Nov. 7 Sermon: All Saints Storytelling Service
Hear all 3 stories from Holy Covenant’s All Saints Storytelling Service told by:
Rebecca Anderson
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
Dan Hart
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Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
All Saints Story
HCUMC, November 7, 2010
Ephesians 1:15-19
I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 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 God, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you, what are the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe, according to the working of God’s great power.
Thanks be to God!
2,000 years ago, Paul prayed for the Christian community in Ephesus: I pray that the God of Jesus Christ may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God.
650 years ago, a great saint of our faith prayed that she would receive a revelation from God, through Jesus Christ, and she did. Specifically, she received 16 revelations from God. Revelations of love.
Her name is Julian of Norwich and she lived in England in the 14th and 15th centuries.
A middle ages mystic, her revelations sound more modern than medieval:
*She uses male and female language and attributes for God:
‘As truly as God is our Father,’ Julian wrote, ‘so truly God is our Mother.’
She takes it a step further, calling Jesus our mother: This is to say that our high God who is sovereign wisdom of all arrayed himself in this low place, clothing himself in our poor flesh, so that he might himself perform the service and office of motherhood in all things; The mother’s task is the nearest, readiest, and most sure, for it is the most real truth…Our own true Mother Jesus, he who is all love, bears us to joy and endless living!”
Jesus, a man, is our mother…it reads like a 14th century transgender theology.
*In a church that preached condemnation, judgment, and wrath, Julian revealed unconditional love. Saying: ‘There is no wrath in God….It is the most impossible thing that can be that God would be angry, for wrath and friendship are two opposites.’
C.S. Lewis wrote to a pupil: “I have been reading Lady Julian of Norwich..A dangerous book, clearly: I’m glad I didn’t read it much earlier”; the Catholic church has never made her an official saint. Who is this dangerous woman?
We don’t know much about her life, nor her real name; but we do know that after a grave illness at the age of 30, on May 8, 1373, she received revelations from God. Showings, she called them. Upon this direct, intense experience with God, she chose to devote herself completely to the life of faith and nurturing this relationship. She didn’t become a nun—instead, she became an anchorite, a person who was granted permission from the Bishop to live alone, in isolation. She chose to live in an anchor cell, a 2 room dwelling, propped against the walls of St. Julian Church in Norwich—thus we call her Julian of Norwich. It is in this room that she lived into her 80’s, rarely receiving visitors or contacting the outside world.
But it is anchored here that Julian wrote down her revelations from God. There was an urgency to her writing, for once she knew so completely the unconditional love of God, she couldn’t help but share it. It is here that she wrote her famous phrase, a quote from God: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
Julian wrote down her revelations from God, and what we have here (show book) is the first book written by a woman in the English language.
Her writings were lost for centuries, but rediscovered in the 20th century. Today she is known as one of the, if not the, greatest English mystics. A mystic is someone who has a direct and immediate relationship with God. But Julian was clear that ALL of us are mystics…just as all of us are saints. If we pay attention, and attend to God, there is a mystic in all of us. She believed it is our calling, as Christians, to come to know God and experience the touching of God’s love.
For the core of her revelation is this: God is love. Hear this from the final chapter: I desired in many ways to know what was our Lord’s meaning. And fifteen years after and more, I was answered in spiritual understanding, and it was said: What, do you wish to know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same. But you will never know different, without end.
This dangerous woman is a saint, and one who can teach us and lead us to a deeper relationship with God. And she teaches us that there’s a mystic living inside each of us. A revelation waiting in a chamber of our hearts. An anchor of love that grounds us to God. For all of us are saints, now and always reconciled to the God of love.
Right here, right now, in 2010, I pray that the God of Jesus Christ may give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know God. For God is love, and when we, as God’s saints, know God’s unconditional love, with our whole bodies, our whole selves, we will know and believe, along with Julian, that:
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
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