◉ It’s that time of year again! Just as the trees start shedding their leaves, the fall rains begin, and children appear at our front doors with big smiles, asking for candy, the timeless classic—the World Series—is here. Wednesday’s final game between the LA Dodgers and the New York Yankees wrapped up one of the most thrilling matchups in years.
Some of you might disagree, but I don’t think it really matters if your favorite team made it to the series or which team comes out on top. What makes this time of year special, at least in my household, is the game itself. For one, it’s one of the few times my family and I can actually agree on what to watch. Plus, there’s an undeniable emotional quality to watching the game that seems to transcend time. The green of the grass, the roar of the crowd, the crack of the bat, the thrill of a home run—these are experiences that almost every American can connect with in some way.
What is your earliest memory of baseball? Mine has to do with my mother. I remember her speaking fondly of her beloved grandfather, Pop. How she sat with him on his front porch in Arkadelphia listening to the game on the radio, score card in hand, marking the hits, runs, and errors for each inning. She told me of his favorite teams and favorite players and of the cards he would collect. When he passed away she gave me his red, Henderson Reddie baseball cap back from when he used to help coach the team.
I went on to create my own memories of baseball, cards spread all around my bedroom floor, organizing the players by team alphabetically for hours, playing third base in little league, and being so devoted to the Atlanta Braves when they played their miraculous, “worst to first” season in ’92. I also remember being taught how to field a ground ball by my grandfather, and learning how to read the statistics of players and teams from my dad. That’s three generations, just in my lifetime, which have been touched by baseball. And in the end, it’s not the people hitting balls with sticks that have made the game so important to me; it’s the relationships and memories that have been forged by experiencing the “great American pastime” together.
A baseball movie that captures this phenomenon better than any other is Field of Dreams, from Kevin Costner’s golden age. I’ll never forget watching that film in the theater with my father and seeing him get emotional during the final touching scene, where a father, long deceased but brought back to life through a magical baseball field, is reunited with his son for a game of catch. To this day, I can’t manage to get through that movie without tearing up myself.
A character in Field of Dreams, played by James Earl Jones, sums it up when he says, “The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.”
Baseball is a tie that binds generations together: mothers and grandfathers, fathers and sons, the past, the present, and the future. It’s woven into the fabric of our culture, a common thread we can all recognize, even if we don’t have a favorite team or watch the World Series. And, I think this baseball phenomenon beautifully captures the spirit of the day we are celebrating: All Saints’ Day. As far as metaphors go, it’s a pretty good one. Through the constant we call Christianity, made manifest in the Church, we are all connected in one timeless relationship.
From generation to generation, we have prayed the same prayers, recited the same confession, professed the same creed, and made the same journey down the aisle to receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Through centuries of sharing a meal around a common table, we have built community and found love—a communion of saints. In this communion, there are no boundaries between the living and the dead. Our temporal existence is merely a snapshot of the eternal life that we and our brothers and sisters inherit through our faith in Christ.
Like ghosts of baseball greats magically materializing in an Iowa cornfield, this is not an easy concept for everyone to grasp. Yet, in today’s gospel, this is precisely the point Jesus is making by raising Lazarus from the dead. It’s easy to get lost in the many details of this story, each deserving of its own sermon: the weeping of Mary, Martha, and the crowd; the compassionate, deeply moved Jesus; the earthly stench coming from the tomb as the stone is rolled away. But the overarching message of today’s gospel is about the need for all of us—Mary, Martha, the crowd, you, me, and even Lazarus—to recognize the constant in our lives, the tie that binds us all together: Jesus.
It is through Jesus that Lazarus is raised. It is through Jesus that the dead are reunited with the living. And it is through Jesus that we understand that the kind of death Lazarus experienced, and the kind of death we all will face, is not the end. We are eternally connected to one another, generation to generation, through our collective faith in Christ.
My wife’s church, Christ Church in Little Rock, held its All Saints’ service on Friday. Many would agree that it’s consistently one of the most moving liturgies the church celebrates. Members process with banners bearing the names of loved ones the community lost that year, the choir sings excerpts from requiem mass settings, and a necrology is read—just as we will do here this morning.
Friday’s necrology included the name of Christ Church’s beloved parish administrator, who had served in that role for over forty years. It also included the name of a cherished daughter who passed too soon and one of the parish’s most treasured lectors, whose voice will forever be linked to certain verses of Scripture. My uncle’s name was on the list as well, a contractor whose handiwork can be seen throughout the church building. These four individuals were not necessarily close in life, and they couldn’t have been more different from one another. Yet, hearing their names read in that context, alongside so many others, was a beautiful reminder that they were always—and will always be—deeply connected. And so are we. Among all the lists our names have appeared on, or will appear on, the church’s necrology is the most esteemed. There is no greater honor—no greater joy—than to be loved and embraced by the body of Christ.
Yesterday afternoon, as I was putting this sermon together, I thought it would be fun to watch Field of Dreams again to see if it still had that magical, emotional pull. I even managed to talk my sixteen-year-old son into joining me. So, we queued it up on Netflix and, I don’t know, it wasn’t even thirty minutes in, and I started to feel that familiar tightness in my throat. You know how it is–you just hope you can hold it together until the end.
The tears we shed during Field of Dreams and at an All Saints’ service can mean many things. There’s sadness for some, nostalgia too. Pain, or maybe regret for others. But at the deepest level, I think they are tears of joy. When we recognize that we are connected, that we are never alone, and that we belong to a timeless community that transcends even death, it brings a profound sense of peace. We understand that we and our loved ones are forgiven and that we are precious to God. Words simply can’t capture the depth of this truth.
When Lazarus came out of the tomb, his hands and feet were bound with strips of cloth, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to the crowd, “Unbind him, and let him go.” As members of the communion of Saints, you and I, like Lazarus, are unbound. The stone has been taken away. Nothing, not even death, can keep us apart.
All Saints, Year B