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All Saints’ Sunday, or 4th Sunday before Advent

28 October 2024

All Saints’ Sunday: Isaiah 25.6-7, Wisdom 24.1-6; Revelation 21.1-6a; John 11.32-end

4 before Advent: Deuteronomy 6.1-9; Psalm 119.1-8; Hebrews 9.11-14; Mark 12.28-34

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TWO different Gospels are options for this Sunday. If All Saints’ Sunday is kept, the Gospel tells of the raising of Lazarus. If the Fourth Sunday before Advent is observed, Mark’s account of the Lord’s summary of the law is heard instead.

Some people tasked with planning worship are opposed in principle to observing feasts on the nearest Sunday instead of on the proper day. No one would dream of moving Christmas Day to a Sunday; so why do it for All Saints’ Day? The precise day matters.

Others take a pragmatic approach. A weekday celebration of All Saints may attract a handful of worshippers, whereas on the Sunday the great vision of heaven can be shared more widely. It is a festival of light and hope, at a time when darkness is deepening. The attraction of sharing that vision is a powerful one.

The Gospel options each reflect their proper themes: one, the hope of glory; the other, the certainty that — if we live as God wills — the Kingdom of heaven is ours. Each also has its harder message. We do not wake up one morning and stroll into the Kingdom. If life is a journey, its end is like a mountain looming before us that is the only route to reach the plains beyond.

The raising of Lazarus is a story often associated with Easter and thought of as a forerunner of the resurrection. For that reason, it is sometimes chosen for funerals. Not that Lazarus himself is “resurrected”; for Christ, not he, is the “first-fruits” of the resurrection, and none may precede him in that role (1 Corinthians 15.23). Lazarus is “merely” revived, and he will die again — which is rather tough on him, though perhaps more years of life outweighed the disadvantages of double dying.

Jesus does not perform this sign to prove that death is of no significance to those who believe. If that were so, his own death on the cross would be emptied of meaning. His grief at Lazarus’s death, moreover, confirms that death is part of the curse of Adam (Genesis 3.19). Though not actually an evil in itself, it is fraught with dangers, driving the fearful and faithless to struggle against it as pointlessly as butterflies batting themselves against a window in the hope of reaching the air outside.

Perhaps even the process of bodily decomposition, which has already begun, plays its part in crystallising Jesus’s sorrow. Certainly, Martha is sensitive about the breakdown of Lazarus’s body. Probably, she is struggling to reconcile her reflex of disgust with her love for her brother, and her hope that Jesus can somehow undo what her sense of smell tells her is happening. By raising Lazarus, Jesus demonstrates his power over life and death — which helps us to see that he did not die on the cross because he had to, but because he chose to.

For all its message of hope, appropriate to the light and glory of All Saints’ Day, Lazarus is a hard Gospel; for it highlights much of what makes death a dark abyss for us. The Marcan Gospel, by contrast, is simple and positive in its message. You must love, it says. You must love God first. And you must love your neighbour, too. Four Sundays before Advent, before the judgement, we remember our faith’s foundations. Christ is our cornerstone. God is love. If we live by this faith, Advent can hold no terrors.

When Jesus tells the scribe who questioned him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God,” he encouraged all of us who follow on the Way. Two simple command-ments offer reassurance to anyone who embraces their teaching: by living life positively, with warmth and openness to others, we can find our way to God and his salvation. We may be preparing for Advent judgement, but we see glimpses of the Kingdom all around us.

The brilliant splendour of All Saints’ Day does not undo the realities of our humanity — not on this side of eternity. Nor do forebodings of final judgement quench the “light of the glorious gospel of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4.4) or overshadow the brightness of “the everlasting gospel” (Revelation 14.6).

Either Gospel option for this Sunday can speak to both liturgical themes. That should not surprise us; for this breadth of meaning is part of what makes the Gospel scripture in the first place.

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