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Knit Together with the Knotty
https://www.friendsandfiber.com/
I am preaching to you today from the snuggliest place I know, Friends and Fiber Yarn Shop in La Grange, KY with owner Vickie Kinser and friend Debbie Hanna. While I preach, Debbie will fix the places where I made knit stitches on the row I was supposed to yarn over. Thank you Debbie!
I first learned to knit as an impatient six year old child who was fascinated by the way two needles could make something as simple as yarn into something so elaborate as a garment. I lived in Massachusetts at the time and the warmth of the yarn with the camaraderie of the knitters made a lasting impression on me. As for knitting as a learned-skill I quit that. I felt so upset when I made a mistake that trying to untangle one knot created an even knottier knot. Unless I was closely supervised by my teacher, every row ended in tears.
Forty years later I visited the Adirondacks where I bought a ball of yarn as a souvenir. It was so beautiful it inspired me to think that maybe, just maybe I was mature enough to relearn the skill. I took my little ball of souvenir yarn and I strutted confidently into the Crafty Hands Yarn Shop in Bowling Green, KY.
I brashly asked Starla for the most advanced level and complicated pattern. She took one look at me and invited me to join the knitting class. I looked at Starla looking at me and realized I needed all the help she could give.
God is a knitter. I don’t know if God had to take lessons from friends like Starla, Debbie and Vickie. Holy Scripture describes how God uses bones and sinews instead of yarn and creates humans instead of garments. Whether it’s creating a wool garment or a woolly human God’s creativity is inscrutable and wondrous.
Today, the church observes the Feast of All Saints. Technically that means we observe those in every generation who lived a virtuous and godly life. Tomorrow is the Feast of All Faithful Departed when the church commemorates all the deceased whether they were virtuous and godly or pains-in-the-needles.
The lives of the virtuous and godly are so closely knit to the rest of us that many faith communities like St James lump the 
observances all together all on the same day like a big basket of scrap yarn.
It’s a bit of a tangle isn’t it — that Jesus didn’t sacrifice his life to save good people; he sacrificed his life to save all people... even and especially the pains-in-the-needles s.
That truth can feel just as frustrating as making a yarn over where you wanted a pearl. Those are the times you just need a teacher, a supervisor, and a friend to come along and take your tangles lovingly in hand. Like Debbie, Jesus can knit things back together that seemed hopelessly un-untangleable. Sometimes a tangle takes some serious unknitting to get back to the origin of the mistake. Unknitting is called “tinking’ which is knitting spelled backwards - literally un-knitting.
Jesus has the patience we don’t to knit in us a heart worth snuggling. The theological description of that miracle is: In his incarnation Jesus gets irrevocably tangled up in humanity and death so we can be knit to his resurrection. A yarn shop like Friends and Fiber is where it is on earth as it is in heaven.
So this week, study those Beatitude-blessings from Matthew 5 like they are a knitting pattern.
Ponder Revelation 7 like it’s a tutorial on coming out of a great ordeal to be clothed in a white robe and have God wipe away every tear from your eyes.
Snuggle up close to the belief that you are knit together with all the virtuous and godly and the pains-in-the-needles in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of God’s Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
