WE LOVE, WE HOPE AND WE BELIEVE.
All Saints falls on the First Sunday of November, and it marks the beginning of not just the month November but even more of the Season of Fall and Winter. The weather has shifted, and here in California we have been scorched and scared by the raging wildfires just outside our homes and communities. It rained with ashes and we smelled smoke and destruction. We pray for all who are affected, all our brave firefighters and first responders. We pray for rain and relief to come. We pray for November to be more November- like, cooler, and more rainy!
All Saints has a certain kind of melancholy to it; just as November does. The days are getting shorter, cooler, darker and nature reminds us of our own mortality and life.
All Saints and November has a certain touch of melancholy and sadness. The grief over our losses in time, the months and days that have passed, and the mourning of those we have known and loved.
All Saints is the day of remembrance. It is a day to embrace with love, hope and faith.
On a day like this we do love, we do hope, and we do believe.
All Saints it the day to remember: to look back and remember what has been once upon a time before death separated us from our loved ones.
All Saints is the day to dwell in the memories of the past and know, that that time is gone and yet at the same time something new has begun. We can and we have to keep on living even when death has marked our lives.
There is a time for everything under heaven, it says in the OT.
A time to be born, at time to die.
A time to plant, and a time to uproot
A time to cry and a time to laugh.
There is a time for everything under heaven.
We feel that especially on a day like this. There is a beginning and an end. There is a time to be born and a time to die. These are the limits of our lives and in between those, we live, we love, we hope, and we believe. In-between those limitations and conditions, we cry and laugh, we plant and uproot, we love, and we hate. All of this is our life.
A life where we feel and know that we are each other’s lives. Where my life begins in the meeting with you. Where your life begins, when meeting me and all the others on your way.
We know that no person is an island. That we are connected, dependent, relying on each other. Our lives are in the hands of others. We are the life of each other, when we hurt each other and when we love each other.
Jesus begins his remarkable moving sermon on the mountain, by praising and blessing different groups of people, who are all praised because of who they are, what they do and most important how they are connected and related to others.
The beautiful Beatitudes are all about people being a blessing in the lives of others, and people depended on others to be a blessing in their lives.
• Blessed are the poor as the poor are depending on and counting on somebody to see them and help them.
• Blessed are those who mourn. If nobody sees the mourners, hear their cries and comforts them in their grief, how are they to cope, be comforted and live?
• Blessed are the merciful, the ones who hunger for righteousness and justice, and the peacemakers: they are blessed because they put their lives on the line for mercy, peace and change.
Or as the Presbyterian minister and author Layton Williams wrote in Christian Century:”
Jesus begins by centering those who suffer, those who remain faithful I the case of hardship, those who focus themselves on compassion and car for other, on justice and righteous, on making true peace for a better world for all. God has created us not simply to be mortal but to be moral. Our call from God is to have a broader vision of care for all people. Those who do this, Jesus says, are blessed.”
This life of ours is blessed, when we put our own lives on the line: when we help, when we comfort, when we work for peace and justice, when we live a life of relations and dependence. When we know that we need each other. In the presence, in the comfort, in the fellowship and in the relation our lives are – and that is why it hurts to lose that connection and that relationship..
It means the world to us to be a difference and a blessing in someone else’s life, and it means the world to us that others become a blessing in our life.
And it hurts when these blessed relations end. Where do I put all my love, care and emotion now?
Then it is good to be here. In church. Listening to the voice of God and the comfort of Jesus.
To manifest and confess that we love, we hope, and we do believe.
That all times are in the hands of God.
All Saints looks back to what was, and who once were.
All Saints looks forward towards what we hope and believe may come, a time of comfort and mercy, no tears in heaven.
To dare to remember, to look back, in love and gratitude and forgiveness, - and dare to believe and look forward to something brighter, - urges us also to dare to be present in the present moment.
Husk at elske mens du tor det,
husk at leve mens du gor det
“Love while you've got love to give.
Live while you've got life to live.”
― Piet Hein
The Danish Poet Piet Hein urges us to remember to seize the moment. To seize the day and make the day a blessing to others and yourself. To dare to love. That is where life is found.
Blessed are each one of us, when we feel that we need each other and when we feel that others need us.
All Saints reminds us to live while we got love to give and life to live; that is now we cry and laugh, plant land uproot, love and hate – and we do it together. We are indeed the life of each there and that makes it a blessed life.
LOVE WHIL YOU HAVE GOT LOVE TO GIVE
LIVE WHILE YOU HAVE GOT LIFE TO LIVE.
WE LOVE. WE HOPE. WE LOVE.
Amen
ALL SAINTS REMEMBRANCE AND LIGHT
In a moment I will read the names of the ones we lost and loved. And with every name, I will light a candle. The light and life of a beloved person, we remember today will be present in a small candle. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
Let us pray:
We thank you for all the saints remembered through history and time and we give thanks for those dear beloved ones, most precious to us.
Today we give thanks for those who during the last twelve months have died. We give thanks for their life and love and rejoice in our faith that they are at peace.
Candles of faith to be lit.
In loving memory of our loved ones who we have lost and who we mourn and miss. In loving faith and hope that the loving light of God embraces them.
ALL SAINTS 2020
2019 Peer Siegfried Hegg
2020 Knud Balling
Aase Jensen
Preben Sørensen
Karen Arens
Estrid Furnes
Robert Silverii
Fred Stein
Ebbe Rosendahl
Arne Bjorn Pedersen
Tenna Laugesen
Carmen Lusk
Prayer for All Saints
Holy One of days and nights, of sinners and saints, of right and left and everything between and beyond,
We are grateful for all Your presence that abides in every corner of our living.
You lurk quietly in the loneliest places in our hearts, keeping watch.
You grieve with us in our devastations, our losses, our fears.
You journey with us in our celebrations, our defeats, and even in the monotony of our days.
You delight in us and love us.
May we live in that love and delight, knowing that as we sink into You, we might become more like You, wanting life and grace for this world and all peoples and creatures that live upon it.
We pray for this world, for the places and precious people, who are striving to recover from raging wildfires, Covid19 illness and deaths, depression, hardship and loneliness.
We give you thanks, for all the saints in our lives,
those who are living and those of blessed memory.
We pray this prayer as we love, we hope, and we believe.
Amen.
Please rise: The grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with us all. Let us be silent together for a moment. Amen