All Saints Day
by the Rt. Rev. Stephen Lane
November 2, 2008
Christ Church, Norway, Maine

Revelation 7:9-17; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

It’s my joy and privilege to be with this morning. I’m looking forward to getting to know you and to strengthen with you Christ’s ministry to the people of Norway…

Today is All Saints’ Sunday, one of the seven Principal Feasts in the Episcopal Church calendar. [The others are Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity.] Of the seven, All Saints’ is the one day that’s moveable to the nearest Sunday. All Saints’ is almost always celebrated on the Sunday nearest to November 1, not on the first itself. And that’s because it’s quite important to have the saints present if we’re going to celebrate their day.

The Episcopal Church understands the saints in three ways: the great saints of the first centuries of the church, the founders as it were, figures such as Peter and Paul, Mary, James and John, etc. Then there are the great figures of the church who served as leaders, heroes and martyrs, people like Ambrose, Gregory the Great, the Martyrs of New Guinea, Martin Luther King, Jr. – persons we celebrate throughout the year in the calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. And finally, but not least, are the one’s St. Paul calls the saints, the Christians of every age, past, present and future, who have loved and served our Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s all of us. We’re the ones we sing about in that much loved hymn, I Sing a Song of the Saints of God. (And I want to be one, too.)

So All Saints is a celebration of our history, our founding and our development as a community of faith. It’s a celebration of our heroes, all those who have been models and mentors for us. It’s a celebration of our hope, eternal life in the kingdom of God. And it’s a mystical day, the day we recognize that we are connected with all the saints, past, present and future, those who have lived and died, those who are alive now, and those yet to be born.

But how do we hold all these understandings together? How can All Saints’ celebrate both our heroes and martyrs and also celebrate just us? How can we be saints, too?

The answer, I think, rests in our Gospel from Matthew, the so-called Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. The church has always struggled with the Beatitudes. There’s more than one version. The one in Luke is a bit more direct, less spiritualized than the one in Matthew. And quite frankly, a number of things referenced in the Beatitudes don’t much seem like blessings. And there are translation issues. Some scholars have suggested that a better word than “blessed” might be “happy.” While we can perhaps rationalize some notion of mourning being blessed, we would hardly call such persons happy.

How is it that we are blessed when we are poor, when we mourn, when we hunger and thirst, when we are persecuted or reviled? What does that mean? Is this all about “pie in the sky when you die?” Or is there something for us now?

The conviction of the Biblical writers, the conviction of the Church, is that we belong to God. All of us. Now. Indeed, all creation, the cosmos, belongs to God. And more than that, Christ is in all the things that God has created, in every person we meet, whether Christian or not. Our task, our job, is to look for Christ, to seek after him and find him, and to assist him in building his kingdom. And that kingdom is always and everywhere under construction, so we are able to build at work, at school, in our homes, in our communities, when we are well, when we are sick, at the grave, in the midst of conflict, when we are persecuted, whether we are rich or poor. Every occasion is an opportunity to proclaim that this world is God’s world and that we are building God’s kingdom. And that way, we are always blessed and always have the chance to be a blessing to others.

In her All Saints’ message to the Church, our Presiding Bishop, asked, “In your neighborhood, who is the saint who picks up trash? Who looks out for school children on their way to and from school? Who looks after an elderly or frail neighbor, running errands or checking to be sure that person has what is needed?” She didn’t ask, “Who are the Christians?” She asked instead, “Who does the work of Christ?” Who reveals Christ’s presence in the world? The person who picks up litter might be a Baptist or a Seventh Day Adventist. The crossing guard might be a recent immigrant, a Hindu or a Moslem. The person checking on a neighbor might be an unchurched young person or a Buddhist. It doesn’t matter, because the work of Christ is being done.

What makes us saints, the only thing that has ever made saints of whatever kind, is that we are followers of Jesus and fellow travelers on the road to the City of God. It’s not our denomination that matters, or our theological position, or even, dare I say, our formal membership in the Church. Rather it has always been the case that what matters is doing the work of Christ. It is our call to recognize our poverty before God, to mourn with the hope of eternal life, to live humbly, to seek justice, to be compassionate, to model holiness, to make peace, and to endure persecution with patience as our Lord did. Because it all belongs to God, and God’s kingdom is our home. Christian living is living with this perspective. And as we come together week by week, we affirm and support one another in such living.

In just a few minutes we will celebrate the renewal of our baptisms, and in so doing we will be upholding our participation in the mystical body of saints. We will remember our call to live as members of God’s eternal kingdom and we will affirm our desire to do the work of Christ. May we, on this All Saints’ Sunday, be filled again with God’s holy Spirit, and may we claim our place, our life, as saints of God.

Amen.