All Saints: St. Alfred's, Nov. 5, 2023
Setting
Who makes saints
Someone asked me the other day who makes Saints? They had observed that some of the people in the church's calendar had "saint" in front of their name and some didn't. How do you get to be a saint? I'm a little surprised at myself that my first instinct was to describe the different ways the Catholic Church and the Episcopal church make a saint. I gave a bureaucratic answer to what I think was a personal question.
Somehow All Saints Day is a very personal day.
There was one thing (Bishop) Scharf said two weeks ago that -- in the language of my youth --"blew me away." He pointed to how the Pharisees were asking one question and Jesus answered a different question. It's so important to listen for the right questions, isn't it. It wasn't just that it was an insight in how to understand that particular exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. It seemed to be a kind of commentary on the importance of really listening to one another. It seemed almost an explanation for conflict in our lives and our world.
There's are various processes for how one gets "saint" in front of their name. But is that why we're here today? Our congregation is made up of people from a wonderful variety of different church backgrounds. There is I think a wonderful menagerie of different expectations for what the feast of All Saints is about.
I was amazed at that variety when I dug a little bit into the different traditions related to this day. A day that the church has been observing since the 300s. What would it have been like for those Christians in the fourth century as they gathered to celebrate the Saints among them, the Saints who had gone before them, the Martyrs who had died for the sake of the faith that bound them together?
Great variety
Observances
The observance of this feast day for me personally goes back deep into my youth, because my mother -- at the time a recent convert to the Episcopal church -- was keen to distinguish between the holy day of November 1 and the secular day called Halloween. As I learned a little more about the church year in those days, probably leading up to my confirmation, I learned there was a day set aside on November 2 called All Souls Day. Obviously they're not the same thing. But related. Later in my own life I was interested in the different approach to these holidays brought to us by the Day of the Dead -- dios de muerte. Related but not the same.
I was especially impressed when I went to a Lutheran Church where my daughter was married some years ago. They had hanging from the ceiling, high above us, strips of paper containing the names of all the people who had ever been a member of the church. It was like a snow storm of all the saints of that church who had gone before and brought those present to where they were now. For some of us this day conjures up memories of this sort. We pray for them in a litany today.
How rich this day is in meaning and importance to our own lives.
Cloud of witnesses
One of the things that ties together the different elements of this feast day is our fundamental trust and faith in the way we are bound together with those who have gone before us. Every year on this holy day I hear echoed in my mind the words of Hebrews chapter 12:
So then, with endurance, let’s also run the race that is laid out in front of us, since we have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us. Let’s throw off any extra baggage, get rid of the sin that trips us up, and fix our eyes on Jesus, faith’s pioneer and perfecter. He endured the cross, ignoring the shame, for the sake of the joy that was laid out in front of him, and sat down at the right side of God’s throne. (CEB Heb 12:1-2)
For myself, one of the foundations of my trust in the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us came in the form of a message from beyond Death. I was standing alone in an apartment about a month after my father died. I can still remember the scene. I was standing at the kitchen counter minding my own business. I'm not sure what I was doing. But I suddenly heard a voice. It was the voice of my father. And it said, "Don't worry. I'm all right."
One might easily claim that all sorts of things might have produced the sensation in my mind. But from the moment it happened it felt like a message for me from beyond the grave. It felt like a message from God, and left me convinced that what death brings is not dissolution and separation; those are the things that we see and feel. It left me with an unshakable conviction that what death brings is peace and connection with all things and the God who made it all.
All Saints Day is for me the clearest expression of that.
Ancient setting
Who are these saints who surround us? How does scripture portray them? In both Hebrew and then Greek the words for "saint" are in their root meaning having to do with set apart or separate. Saints are different and yet the same as you and I. On the one hand there is the sacred and on the other there is the ordinary. Holiness and sacredness are associated with God. And we are not God.1
In the New Testament the word "saint" is applied to the followers of Jesus, the believers in Jesus as the Christ. So Paul addresses six of his letters to the Saints, ... of Rome, Corinth, Ephesus ... and so on. The saints in this usage are set apart from those who don't believe. Related to this is the word for Church which means those who are called out, ekklesia.
