First Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: John 11:32-44

[Most weeks, I present as many updates on my reflections and study of the Biblical texts on which our weekend worship celebrations will be built as I can. The purpose is to help the people of the congregation I serve as pastor, Friendship Lutheran Church of Amelia, Ohio, get ready for worship. Hopefully, it's helpful to others as well, since our Bible lesson is usually one from the weekly lectionary, variations of which are used in most of the churches of the world.]

The Text: John 11:32-44
32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” 38Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

General Comments
1. This is the Gospel lesson appointed for All Saints' Day, which falls on November 1. (Halloween, a contraction of the words hallowed evening, is All Saints' Eve.) Our congregation, like many others around the world, will celebrate the festival during our regular worship celebrations this weekend. Churches in the Roman Catholic tradition and in many others', will hold special All Saints' Day services tomorrow.

2. All Saints' Day is a Lesser Festival of the Church Year. The Lesser Festivals constitute one of four different classes of days on the Church calendar. Others are:

• The Principal Festivals of the Church year, which include Easter Day, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Christmas Day, and the Epiphany.
• Sundays and Days of Special Devotion, under which the following is included: Ash Wednesday and the days of Holy Week, the week prior to Easter.
• Commemorations, which may celebrate the witness to Christ given through the lives of people from Bible times and since.

3. According to Philip Pfatteicher and Carlos Messerli:

At the time of the Reformation [which began in 1517] the list of saints who were commemorated on the calendar [of the Roman Catholic Church] was enormous. The Reformers drastically simplified the calendar and out of the welter of names and events of the medieval calendar retained the days of the 12 apostles, the evangelists, the Name of Jesus, the Presentation of Our Lord, the Annunciation of Our Lord, the Visitation (of Elizabeth by the Virgin Mary), the Nativity of John the Baptist, St. Michael and All Angels, the Conversion of St. Paul, and All Saints' Day...

Later generations in Lutheran and other traditions have also come to embrace several Lesser Fetsivals already celebrated by Roman Catholics. This includes Mary, Mother of Our Lord, the Confession of St. Peter, St. Barnabas (one of my personal favorites!), and Holy Cross Day.

4. Of All Saints' Day, Pfatteicher and Messerli write:

The custom of commemorating all of the martyrs of the church on a single day goes back at least to the third century. In the East, the celebration is still on the Sunday after Pentecost...When the festival was introduced in the West it was kept first on May 13, the date of the dedication of the rebuilt Roman Pantheon to St. Mary and All Martyrs. In modern practice, All Saints' Day commemorates not only all the martyrs but all people of God, living and dead, who form the mystical body of Christ...

5. The Biblical understanding of the term saint describes any person who entrusts their past, present, and future to the God Who came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. In other words, a saint is one who repents of their sin and believes in Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior, and God. Put more simply, a saint is a forgiven sinner.

The communion of saints incorporates those who believed in God before His physical incarnation in our world, as He revealed Himself to Abraham and his descendants.

6. Many churches use All Saints' Day or All Saints' Sunday to remember those from their fellowship who, believing in Jesus Christ, died in the preceding year. Often too, the occasion is used to remember all who have died in the faith. At a deeper level though, the day is set aside as a festival of the Church itself, a time to thank God that we are saved from sin and death and given an eternity with God by the grace granted to all, living and dead, who believe in Christ. From the saints who have gone before us, we can learn lessons on how to live and die as people who are faithful to Jesus Christ.

I hope to present some general comments about the Bible lesson in the next pass.