Transcript
Give us grace so to follow your blessed Saints and all virtuous and godly living. Please be seated.
Today we are celebrating the feast of All Saints. A special day celebrated at least since the ninth century, with evidence of celebrations going back to all the way to the third century. All Saints is a time for us to celebrate the Saints, Capital S. This is a chance for us to honor all those Saints (capital S) who lived lives a little bit more in line with Jesus’s life. A little more like the model we get from Jesus. Not so much the divine. Although it’s always helpful when a Saint can perform miracles. Today is about the Saints who dedicated their lives to feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, to healing the sick and offering justice to the imprisoned, to welcoming the stranger and standing up for the oppressed, for living according to Scripture. After all, all of those above explicitly outlined in the Old and New Testament.
Saints like John, our namesake, who is considered the author of the Fourth gospel, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and is responsible for bringing Christianity east toward Asia through Turkey. Or Augustine of Hippo, whose writing is often created as being the very foundation of modern Christian interpretations of Scripture and Jesus’s life and teachings. Or Stephen, who is considered the very first martyr killed for his unwillingness to denounce the new Christian teachings of the apostles. His death, in case you were wondering, is depicted in the Book of Acts and was believed to have happened between year 33 and 36.
There are modern Saints we can honor today as well. Saints like Mother Teresa, who I’m sure you all have heard of, a Catholic nun who dedicated her life to serving the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta, or Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian who used his own body to stop a bullet aimed at a black girl trying to go to an integrated high school in the South in the 1960s. Or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor who chose to remain in a Nazi concentration camp, giving up his life to care for those imprisoned rather than publicly declare support for the Nazis. All of these are people who took the risk of being Christian to great levels and as a result, died for their faith.
These are people of whom we have icons and stained glass windows. These are real people who lives are often told as fables, like a lesson to be learned about how we should strive to live our own lives. As I said, these are people who took their faith far beyond the comfortable Christian lifestyle. And in most cases, these are not people we could even strive to be like. Instead, these are people who are called by God to live lives worth knowing about. To live lives worth writing about, and reading about and studying.
This evening we will celebrate All Souls, or the feast of all faithful departed. In comparison to All Saints, All Souls honors all those whom we love but no longer see. Those who have gone before us to God’s heavenly kingdom, those imperfect and yet perfectly human beings, many who knew God in their lives and lived Christian or good lives. Those who loved and were loved. Those who tried to be like Christ and like us. Those who often failed. Those who again like us, need the confession on Sunday to apologize to God for all those times we seem to fall short.
Lesser feasts and fasts, the book of the Episcopal Calendar of Saints, differentiates All Saints Day and All Souls Day in this way: All Saints Day honors persons of heroic sanctity whose deeds were recalled with gratitude by later generations. All Souls Day honors the vast body of the faithful, who, though no less members of the company of the redeemed, are unknown in the wider fellowship of the church. In other words, All Saints are the Saints (capital S) that the Church (capital C) knows and All Souls are the souls that we know in our individual and intimate lives. I had a mentor refer to this time of year as the fall tritium, the spring tritium being Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. This is All Hallows Eve, where we dress up as scary creatures and make fun of Death, and All Saints, where we honor the superstars of our faith and our souls, where we honor all those in God’s heavenly kingdom. Perhaps like the reverse of the spring tritium this time of year acknowledges the fact that death must be part of the process before we achieve eternal life.
It acknowledges the fact that we must descend to the dead. We must die before we can ascend to heaven, before the resurrection. Jesus models this during Holy Week and Easter, and we anticipate it with every death we witness. Every loved one we lose to death. Every person who goes before us.
Most of us won’t live the life of a Saint (capital S), and that’s okay, because even though most of us are not called to live a life of outrageous and irrational faith, we are all called to live out our faith in love. Love of those we do not like. Love of those we do not agree with. Love of those we do not even know, as well as love of those whom we see every day or almost every day. We are called and very much are able to live out our faith in love and a life like that. A faith like that is worthy of a celebration.
A life like that. A faith like that will lead us to the heavenly kingdom with all the Saints (capital S) and all the souls. Those whom we love and no longer see.
We may not be able to live our lives like the Saints, but we can certainly live our lives according to the two greatest commandments to love God and love your neighbor. And to do that we are called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and heal the sick and fight for justice, and welcome the stranger and stand up for the oppressed. To live Saint like lives, Christ like lives, as promised in our baptismal vows.
In a moment, George will be coming forward with his parents and grandparents to get baptized, and we will all join him. Join George in a renewal of our own baptismal vows as he takes his for the first time, a promise that we might not strive to live like the Saints who are willing to die for their faith. But we will at least try to live like the Christians we are called to be by Christ, loving God, and loving our neighbor.
You don’t have to be a Saint (capital S). George, you’re good, don’t worry. You can simply be you. Christian, loved, and loving.
Amen.