God's Children NOW

Today I used a progessional dialogue style of worship.  I started with some thoughts on All Saints Day and the second reading 1 John 3:1-3.  I then asked a pointed question which lead to myself and others responding to one another and how we are currently living into our sainthood. It was a great conversation and I know sparked more conversation as a few people were talking after they marked one another on the forehead with a cross.  

I haven't included what people responded mainly because I thought that would be inauthentic to the conversation as I did not take notes.  

Enjoy and let me know how you are living into your sainthood. 

I have a love/hate relationship with All Saints Day.

I Love All Saints because it is like a communal funeral.  We, all of us, get together to pray for family and friends whose death we mourn individually.  We are reminded that we are not alone as we mourn; that others mourn along-side us and together, we support one another.

And yet I hate All Saints Sunday because of all that focus on death.  Let’s face it All Saints Day can be depressing.  We are reminded yet again of people in our lives that we have lost.  And if we are lucky enough to not have experienced death in our lives recently, then on this day we are forced to realized that death does happen and we will all eventually die.

But that is not the real reason I, at times, hate All Saints Day.  The real reason, I hate it is because both All Saints Day and many All Saints worship services, make it seem that to be a saint one must first die. 

Yet we are all saints and sinners, sinners and saints.  We are not just sinners now and have to wait to die in order to claim our sainthood, that we must die to live into our sainthood.  We do not have to hope that we live a good life or do enough good deeds or confess our unwavering faith on our death bed or have the right type of funeral or even have people remember us after we have died in order to claim the fact that we are now saints. 

Our reading from 1 John says “Beloved, we are God’s children now!”  Now!  Not in the future, not based on who we hope to be or who we try to be or who we are hoping to become.  We are God’s children now!  God has claimed us as sons and daughters.  We are saints now in Christ.

So how do you live into your sainthood now?  How are you God’s child now?

Will you do me a favor, turn to your neighbor and make the sign of the cross on their forehead and say their name “you are a child of God now and forever”

Today is All Saints Sunday and we are saints now and forever. Amen!