On the first anniversary of his rectorship at All Saints Church, Mike Kinman reflects on All Saints Day and the power of God’s love and delight.
All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song:
Alleluia
Alleluia
Alleluia
“In the midst of life we are in death” our burial office begins. But the converse is also true – and we must not forget it:
In the midst of death, we are in life.
The past year has been an extraordinarily difficult and destabilizing one. We need not recite the litany here. Suffice it to say that we are possibly as aware of the deep brokenness of the world, the massive inequities that plague us and the unhappy divisions that separate us as we ever have been.
In addition to the screaming pain of our world, there are the struggles we each have in our own lives – some new and some borne of traumas years or even generations old.
And yet … in the midst of death, we are in life.
Even at the grave we make our song. And our song is this:
Alleluia.
Alleluia.
Alleluia.
That’s not to deny the pain of trauma, but to put that pain in its proper context – and that is the love of God for us and the deep delight God takes in us. The pain is real. The trauma is real. Feelings need to be felt. AND as we feel all of the pain that life brings, we are enfolded by that “love how deep, how broad, how high, beyond all thought and fantasy” of which Thomas a Kempis wrote.
We are loved beyond measure. There is not a wound that God cannot bind. There is not a trauma that God cannot heal. And because of that, though the pain be real and sometimes even devastating, we need not fear. Because of that, though the struggle is certainly real, we need not despair.
When someone comes to the rail at communion and asks for a blessing, after announcing our blessedness, I always conclude with these words:
“And may you always know how deeply God delights in you.”
At All Saints Church, we proclaim regularly that “God dwells in you” … and perhaps as much as ever, we need to remind one another that God not only dwells in us but God delights in us as well.
God delights in you. God looks on you … YOU … and her heart skips beat after beat after beat. YOU make God’s socks roll up and down. YOU make God’s Jell-O jiggle. YOU make God’s palms sweat like an eighth-grader hoping the boy he likes will give him a kiss.
God delights in you. Through all brokenness and the pain and the willful and even malicious incompetence from the White House.
God delights in you. Through the cancer diagnosis and the eviction notice and the memories of abuse that are only just surfacing years after the wound.
God delights in you. Through the rejection and the failure. Through the hurricane and the fire. Through the changes and the goodbyes.
God delights in you – and we get to remind each other of this. And so it’s so important that we not only take time to protest and vote, to feed those among us who are hungry and fight for those among us who have no shelter. It’s important that we take time to dance and to sing. To enjoy one another’s company and laugh just for the sake of joy. To make opportunities as a community to come together for no other reason than just to celebrate God’s delight in us through delighting in one another.
God delights in you. And so even though in the midst of life we are in death. Even though we all go down to the dust, even at the grave we can see God dance with joy at the mere thought of us, even at the grave we can trust that God adores us with a love that will never go away.
God delights in you. God delights in me. God delights in us. And because of that, even at the grave we can make our song.
Alleluia.
Alleluia.
Alleluia.
Reposted here from the November 2017 issue of Saints Alive … our monthly news magazine. Available online here … or in print on campus in the parish office or in the narthex of the church.
