You, Me, Some Words

It is time to mess with time again.

So, here is your annual reminder: Set your clocks back one hour on Saturday night.

Got it?  Good.  Then, one more thing: Toss your clocks aside before you head to church.  The simple truth is no timepiece will work properly this Sunday.  We are celebrating All Saints Sunday, a day when time expands beyond the confines of our clocks and calendars and a day when our years contract into an infinitesimal pixel in God’s infinity.  Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time might be a little confusing, but God’s time is guaranteed to leave you in awe.

This week we zoom in on one phrase from the magnificent Apostles’ Creed.  “I believe in … the communion of saints,” each of us says together.  We’re talking about that great eternal gathering at the heart of heaven where all God’s people sing “before the throne and the lamb” (Rev. 7:9-10).  We remember we are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1).  And we take our place in a line of faithful saints stretching back to the beginning of beginnings and on beyond the last horizon we’ll ever know.  The church will be full this Sunday, even if the pews aren’t.

And there in that holy space, with time compressed to a moment, each of us will remember our own saints, known by names and nicknames and terms of endearment and held in our love.  One by one, we will call to our hearts the ones we had to let go, the ones now held, with us, in the heart of God.

When all is said and done, what is time but a parade of shared moments?  And memory but the naming of those moments?  And eternity but the divine love that holds it all?

Sunday, we gather in that eternal love—the love of God that created all that is, the love made flesh in Jesus Christ, the love we share, the love that is the foundation and mortar of the church.  And we’ll sing and pray and look to God’s Word, and we’ll wrap it all up with the Sacrament of Holy Communion—eternity written with bread and juice.

So, set your clocks back, then set them aside.  I’ll see you in God’s time this Sunday.