All Saint's sermon 2013

All Saints C-2013

It is quite a dream that Daniel has; one we might even call a nightmare.

Gusting winds from all directions, churning seas, great beasts – monsters; kings are rising, bringing with them war, turbulence, and chaos.  People are troubled in spirit and terrified.  The book of Daniel is written in such a time, the 2^nd Century BCE when Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes is severely persecuting the Jews because they are a minority ethnically and religiously.  It is almost the eve of the Maccabean revolt where the brothers Macabee band brethren together to zealously fight against the assimilation policies of foreign rulers and the priestly class.  War is brewing. Persecution is around every corner. Chaos is imminent.  Fear is consuming.

Daniel is what we call apocalyptic literature.  It draws on the past experiences of the people when in exile, using images and characters from those times to capture a picture of the present, facing the present time by using symbols and metaphors known to the hearers, with the purpose of the book being to create hope and encouragement in the hearts and minds of a people facing chaos.  The promise in the end is salvation under God’s sovereignty.

When I was preparing the list of names for this morning’s service, I was struck by the fact that I knew most of these people.  I knew their stories, their faith, their fears, their joys, their sorrows, their acceptance of death, their hopes and dreams.  These faithful represent two generations of people, all affected by living in troubled times, in a chaotic world.  These loved ones faced an array of chaos: some born in the aftermath of WWI, large families living through the Great Depression, poor and hungry, going to work early in life, experiencing loss of siblings and parents before their time. There was WWII with experiences of living in war, fleeing for one’s life, being a displaced person. There was rationing, starting over, sickness, depression, looking after dying spouses, living in institutions; things not turning out the way life had been planned.  

As I thought about our loved ones, I connected their lives to the picture painted in Daniel.

Living life is messy.  There are powers outside of our control that have a great affect on our lives; affects that change our ability to address our needs, and can abruptly change our hopes and dreams.

Two Fridays in a row I have found myself at Neptune Theatre experiencing the play “Red.”  The play has two characters: the artist Mark Rothko and his art student employee.  Rothko was an abstract expressionist.  His canvasses were floating squares overlaid one upon another, in shades of the same colour; in this case, red. One enters the mind of the artist: his philosophy of art and life, his wrestling with inner demons and being relevant, and his relationship to the living work he created. I was struck by his monologues and how they fit with my thesis work around the theology of art.

Abstract expressionism - canvasses of solid colour, experiments in minimalism, fuzzy edged blocks moving from one into another- the point was to feel painting, and think painting until there was tragedy in every stroke.  That was when the painting was done.  When there was tragedy pulsating in every stroke the painting captured the chaos and ugliness of the world.

The book of Daniel did the same thing for his time, written in an age where the ear had priority, the words written painted the chaos and ugliness of the world at that time.

We don’t have to like abstract expressionism.  We are not being asked to like the words from the Book of Daniel, in fact it is better if we don’t.  The paintings, the images, the words, are meant to cause discernment. They are to throw us into feeling and thinking beyond our current moment of understanding and being.

They are meant to shake us, such that we face the chaos –the art names the chaos – drawing on images from the past and propelling us, agitating us, into moving away towards hope and dreams; possibilities of growing beauty, from the beauty seen in the ugliness of red floating squares on a canvass.

It is the Lutheran understanding of the theology of the cross, where Jesus’ death, the crucifix, the suffering, dying, the vulnerable Jesus, dares to enter into the pain of humanity. ...and die ...drawing on the stories of the past and propelling movement forward, with promises for tomorrow.  The chaos of the cross is ugliness at its most beautiful; ugliness is redeemed -in the state that it is in it is beautiful.

In Rothko’s Reds, or in Daniel’s beasts, the chaotic is presented...blah there it is.  Now what are you going to do with it?

You can walk away, glimpse but not really look, keep on living seeing red and put off to the side the sense of black, of chaos eating up the red, a sense of living life holding on for dear life, almost at the end of your rope, being chased to the end.  Or you can stop and look, really look, the more you look the more the pictures move, the more the words penetrate, eventually faith is born as the ugly is made beautiful; and grace showers through.

The people that we are remembering today, those who have gone on before, faced ugliness and found beauty therein.  When the church talks of the communion of saints and the great cloud of witnesses we recall this facing ugliness and finding beauty... as it was exemplified in people’s lives as faithfulness, righteousness, salvation, redemption, forgiveness, and grace; and in the end having a spirit of love, even loving people and things that seemed unlovable.

Near the end of the play, in the furry of talking about the world outside his studio, in a powerful movement, Rothko reaches out his hands almost in desperation, or perhaps exasperation, with a hand on the chest and one on the forehead of his student employee, says, commenting to being out there: make something beautiful. 

Is that not the message of the Book of Daniel?  Face the chaos, live the persecution; make something beautiful? Is that not the message of the cross?  Face the suffering, the dying, pain, vulnerability; make something beautiful?  Is that not the hope and blessing of All the Saints gone before? Live through the chaos; faithful; make something beautiful?

We have come here today and paused to hear, to see, to observe...to feel and think...the greatest fear many of us face death, not being in control, chaos on a global stage.  Facing it here we have the chance to take the ugliness, the moment of the Jesus’ death, and experience the beautiful –redemption.  In the twinkling of these candles, the swishing of the grain, the eating of bread and wine, in the language of prayer- ugly is deemed beautiful, such that we can go into the world to make something beautiful.

Go in the hopes and dreams of those from the past, for they are the hopes and dreams we are to live, as we create hope and dreams beyond the present chaos for those who follow us.