It turns out that the same concept of being "set apart" for God – "saint" "holy one" – is very like the word Jesus's chief opponents used about themselves. The meaning of the word "Pharisees" is those who are separate, those who are set apart. Set apart for God. Separate from ordinary society. Saint. Paul himself was a Pharisee and then referred to his fellow followers of Jesus as "the saints". Jesus certainly had his conflict with the Pharisees, but they had far more in common than what separated them.
All Saints is all about what binds us together, across the generations and across our differences.
Who am I? How become that?
Reverie as a teenager
On a regular basis when I was a teenager I would spend time in a kind of reverie thinking about the "great cloud of witnesses". I've never forgotten the wonder I felt. It wasn't just parents or grandparents as I understood it. It was all of my ancestors who made it so that I spoke and thought and dreamed in English and not in Swahili. They helped make me who I am for better and for worse, good and the bad, the weak and the strong.
Today I would call that meditating on all the saints, those who bind me together with those who have gone before and those who will come after.
When the bishop spoke to us two weeks ago he gave us a plan of action. He gave us a charge. He charged us with paying attention to the lives we were living because we are made in the image of God. Who we are is children of God. It sounded very much like a short quotation from Bp. Tutu, a quotation that has guided and inspired me for decades. "God has made us responsible for his reputation."
We are a part of that great cloud of witnesses and we bear responsibility for those who come after.
Baptism
Promises:
How ought we to fashion our lives so that we can take our place in the Communion of the Saints? We don't just get there by accident or automatically. What do we have to do or be? An excellent summary is found in the baptismal covenant. We heard it two weeks ago and we make those renewal of vows again today.
- Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
- Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
- Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
- Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
- Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
Who are the saints in your life who have held out for you these ideals and have empowered you to live into them? Is it an aunt or uncle? Or a friend you met in a purely serendipitous way? Whoever they are, we celebrate those Saints today.
Gospel
Those baptismal promises from our Book of Common Prayer have only been around for 50 years or so, but the words of Jesus's Beatitudes have been with us from the beginning. They have been a model and guide for the kind of lives we're talking about today. They point to who we are and whose we are, as Bishop Sharf put it 2 weeks ago. We are children of God made in God's image and responsible for God's reputation.
Who?
Who are the saint or saints who have been models for you and for me of poor in spirit? Dorothy Day has been that for me.
Who are the ones who have shown you that the way out of grief and mourning is into peace and shalom? The martyred nuns in El Salvador? For me it is a woman who breathed her last breath and then finished with the biggest smile you can imagine.
Who are the ones who have guided you with the knowledge that the meek shall inherit the Earth? Takashi Nagai, A Japanese doctor injured during the bombing of Nagasaki, cared tirelessly for other victims and worked towards forgiveness and reconciliation through the establishment of a prayer house, the writing of a book and the planting of thousands of cherry trees to help reclaim the devastated landscape.
Who are the ones who have produced in you a hunger and thirst for righteousness? Sam Shoemaker and the countless anonymous leaders of AA groups throughout the world?
Who are the ones who have exemplified mercy? Mother Teresa? Or perhaps your grandmother?
Who are the peacemakers? Gandhi perhaps? One of them for me was the man who brought together in Raleigh, NC, a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and the local black woman who pestered the city council for justice for the black community.
Who are the martyrs who have shown you the way of life? Oscar Romero? A parishioner I had in the 1990's is one who helped to show me that way of life. She had founded a free medical clinic for Michigan City. As a part of that process she had lived with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. As she talked about that experience the "holiness" of it was palpable to me – gave me, as they say in Hawai'i – "chicken skin". She died of uterine cancer, still in her 30's. Way too young.
Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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