My goddaughter Kaia was baptized on the Feast of All Saints eight years ago. Bishop Sandy Hampton was the preacher, and he asked us a provocative question: “If you could put the central message of Christianity on a bumper sticker, what would it say?” Clearly he didn’t expect us all to come up with the same answer, but to play and explore our faith together on this joyful occasion.

A couple months later, I put Sandy’s bumper sticker challenge to a priest I had just met. His solution was this: “Since all else fails, love.” I really like that one. And I’ve come up with others, but they keep changing. Today, I would put it this way: “No death without resurrection.” It is simultaneously a statement of belief and a call to action. We hear a lot of readings on this theme in November, beginning at the Feast of All Saints.

One of the weirdest mixed metaphors in Christianity is “the marriage supper of the Lamb.” OK, wait – a sheep is getting married? I thought Jesus was supposed to be the shepherd. And how do these modifiers work, anyway? Is the Lamb hosting the supper, or is the Lamb itself supper for all of us? The answer is, simply, yes.

There’s a classic Twilight Zone episode in which aliens arrive and tell us their mission is “to serve Man.” This sounds great until the end of the episode, when we discover that this is the name of their cookbook!

In a playful but reverent comparison, we could say that the Christian’s task is “To Serve Jesus.” We serve him by loving God and loving each other. And every week at church, we serve Jesus as a meal to nourish the people of the world … not because we are bloodthirsty, but because Jesus has given himself for this very purpose.

At the beginning of the story of our faith, the Hebrews feast on the sacrificial Passover Lamb before being led through the Red Sea to freedom. At the climax of our story, Jesus becomes the Lamb, sacrificed on a cross in order to end the endless system of sacrificial atonement. And at the end of all things, the Lamb becomes the groom at the wedding of the human world and the divine world. All death is subsumed into a glorious celebration of resurrection.