Transcript
From St Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” I speak in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus is more than a coach, but he’s not less than one.
When you’re a member of a team—whether the team is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, the team St Augustine called totus Christus; or team Good Sam; or an orchestra; a choir; or a basketball team—you give your coach permission to take you to places you wouldn’t get to on your own steam, to do things you wouldn’t be able to do in your own strength, except that you’re following the leader.
That’s what a leader is, someone others follow, at cost to themselves. “The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God,” and the Most High doesn’t coddle them there.
A good coach influences you your whole life long. They have “the eyes of the heart”—to use that beautiful phrase of St Paul in our reading—to see something in you, to see that desire in you which wants to get better at something, whether that something is singing, playing the piano, playing a sport, or living a better life.
A good coach takes you seriously enough not to go easy on you. They get you to do things you didn’t think you could do. They get more out of you than you thought you had it in you to give, bruises and floor burns and blisters and proportional gifts and tithes and all. And you love them for it.
On All Saints, we celebrate those teammates in the faith who show us what being taken seriously by the Captain of our Salvation can look like. That’s what Christians in the early Church called Jesus, the Captain of our Salvation. And it’s all done in flesh and blood.
Some of you know that when I was born my parents were on their sofa in El Paso, Texas, watching Wagon Train. My mother’s water broke, sending her into labor and my father out to start the car. It didn’t. The battery was dead. The Robertsons lived next door. Sgt. Robertson put us in his car and ran two red lights on Dyer Street to get us to the hospital in time.
Fifteen years later in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan my parents would join Jesus’ team, learning to follow him. And when they look back on their lives, they see that there were people who made God credible to them. People who influenced them, such as the Robertsons.
Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, born Edith Stein, is a saint Amber Bowen has commended to me. Edith Stein was a phenomenologist. At the All Saints feast Amber and Jack hosted in the East Rectory Friday night, Amber described Stein in the elegant way that a philosophy professor would. “She is a kick-*** philosopher!”
Stein wrote, “Our love of neighbour is the measure of our love of God. For Christians—and not only for them—no one is a ‘stranger’. The love of Christ knows no borders.”
The Robertsons loved the Lord and they loved their neighbors, the people next door. My Mom and Dad, who are here with us today, tell the story of how the Robertsons’ church, which didn’t have a church building, was building one. And so my Dad went to the construction site to help. When he came home from swinging hammers, my Mom asked, “How did it go, Bud? Did you have a good time?” “Yes, but those poor folks are never gonna get their church built. Because they stop every fifteen minutes to pray!” (They got the church built.)
In our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he prays for the faithful in Ephesus,
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation … so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe …
The riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints isn’t a spiritual add-on a believer can just as well trust in the Lord without. You don’t get anywhere spiritually apart from the Team. “He who has not the Church for his Mother has not God for his Father,” Cyprian of Carthage said. This isn’t a bit of idolatry smuggled into the Church. It’s “the great cloud of witnesses,” the choice vessels of God’s grace in their several generations whose witness makes God credible.
To commemorate and give thanks for all the faithful departed—the heroes and martyrs of the faith whose names are beatified and known, the faithful departed whose names are known perhaps to God alone—is to peer into your family album and learn something about yourself. And it is to receive something of God’s very glory and mighty power.
God’s power and glory are bound up in what God takes to himself. And what God takes to himself he gives of himself. The God whose story is told in “A wandering Aramean was my father” turns out by his own choosing to be the Blessed One attended by creatures of such burning splendor that we can scarcely imagine them: cherubim and seraphim and angels and archangels.
CS Lewis wrote, “In this throng are creatures who bear a dignity excelling that of the immortals. These are the creatures of whom alone it is said that they were made in the image of God.” The mantle of their flesh, your flesh and mine, is the mantle taken by God himself at His Incarnation. It is almost impossible to imagine. You pinch yourself. But there it is. And we celebrate it on the Feast of All Saints.
In chapter three of this letter to the Ephesians, St Paul writes,
I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith — that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
His syntax, the way he writes this, using these relative, dependent clauses, Paul’s meaning is unmistakable: the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ is not something we’re going to get anywhere in knowing apart from the saints. The hope to which Christians are called has to do irretrievably with the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints, the blessed company of all faithful people.
In that mystic, sweet communion God vouchsafes to us in the love of Christ companions beyond our ken, sacred teammates. And the Most High gives us thereby strength and power.
Jesus is more than a coach, but he is not less than one.
Tom Wiedrich is a friend. We played varsity basketball for the Sault High Blue Devils. He was 6’ 4” forward with a beautiful, deadly accurate jump shot. I was the point guard. We were an outstanding team in Michigan our senior year. Team Good Sam, full of talent, reminds me of that team. And our coach, Coach Ludwig, a fierce competitor who played for the University of Michigan, harnessed it.
Tom went to Harvard College, then to the University of Michigan Medical School. An orthopedic surgeon, he specialised in hand and wrist surgery, his office on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. He told me last month that he retired a year ago. He accomplished a thing or two.
Years ago he emailed me, Hey Phil! Coach Ludwig called the other day. He said, Wiedrich. I’m in Chicago. I want to stop by your office to say hello. Can I do that? I said sure, coach. He came in. It had been more than thirty years since we played for him. It was good to see him. I introduced him to my staff. And if he had said, Wiedrich, give me 50! I’d have dropped to the floor and given him 50 pushups.
Jesus is that kind of coach. He’s more than that, but he’s not less than that. He will take you places you want to be but wouldn’t get to except that he’ll take you there. He’ll have you give him things you didn’t think you had it in you to give. And he’ll inspire you to live in a way that influences others to join his team.
So what’s the takeaway, this All Saints’ Sunday? Find a way today, tomorrow, to love your neighbor. Do something for the people next door. Be ready to drop everything to help them. Run two red lights on Dyer Street if you have to. And make sure to invite them to help you and your church get something done for the Captain. Do that. And by the grace of God perhaps someday they’ll begin—and we’re all beginners at this—to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
