In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost. Amen.
“For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee
by faith before the world confessed, thy Name, O Jesus, be for ever blessed.”
We gather today on the Feast of All Saints to give thanks for the blessed
Communion of the Body of Christ that transcends time and space and for the holy
ones of God who have inspired us in generations past. William Faulkner once
wrote that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” All Saints
recognizes the power of that statement. The saints are not dead because once
you are in Christ, death has been defeated and, as we know from the Eucharistic
Prayer at a Burial, “life is changed, not ended.” And so the saints are still
very much with us in providing companionship and witness.
Who are the saints though? I was recently in a
conversation with someone new to the Episcopal Church who asked what our view
of the saints is. As I often do when such questions come up, I said, “Let’s
look at the Prayer Book.” And if we
study the various prayers in the Prayer
Book related to the saints, we read that saints are enduring examples, faithful
witnesses, and virtuous vessels of God’s grace. Later in tonight’s liturgy,
we’ll rejoice in the fellowship of the saints as we pray the Litany for All
Saints. You’ll notice there are some different types of saints – there are
saints from Scripture who took part in the story of God’s salvation of Israel.
There are martyrs, those who gave their lives in witness to Christ. There are
teachers who still teach us about God. There are bishops, priests, deacons, and
laity who lived their lives as if the love of God was the truest thing about
the world. Some had a faith that we’d call “heroic” and some that we’d call
“simple.” There is no formula for what makes someone a saint because sainthood
is as diverse as the family of God is.
But the common thread that runs through the lives of the
saints is that none of them set out to be a saint. We might say that the most
significant of all the saints is Mary, the God-bearer. When she was called by
God she responded by saying “Let it be with me according to your word.” The
saints never live for themselves, but always for God. We remember and celebrate
the saints not because they were perfect people, because they were not. They
were just as sinful and prone to mistakes as you or I. Instead, what
distinguishes the saints is that they, following the example of St. John the
Baptist, said: “I must decrease that Christ may increase.” It is not the light
or life of the saints that we celebrate, rather the light of Christ that shined
through them.
Tonight’s readings say much to inform our understanding
of the saints and guide our vernation of them. In Ephesians, St. Paul uses the
word “inheritance” several times in this passage. The saints are those who are
aware of the gift of grace they received. To be clear, every single person,
Christian or not, is a beloved child of God. But not everyone recognizes that
they are the beloved of God, not everyone lives with that love at the core of
their lives, not everyone reaches out in that love to others. But the saints
do. Saints are aware of the inheritance that they have received and that
inheritance of having a holy calling, the power of the Spirit, and the grace of
love is manifest in their lives. The Psalm reminds us that we are to rejoice in
this inheritance – we rejoice in this congregation of the faithful and praise
the Name of the Lord throughout our lives.
As St. Luke records Jesus’ words known as the Beatitudes,
we see Jesus not telling us what we need to do in order to become saints, but
rather telling us that saintly living opens us to the blessings of God. The
blessings and woes are not prescriptions, but rather descriptions. Saints are
not always poor, hungry, or sorrowful, nor are the saints never rich, full, or
full of laughter. Sainthood is about openness to God, and often when we are
open to the radical and redeeming love of God, the world will reject and
ridicule that faith. And so poverty sometimes will follow, just ask St.
Francis. Sometimes hunger will come, just ask St. Constance. Sometimes sorrow
will come, just ask St. Julian. The saints of God do not live according to the
rules of the world, but rather by the grace of God and that is what these words
of Jesus describe.
And in the passage from Daniel, we encounter what it is
that allows the saints to engage in their holy and courageous work – and that
is the victory of God. In an apocalyptic vision, the prophet Daniel sees that
the kingdoms of this world will all fall, but that the Kingdom of God will
endure forever. God will redeem his holy ones and they shall possess that
Kingdom forever. Daniel says that he sees “one like a human,” sometimes
translated as the “Son of Man,” who is associated with Jesus and is “given
dominion, and glory, and kingship… His dominion is an everlasting dominion that
shall not pass away and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”
Some of the saints were slain by fierce wild beasts, some
were burned at the stake, some died of the illnesses of the patients that they
were caring for. Some of the saints were dismissed as heretics, some were
ignored, some were exiled. But they did their holy work because they did not
measure success by the standards of the falling kingdoms of this world.
An Orthodox theologian said that “A saint is not thirsty
for decency, not for cleanliness, and not for absence of sin, but for unity
with God.” Because the desire of the saints is not for fame, fortune, or lives
of ease but rather nearness to God, the saints are able to do what seems to us
to be heroic. They transcend the excuses of society and embrace the radical
nature of the Gospel. The saints are assured of only one thing – that they will
share in the victory of God. And with that assurance, they are able to do more
than we ask or imagine would be possible in a human life. Their victories were
not their own, but a participation in the victory of God.
Now, the danger in celebrating All Saints is that we might
think that saints are only “stained glass people” and not people like you and
me. Baptism is what unites us to Jesus and in being united to Jesus, we are
united to one another in this joyous fellowship of all the saints. You might
even say that the Communion of Saints is a way of understanding what it means
to be a part of the Beloved Community. The saints help and inspire us in this
work. The saints surround us and cheer us on as it is now our turn to run with
perseverance the race that is set before us. The lives of the saints remind us
that, with God, nothing shall be impossible.
And so on this Feast of All Saints, we thank God for the
ways we have seen the Holy Spirit move in the lives of the saints and we pray
that the same grace which allowed them to be the lights of the world in their
generations might also shine in our own lives. “O blest communion, fellowship
divine! We feebly struggle, they in glory shine; yet all are one in thee, for
all are thine. Alleluia, alleluia!”
