All Saints’ Day, (trans.) 2nd November, by Fr Jack
Daniel 7.1-3, 15-18
Ephesians 1.11-end
St Luke 6.20-31
What makes a saint?
What are we celebrating today?
And how does it all fit in with the readings given for today?
Well a saint is one, who over the life of the church across the centuries, is seen to have shone so brightly with the light of God’s love, that the church says with confidence: ‘this person is in heaven now, crying Holy, Holy, Holy with angels and all the other heavenly mob, before the Throne of Grace’. Just as the Prophecy of Daniel says today, the saints have overcome the kingdoms of this world, leaving all that behind them, and are there now in the Kingdom of God, and rejoice there forever and ever.
St Mary, mother of Jesus. St Giles’ the holy hermit of Provence. St Teresa of Avila, the firebrand reformer and spiritual writer. St Teresa of Kolkata, in our own time, the servant of the poor and overlooked. These, with countless others are called saints.
But in a sense we are all saints. We are all travelling on the road home to heaven. That’s why the Letter to the Ephesians today speaks of ‘love towards all the saints’ - St Paul means towards all of us. We on earth (the Church Militant in the old words) are in the midst of the rocky path and thick undergrowth of life’s pilgrimage.
The Church Triumphant are those we call saints with a capital S. They’ve made it, and their work now is to cheer us on, to inspire us, and to pray for us from heaven to God. They are our support crew, cheerleaders and helpers.
And then there is the Church Expectant, we shall turn to them this afternoon at Four O’Clock as we keep the commemoration of All Souls. The Church Expectant are those who now are making their final leg of the pilgrimage, who have left this life and are journeying ‘further up and farther in’ as CS Lewis put it in Narnia’s Last Battle.
Militant, expectant and triumphant. We are all on the same pilgrimage, and because of that we pray for each other. The saints pray for us, and we pray for those who have died and are on their final journey home into the heart of God, into the Kingdom of the Risen Jesus. It is a mystery. Prayer and love and life always are. And we use time bound language of militant, expectant and triumphant. But lets be honest, time doesn’t really work as a frame of reference for what happens after we die, because it is all in the eternity of God. But, language and time is all we have to use to grapple with this stuff, and so we do. But the point is the unity of these three hooks we have, of militant, expectant and triumphant.
Shortly we will be led in prayers of intercession, and as we sometimes do, there will be a chant interspersing the prayers, taken from the Taize community, an ecumenical monastic community in the South of France who pray these chants everyday, and welcome hundreds of thousands of young people and young adults to camp in the beautiful Burgundian valley around the monastery each summer and join their prayer life. As we prayer this chant - O Lord hear our prayer - we are joining in the voice of prayer that is never silent, in heaven and on earth.
Because death is no barrier for God. Jesus has abolished death, He has emptied hell, He has taken away with all our sins, even the sting of death, which is the ultimate expression of sin. Because sin is simply anything that separates us from God, from love. Sin is any barrier to love, love of God, neighbour and self. Death is the ultimate barrier to this life and love of us and God. And, in Jesus, even that, and every other type and consequence of sin piled up beneath it, has been rendered toothless. So although we cannot see the saints, we rejoice with them today. Although we can no longer share life in the same way with our loved ones who have died, we pray for them and go on loving them, as we all journey home, separated for a time, but on the same road, with the same destination.
And that’s why we make such a fuss about these saints. That’s why we have stained glass windows full of them, why we name our churches after them, why we have patron saints of this and that, we take saints names, and our calendar is full of saints days. Because, through them in our names and devotions and churches and the rest, we are reminded again and again of this family to which we belong, and this pilgrimage home to heaven that we are on together. Perhaps Jesus is our map and compass, and the saints are lights and landmarks that keep us going.
It is so easy on a long journey (like life) to lose your way, or to forget where you have come from, and even where you are trying to go. You get lost, or you get distracted by another destination, or what looks like a smoother road, or a straighter path, or you get stuck in the tea shop and eat so many cakes that you forget you’re on a journey at all.
As Christians we do life with our friends the saints, because they shine with the light of Jesus, lighting our path, spurring us on, providing way-markers and inspiration and the help of their prayers, to keep us on the Highway, the path that is narrow and difficult, but it is the way, He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, now and for eternity.
And we are left in no doubt of this way, and it’s character, and our part in it, by today’s Gospel: St Luke’s account of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, as it is sometimes called. This Kingdom, the path of the saints, the Way of Jesus, is of a very different order. Look again at these words of Jesus, how can we do this? How can you and I truly love our enemies, turn the other cheek, give to everyone who asks of us, rejoice in poverty, hunger and tears? This Kingdom will always be more radical and real than I can ever achieve. And this is not supposed to make us despair and give up, absolutely not. What it does, is show us that we are not done yet. A complacent and self-satisfied ‘I’ve done it. I am the perfect Christian. I have completed following Jesus like one can complete all the levels on a computer game’; those ways of thinking are never possible for us.
Instead, we look to the saints, who were not Jesus, not perfect.
What makes a saint?
What are we celebrating today?
They are flawed and messy and like us, and yet, because they stuck at this road of life we call being a Christian, because they drank deeply from these foretastes of heaven [the Eucharist etc], soaked their lives in prayer, scripture, sacrament, and love of God and neighbour as self, they now rejoice in God’s Kingdom, and are cheering us and all our loved ones (living and departed) on until we rejoice with them there, at the final banquet of the Lamb.