Gather Us In:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

Less than thirty-six hours ago, people with whom I work—people with whom I serve—were lying face-down on the ground as bullets ricocheted through the air.  They had come to the corner of Broadway and Coal to be part of an outreach fair serving people experiencing homelessness.  An ordinary Saturday morning.  A festive day.  Kids playing, moms keeping track, old men telling stories, agency folks trying to make connections with people who live on the streets.  Then all hell broke out.  Moms threw themselves over their children; agency people up-ended their tables and hid behind them; vets heard echoes of other battles in other places at other times.  A community of need; a community of woundedness; a community of fear.

The chaos spread across this part of the city.  At 4th and Montano—not even a block from St. Michael’s—again shots were heard.  Gunshots punctuating the silence of this place. Violence encroaching on this sheltered space.  Lives disrupted; plans upended. 

In the midst of it all, the cross, the table and the pictures gracing our ofrenda. 

Today, we celebrate Dia de los Muertos.  Today we celebrate the great feast of All Saints—a day that calls us together in communion with those who as our prayer book puts it, “we love and see no longer.”   Today is a day when we come together as stranger and friend, living and dead, ordinary and heroic in one great communion of saints.  Today we come together in brokenness and hope.

Today we remember saints who have gone before us and saints who share our days and lives.  We look at their pictures and we remember the good times.  The laughter we shared, the hopes we nurtured, the memories we made together.  And yet we know that their lives, like the lives of the people lying flat on the ground on the corner of Broadway and Coal, were lives touched not only by joy but also by sadness, disappointment, failure, and grief.  

There’s something else we see in the lives of those who have gone before us and in the lives of those sitting right next to us in the pew.  We see God’s grace at work.  God’s grace at work in things little and things big.  A hand extended.  A kleenex pulled out of a purse.  A wink.  A nod.  A look of understanding.  An arm around the shoulder.  A pat on the back.  We see God’s grace at work in stories told and in lives unfolding.  Stories of courage in the face of hardship, of hope in the midst of despair, of laughter when things are falling apart.  God’s grace at work in love growing, in relationships weathering, in kids branching out in their own way. 

Before Jesus speaks to his disciples and those gathered with them, he looks out upon the crowd that has followed him.  He sees their weariness, the weight of the injustices they bear, the hollows in their cheeks; he hears their cries of pain; he knows the hunger in their bellies. 

I can imagine him taking a moment to take it all in.  I can imagine him holding the crowd in silence before God.  Then he looks again and says to his disciples and to those within earshot,

            “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
            Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
            Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
            Blessed are you....” 

We who weep, we who mourn, we who are hungry, we who are afraid, we whose lives are marked by violence say to Him,

Gather us in, the sad and the wounded,
Gather us in, the poor and the proud
Gather us in, we who are fearful
Gather us into your heart filled with love.

For here, in this place, new life is streaming
Here, in this place, all darkness is vanquished
Here, in this place we grow in your love.

Gather us in to mend and to heal
Gather us and hold us forever
Gather us in and make us your own.

Opening Portals:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

This morning, at the end of the service at St. Martin’s—the day shelter where I lead worship on Sunday mornings, a man came up to me and asked in a rather plaintive tone of voice, “Is Jesus saying that if we just pester God enough, we’ll get what we ask for?”  Then he went on to say, “I don’t get that parable. And I don’t much like it either.” 

This is a hard parable.  I’ve wrestled with it all week long.  Finally, at long last, I’m beginning to hear echoes in it.  Echoes of my mom.  Echoes that help open up the parable for me. 

Mom spent years preparing my brother and me to live without her.  She knew just how close she had come to death and she didn’t expect to survive our childhood.  She was determined to help us through the hard times she was sure would come our way. 

Mom’s way of teaching was stories—stories of her own hard times, stories of how she got through them, stories of her praying her way through the hard times of her life.

Mom taught us how to pray—not by saying, “When you pray, pray like this” but by sharing with us the prayers she prayed.  She had two prayers.  Her “candle-in-the-dark” prayer was a simple one.  Just a verse from her favorite psalm.  “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.”  Because we knew her story, because we knew that for three years before she even turned thirty she lay in a hospital bed hovering between life and death, we knew she knew what walking through the valley of the shadow of death meant.

Mom’s second prayer was always preceded by an explanation.  I think she wanted to drive the point home.  Over and over she would tell the story of her lowest point.  She’d been in the hospital for over a year.  The sun-lamp treatments and bed rest had not helped.  The tuberculosis had spread from her lungs to her intestines.  She weighed butseventy-six pounds.  She couldn’t even get out of bed.  The way mom told her story, it was not until she prayed the words, “Thy will be done” and handed her struggle over to God, that she turned the corner to recovery. 

I think with this parable of the persistent widow Jesus is pulling what my brother and I call a “Jane.”  Already he and his disciples have encountered heavy fire.  Jesus knows what is awaiting him and them in Jerusalem.  He knows the trials ahead.  And so he tells them a story.  A story of a woman left alone without anyone to care for her, support her or advocate for her.  A story of a woman whose own friends and relatives are scheming to take from her what little she has.  It’s a story of a woman who knows she does not walk alone; a woman who knows that at the darkest moments God is with her.  How else could she make all those trips down the road to the unjust judge?

This is not a parable about pestering God.  Jesus is not saying that persistence in prayer is like the widow coming again and again before that unjust judge until he grants her request.  I don’t think that’s what Jesus is up to in this story or in his other teachings about prayer.  I think he is saying something else.  I think he’s doing something else.

I think he is trying to teach his disciples how to get through the hard times that were sure to be a part of their lives.  I think Jesus, like my mom, was trying to teach the disciples how to grow that mustard seed into a full-blown faith that would sustain them through the darkest days of their lives.  For what is prayer but an on-going conversation with God who walks at our side?

On the night before he died, Jesus led his disciples to the Mount of Olives.  He urged them to pray, and then he went off to pray by himself.  This was his prayer:  “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.”  Luke then tells us, “Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength.”

Pray always and do not lose heart for prayer opens portals through which God and God’s angels come to us in our hour of deepest need.  Amen.