From the musical The Lion King we hear: 

“From the day we arrive on the planet

And blinking, step into the sun

There's more to see than can ever be seen

More to do than can ever be done

There's far too much to take in here

More to find than can ever be found

But the sun rolling high

Through the sapphire sky

Keeps great and small on the endless round

It's the Circle of Life

And it moves us all

Through despair and hope

Through faith and love

Till we find our place

On the path unwinding

In the Circle

The Circle of Life” 

(Elton John and Tim Rice)

This past week had three of the most under-appreciated days in the church year: All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day and All Souls Day—three days when the veil between this life and the next, between the living and the dead is lifted just a bit. Three days when we laugh in the face of death, when we remember those who have gone before, when we celebrate the legacy they have left behind. I think these days are underappreciated because we all struggle with death… we fear it, we do everything in our power to prevent it…..but ….this is always a losing proposition. We lose this battle because death is universal and death is inevitable. People are born, people live and people die. 

But this circle of life, the reality of life and death, is not something to be feared, it is something to be celebrated. Celebrated because death has been defeated….once and for all... through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Jesus looked death in the eye and death blinked. 

Each and every baptism is a recreation of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Our baptisms defeat death. Our baptisms give us eternal life. 

A baptism offers us a glimpse into that very circle of life so emblematically etched in our brains by the song written by Tim Rice and Elton John and so memorably heard in the Lion King. In baptism we are put on that winding path that takes us through despair and hope, through faith and love until we rest in the arms of our God, taking our place among that great cloud of witnesses that populate the heavenly banquet, a seat at which each and every one of us is guaranteed.

This week at Good Shepherd we took our own journey through this Circle of Life. We had a funeral and this morning, three baptisms. It was fitting that we bade farewell to Norma McIntosh on All Souls’ Day and it’s fitting that this All Saints’ Sunday morning we baptize (d) LJ, Riley and Caylee…because the path around the Circle of Life is made up of death and birth, beginnings and endings, alpha and omega.

Any community---our families, our neighborhoods, our churches, our world----is part of this great circle. Things begin, things end. New people come into these communities, old people depart. 

All Saint’s Sunday is a day to remember and this year especially, a day to look ahead. All Saints day is a day when the open veil between this world and the next allows us to consider where we’ve been and where we are headed. 

The Great Cloud of Witnesses—the saints in heaven---represent where we’ve been. 

Pause for a moment. Take a good look around this place. The windows, the woodwork. Look at the altar—think of all the hundreds, the thousands of times the Eucharist has been celebrated atop this gorgeous table, think of all the caskets, all the urns that have been honored right here. Look at this font---how many people have had the waters of baptism poured over them—babies and children young adults and older adults alike. This place is full of history, full of memories, full of the people who built it into what it is today. [For use at Ascension:This place has both glory and struggle in its past, and we have struggle and glimpses of glory in our present. Our forebears know what it is to struggle, to dream, to hope and to worry]

On a day like this we are to honor those people, honor each and every one of these Holy Witnesses …people who have entrusted this place to us. 

To all of Us. 

It’s quite the responsibility. Just how are we to honor them? By doing what we’re doing: by baptizing new members, by welcoming the stranger, by reaching out to the needy, by loving one another. When we do that: when we love one another like Christ loves us, then we are building something---we are building a community of saints, earthly saints, folks just like you and me who love this place, love one another and long to give this church—its people, its purpose, its past, its present and its future the very best that we can.

So as we [For use at Ascension and 8 am: renew our baptismal promises remember all those who’ve been washed in the waters of our fonts, remember all those whose final journey was taken from this space, remember all those who have come before, HONOR all those who will come after as we say, Welcome, welcome to our circle, our glorious, wondrous circle of life] baptize Caylee, Riely and LJ into this, our community of earthly saints, we say; welcome, welcome to our circle, our glorious, wondrous circle of life.