All Saints (Observed) - November 3, 2024
Father Vincent Pizzuto, Ph.D.
St. Columba's Episcopal Church
Wisdom 3:1-9 + Ps. 24 + Rev. 21:1-6a + John 11:32-44
Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. + I speak to you in the Name of the Three-in-One and One-in-Three. Amen!
If there is a discernible thread woven throughout the scriptures today, a significance that speaks poignantly to our times, it is the clear and resounding message of hope. Not merely the placid hope that one might cheaply claim for oneself in times of relative peace and prosperity, nor even hope when there is otherwise thought to be none.
Rather each of the scriptures today proclaim a hope that arises precisely out of the abyss of hopelessness itself, not merely when there is thought to be none, but when there is in fact none to be had.
Because the hope proclaimed today is a hope that comes not out of this world, not from the platform of one political party or candidate over another, not from the commitments of one warring faction or ideology over another, but a hope that comes to the world through those of us whose hearts belong to another Kingdom, a kingdom not of this world at all. “But the souls of the righteous” says the book of Wisdom, “though they seem to have died, are in the hands of God. Though, their departure from us was thought to be a disaster, they are at peace. For…their hope is full of immortality.”
Or again, The Book of Revelation, so often dismissed for its bizarre imagery and apparent dualism was in fact written as comfort literature in times of sadistic persecution and the brutal repression of the late first century Christians. A time so despairing that hope could only be relegated to a future moment, beyond the horizon of history when the promised Kingdom of God would break upon us as surely and gently as dawn rolls back the piercing darkness of night:
Then…I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…and I heard a loud voice saying,
“See, God is at home among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
And he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”
for I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
(Revelation 21)
But it is everything in between the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, that threatens the spirit of hope in us: the real threat of climate collapse; the rise of despotism – even upon our own shores; extremism, fanaticism, and mind-control through patently obscene and utterly irrational conspiracy theories; the rise of regional conflicts threatening to destabilize vast sectors of our geo-political landscape, with weapons at the ready never before unleashed upon the world.
And, it would seem, we are no different than our spiritual ancestors to question the “why” of God’s apparent delay to bring about the end of history’s wars, and violence…and indeed, its tyrants. So, too did Mary and Martha the sisters of Lazarus, admonish Jesus for his delay in a time of hopelessness: “Lord, if you had only been here, my brother would not have died,” she said to him, no doubt with no small bit of resentment in her voice. “Surely, had you come while there was still hope, things could have been different for my brother. But, now, Lord, you see: no hope remains.” And who could blame Mary for her exasperation: There are fewer places in the world more hopeless than a tomb. And yet, we know how that story ends.
Of course, what we do not yet know is how this current chapter in our own national history will end. But I can tell you this: our hope does not rest on one election cycle, much less one political candidate or party. “For our struggle,” as Paul reminds us in Ephesians, “is not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the powers, and principalities of this present darkness....” (Ephesians 6:2)
There is, if you will, a spirit that has been unleashed across our nation. A zeitgeist of violence, hatred, rage and intolerance that has found a new voice; one that is ever more emboldened to speak with unprecedented disregard for human life, with unabashed violence toward one’s political rivals, and with unmitigated hatred toward those who would challenge claims to power that are as despotic as they are vacuous.
Whatever is determined to be the will of the people in the week ahead, let us not be so naïve to think that the principalities and powers of this present darkness will be mitigated or defeated. They will either be given a megaphone or they will be diverted to some new path of least resistance to continue their maligning work upon the world. Put otherwise, the principalities and powers of this present darkness will, as Paul well understood, is never defeated or eradicated regardless of which earthy monarch is seated upon the throne.
We are talking here about a zeitgeist (“a spirit of the times”), an intangible kind of mythic member consciousness that cannot be identified with any one person, or frankly, any one political party, or nation, or tribe. And we would deceive ourselves to think that one or another outcome of this election cycle will secure our hope in this world. I can assure you, it will not.
We can certainly hope for better rather than worser outcomes. We can certainly pray that civility and integrity prevail over hostility and duplicity. But let us not think that by defeating a political candidate we have thereby defeated the principalities and powers that will undoubtedly persist regardless.
The history of Rome with its brutal assassinations of one tyrant after another is case in point. But more poignant still, the unrelenting persistence of such intangible darkness has been proven again and again within many of our own lifetimes. Who would have imagined after the defeat of Hitler, Mussolini, and Pol Pot we would ever again give witness to the shadow of fascism now stretching long and dark across the globe?
But in the face of this present darkness, I am wary of slogans that would insist such ideas as: “When we fight we win” because such mantras unwittingly perpetuate the very zeitgeist of an us-versus-them mentality. The very kind of mythic member consciousness in which the principalities and powers that threaten to destroy us are simply given a more fertile context in which to thrive. Like trying to put out a wildfire with gasoline. Because out of that mythic member consciousness – that we-versus-they mentality – arises the very capacity for dehumanization of the individual upon which fascism and totalitarianism thrive.
It is precisely the individual that gets lost, indeed eradicated by the dehumanization of mass movements, the social currents of hatred and intolerance, in which we lose the capacity to see with compassionate eyes when the fascism of the Right is met with the totalitarianism of the Left.
Here is the great temptation of our modern age: to fight intolerance with intolerance, to claim to establish unity while perpetuating division, to cast our own countrymen and women with broad strokes as a monolithic enemy rather than diverse and complex individuals. And in the week ahead, no matter the outcome it is against this temptation that we must resist mightily and with inexhaustible light. To fail at this is to embolden, and unwittingly participate in the very principalities and powers that pose nothing less than an existential threat to civilization and indeed, the planet itself.
As witnesses to the otherworldly hope held out by the Gospel, it is our vocation not to fight, any more than Christ fought the imperial powers of Rome as he hung naked on the Cross. Indeed, had he raised a militia to battle against Israel’s political enemy as had been expected – indeed hoped for – in a messiah, he would have but fueled and perpetuated the very violence and hatred his whole life, person, and ministry stood against as a shining beacon of divine light.
And if we too are to be disciples not of a nationalistic or militaristic messiah but, indeed, of a crucified messiah, then come what may our vocation remains unyielding: not to fight, which inevitably makes an enemy of those with whom we disagree, but to be light. For as J.R.R. Tolkien has expressed so tellingly through his character Lord Celebrimbor, even as the very age in which he lived was falling to pieces:
“It is not strength that overcomes darkness, but light. Armies may rise. Hearts may fail, yet still, light endures. And is mightier than strength, for in its presence all darkness must flee.”
May the witnesses of the saints whom we honor this day, and the blood of the martyrs who died in the hope of the resurrection, sustain us in this present darkness, where we too are summoned to bear a hope that surpasses understanding and a light from which all darkness must flee.
Have courage!
+ Father, Son and Holy Spirit.