: Maybe they have some justification for worrying about subversion or what have you, but the reality is lots of Christians were worried about getting hurt in those situations.
Pastor Darren: And for their belief system, the concern was, well, what if I die or are martyred in the word we sometimes use, people dying for their faith before Jesus comes back?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: This is early, early Christianity.
Pastor Darren: There was this understanding that Jesus was going to come back.
Pastor Darren: Uh, today we don't hold as tightly to that belief.
Pastor Darren: It's been so many years we think maybe either Jesus isn't coming back in that way, or maybe Jesus came back as the church.
Pastor Darren: This uh massive institution of believers who follow Christ that is worldwide.
Pastor Darren: Uh but in the time they were concerned that, well, wait a minute, I want my eternal spot to be with Jesus in heaven.
Pastor Darren: If I die before he comes back, am I going to get to be in that place?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And Paul's reassuring them, and he's saying, you know, if you if you die especially for your faith before Jesus comes back, you will be part of the crew that comes back with him.
Pastor Darren: And there's that assurance that Paul is making to these people in Thessalonia.
Pastor Darren: But it does open up a door to us thinking about what happens in the afterlife.
Pastor Darren: It opens up a door to talking just a touch about uh some of the cultural understandings of Dia de los Muertos, right?
Pastor Darren: This cultural thing that's come from uh Latino culture.
Pastor Darren: Uh we still kind of wrestle with it a little bit, right?
Pastor Darren: You could hear it even with the kids this morning where we we like it and we like certain parts of it, but there's certain parts that aren't true.
Pastor Darren: We heard Kiki, right?
Pastor Darren: Some of it's not true.
Pastor Darren: We have to remember this, but then there's other parts are really, really pretty cool.
Pastor Darren: Even the the phrase day of the dead sometimes makes us go, ooh, oh, hey, settle down.
Pastor Darren: You know, we're Christians.
Pastor Darren: Dead's a pretty hard word.
Pastor Darren: We got this afterlife thing.
Pastor Darren: We pass, right?
Pastor Darren: We transition, right?
Pastor Darren: So it the the that word, even itself, uh it sometimes it's conjuring up images of zombies and and witches and other weird, weird things.
Pastor Darren: Uh, and we start thinking about well, does this afterlife have some concerns for us?
Pastor Darren: Should we be worried about what lay in that afterlife? Dia De los Muertos, the tradition around it, actually isn't even really involved with that, even though we've kind of projected it onto them.
Pastor Darren: Day of the Dead is really about remembrance.
Pastor Darren: It's about remembering those who have passed.
Pastor Darren: Candi did some really good research.
Pastor Darren: She was telling me about it.
Pastor Darren: Uh uh up here, you have certain elements that are part of the journey, because you were inviting those who have passed to come back and engage to a certain extent, not to come back to life necessarily, but to have this moment of engagement to remember and to enhance that memory.
Pastor Darren: So we have food up here, which I've put behind the Bible.
Pastor Darren: Candi's probably disappointed about that.
Pastor Darren: We have drink for them because they've journeyed to come and re-engage with you.
Pastor Darren: Uh, the uh lights that are up here light their pathway.
Pastor Darren: Uh, there's certain things like the these light uh um cutouts kind of symbolizing the fragility of the whole experience.
Pastor Darren: There's a lot of layers to the belief system, but they're all guided around this idea of we are going to re-engage with those who have passed before us.
Pastor Darren: We're gonna re-engage with uh um those people who touched our hearts and continue to live in our hearts.
Pastor Darren: In many ways, Dia de los Muertos is really All Saints' Day in the way we understand it.
Pastor Darren: In our more uh um well-known, I guess I'll call it cultural systems and things.
Pastor Darren: There's some similarities, but remembering the saints, All Saints Day, that's kind of the connection between the two.
Pastor Darren: It invites this idea to me about well, what is a saint then?
Pastor Darren: What kind of attributes do these people have that have grabbed onto our hearts, that continue to live in our hearts?
Pastor Darren: You know, the Catholic Church has a more formalized understanding of a saint and certain things, markers that they need to reach.
Pastor Darren: Christianity broadly is a little more uh um, I'll say, accessible as far as sainthood.
Pastor Darren: That saints is a more general term, meaning somebody who's modeling the faith, modeling it in a way that uh uh uh uh invigorates our faith and inspires us to faith.
Pastor Darren: But partly how we land with Paul in this letter to the Thessalonians is that he does do just a short description of what it means to be a saint.
Pastor Darren: He writes, first Paul is affirming he is affirming to them in the sense that he says to them, Your faith is growing abundantly.
Pastor Darren: There's a checkpoint if you're looking for saints.
Pastor Darren: Is your faith growing abundantly?
Pastor Darren: Not by accident, but with some intention.
Pastor Darren: He also says about he talks about how our love for each other is growing.
Pastor Darren: Another good marker for a saint.
Pastor Darren: Is this somebody whose love for others is growing?
Pastor Darren: Is this somebody who fosters love between others?
Pastor Darren: And finally, he says, you are recognizing that you are still works in progress.
Pastor Darren: You know that God isn't quite finished with you yet.
Pastor Darren: That's why this passage is kind of good for doing a light description of a saint, but I do want to say I feel like we might be missing the spiritual part of that understanding.
Pastor Darren: I got a quote here from Dr.
Pastor Darren: Reverend Barbara Holmes, and she is a theologian and uh professor and uh general deep spiritual being who passed away about a year ago, but she talks a little bit more about what saints are, at least in her understanding.
Pastor Darren: She says, although some folks use a very narrow definition of the word ancestor, I use the word as an indicator of legacy and interconnections.
Pastor Darren: The ancestors are elders who pour their lives into the community as a libation of love and commitment.
Pastor Darren: They live and die well, and when they transition, they do so in full connection with an engaged community.
Pastor Darren: Thereafter, they dwell in the spaces carved out by our spiritual and cultural expectations, and they may be in another life dimension, but they connect with us in dreams, in memories, and in stories.
Pastor Darren: I thought she captured that that last super important piece about the saints that we remember here on All Saints Day.
Pastor Darren: These are people who lived life well.
Pastor Darren: They lived and they died well.
Pastor Darren: These are people we connect with in our dreams, in our memories, and in stories even today.
Pastor Darren: They're people who shaped our lives.
Pastor Darren: They shaped us, they remind us of what it means to be able to live well, and even to die well.
Pastor Darren: Many of them remind us of what it means to be church, a good church, taking care of each other, taking care of the world around them.
Pastor Darren: So today on All Saints Day, let's let them be remembered and held deeply in our hearts.
Pastor Darren: Amen.