All Saints Sunday
Nov. 3, 2024
Isaiah 25:6-9
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44
It’s the beginning of November already and we are celebrating All Saints Day Sunday today. Really we are combining the three-day historical tradition of All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints, and All Souls. In many Western Christian countries we remember our loved ones who have died as well as the saints we have honored in our tradition. Other countries and other faith traditions also have ceremonies or rituals where they may lay food at their ancestors’ gravesite, decorate the grave with flowers, or create an altar of remembrance. In Mexico, they celebrate El Día de Los Muertos so their loved ones are never forgotten. In Japan there is a tradition of honoring the family spirits for a few days in the summer. Many indigenous tribes have a community gifting ceremony and potlatch to mark the one year anniversary of a loved one’s passing. Remembering is an important part of our faith and our experiences of life on this earth.
While it can be bittersweet because our grief and sorrow at the loss of a friend or loved is often acute, as Christians, we are resurrection people. We believe that life is never ending and with Jesus’ resurrection we have already entered into eternal life, the Kingdom of God. God has already reclaimed us, leading us back to the Garden, and we live for a time in that liminal space of yes and not yet.
The reason John wrote this story in his Gospel where Jesus let his friends and local townspeople see Lazarus come out of that grave alive was so that they could see what the prophets meant when they proclaimed “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things will pass away.” The saints know that God dwells with us, these saints know that God will restore and make all things new. They believed it in their very bones and reached out to everyone around them and lived their lives in such a way that one couldn’t help but see that they believed it. They reached out to all the folks that get pushed aside, demonized, shunned, and scorned and they loved them like they knew Jesus loved them!
But what is a saint? When you hear that word, what comes to mind? I mean, there’s St. Christopher, St. Francis, St. Clare, and a lot of saints some of us have never heard of. And what makes one a saint? Is it holiness? Perfection? We don’t canonize saints in the Episcopal Church yet we certainly claim many canonized saints from other traditions but also recognize Christians who have gone before us, whose lives have been examples of trust in the Way of Christ. We see them as witnesses to faith, love, hope, and justice in the world, sometimes at great cost. But if you were to research these saints you’d find out that they were often far from perfect.
These high profile saints are wonderful. As Christians, they, too, are our ancestors of the faith, extensions of the Christian community. They each had their own charism and were examples of living fully into the Way of Jesus, the Way of Love. Regardless of how their lives started out or how misguided they may have been at times, they found their way to their calling. And they didn’t always get it right. And they weren’t always warm, fuzzy people, either. But they cared for those who were overlooked, they devoted themselves to prayer, they saw beyond the veil of chaos in this world and tried to help us all get back to the Garden, to be united with God.
There are other saints, too. You may have met some in your lifetime and some you may never know their name. But they are normal everyday people that take their faith very seriously. Worshiping God is not just a social event. They listen to the teachings of Jesus and take them to heart. They know that to stand for the principles that Jesus and his disciples stood for may cost them, but they’re rarely famous and quite often outcasts themselves for disrupting the status quo. They speak up for those who have no voice, no power in this world. They dedicate time in their day for prayer, for silent connection with God. They do not put themselves above others. Really, nothing more than Christ asks of us all, and these saints do small things with great love requiring no recognition. It is good to get to know the saints we have memorialized because they can encourage us in our own lives. As human beings, we tend to emulate what we admire.
We have to take saints off the pedestals we’ve kept them on and meet them as regular people. Because if we keep the idea of saints as something “other”, something above us painted into an icon then we will never be able to see them as people like us.
These saints and the everyday saints among us now believe in a God who sees our sorrows, who knows we are very worried, who hears our cries and reaches out to wipe away every tear. God will remove the shroud that keeps us from seeing that Promised Land, keeps us from seeing how close our God and all the saints in heaven are to us, especially in the breaking of the bread, when we invite the Holy Spirit to come to us in that moment when heaven and earth meet. These everyday saints understand the scriptures, like we’ve read in Isaiah and Revelation today, and they become the hands and feet of Christ to continue his work in the world.
You don’t have to wear a hair shirt, starve yourself, try to be anyone other than who God created you to be to live a life that says without words that you are a follower of Christ. That you will be known as a Christian by your love. In your everyday life, in your little corner of the world, with the people God brings across your path you. You are God’s before anything else you claim allegiance to, you belong to Christ. Living in that way where you know you are in Christ and with Christ at every moment is to be saintlike.
A Franciscan Episcopal priest and friend from Costa Rica, Fr. Jorge Urrutria, put it this way:
“On All Saints’ Day, let’s remember that holiness is not an unattainable state, reserved for a few. On the contrary, it is a calling that each and every one of us carry in our hearts, an invitation to live with love, humility, and compassion. Saint Francis and Saint Clare of Assisi show us that holiness is built in the simple and everyday things: in every act of kindness, in every moment of prayer, and in every step toward caring for others and Creation.”
May the saints inspire us by their example to seek a life that follows the Way of Love. May we be inspired to live with purpose, letting God’s love transform us in the depths of our being. May our actions become seeds of peace, hope, and justice. May we be the lights in a dark world.
Holiness does not require greatness, but a heart willing to love and forgive, to recognize the dignity in each person and to live with gratitude and generosity. By opening ourselves to this vocation of love, we become instruments of peace, capable of building bridges and healing wounds, bringing a little heaven to earth. On this day especially, let us remember those ordinary saints who have touched our lives in small and big ways, and may we strive to do the same.
On his deathbed, St. Francis told his brothers and sister gathered around him, “I have done what was mine to do, may Christ teach you what you are to do.” You aren’t required to be a St. Francis or a St. Clare. You are to be you, listening to what Christ calls you to do. You do not need to try to get yourself spiritually spruced up and you don’t need to wring your hands about the past. Let go of all that and let God work through you. Place your hand in the hand of Christ and go with God for you are then saint material.
Magdalena's Musings 