A Sermon preached on Nov. 3, 2019, All Saints
and All Souls at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Daniel 7:1-3,
15-18, Ephesians 1:11-23, Luke 6:20-31
It is not unusual for us to do more than one thing at a time on a
Sunday here at St. Augustine’s. This week, we are doing at least four. We have
our regular Sunday Eucharist on what is also the 21st Sunday after
Pentecost. We are celebrating both the feasts of All Saints and All Souls, and
we have our Stewardship Ingathering. In our church the regular Sunday readings usually
take precedence. This goes back to the English Reformation. In his preface to
the 1552 BCP, Thomas Cranmer writes that in olden times it was “so ordered,
that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over
once in the year” but that lately “this godly and decent order of the ancient
fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain
Stories, Legends, Responses, Verses, vain repetitions, and Commemorations… that commonly when any book of the Bible was
begun, before three or four Chapters were read out, all the rest were unread.” To
avoid this, the then new lectionary limited the number of feast days and of
them, only a few were allowed to be moved to a Sunday. All Saints the day for
commemorating all saints, known and unknown, is one of them. All Souls – aka the
Commemoration of All Faithful Departed - did not appear in an American Prayer
Book until 1979. We tend to put them together and commemorate all the faithful
departed together, whether officially a saint or not.
What is a saint, what makes someone a saint you might ask? Well, it is
not dependent on you pledging or on the amount of your pledge. That is not why we
put those two events together! [But “God still loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor.
9:7)] There is no mention of saints in the gospels and when Paul uses the word it
in his letters, it mostly refers simply to all the other Christians, and to
living ones! Only later, in the early church, did the idea develop of raising
up individuals considered worthy of great honour to use them as models for the
faithful. The example of the many who died as martyrs for their faith was
considered too important for them to be forgotten. The Roman Catholic Church
has a proper process of canonization, St. John Henry Newman was a recent instance,
the Eastern Orthodox Church has a process of glorification. And in our church,
we have committees and conventions to decide these things ….
Actually, Anglicans can’t really decide what to do with saints. While
some actively venerate them, others hold positions building on the Reformation
desires to reform or abolish the cults of saints. That probably explains why we
have had found it so difficult to revise our book of saints. Originally called Lesser
Feasts and Fasts (the major saints’ days are already listed in the BCP), it
became Holy Women, Holy Men and then A Great Cloud of Witnesses (still an
optional resource) before turning back – at the last General Convention – into Lesser
Feasts and Fasts again.
What’s a saint? Well according to that book, “Christians have since
ancient times honored men and women whose lives represent heroic commitment to
Christ and who have borne witness to their faith even at the cost of their
lives.” “What we celebrate in the lives of the saints is the presence of Christ
expressing itself in and through particular lives …. In the saints we are not
dealing primarily with absolutes of perfection but human lives … open to the
motions of the Holy Spirit. Many a holy life, when carefully examined, will
reveal flaws or the bias of a particular moment in history or ecclesial
perspective.” [Just think of the colonial era missionaries – we have misogynist
saints, intolerant saints … ] “It should encourage us to realize that the
saints, like us, are first and foremost redeemed sinners in whom the risen
Christ’s words to St. Paul come to fulfillment, “My grace is sufficient for
you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”[1]
Or to use a quote I found recently in another sermon: “A saint is a dead
sinner, revised and edited.”[2]
What’s a saint according to the Bible? Our first reading, from the Book
of Daniel, says nothing about who they are, just what they can expect: “But the
holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom
for ever – for ever and ever.” (Daniel 7:18) Actually it does say something about
them – they are people for whom earthly kingdoms and power are not important,
only God’s kingdom. The Ephesian Christians are also accounted among the saints
– the holy ones. First they heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, then
they believed in Christ, and finally were “marked with the seal of the promised
Holy Spirit; as the pledge of their inheritance toward redemption as God's own
people.” (Eph. 1:13-14) Which is what we might call the Baptismal sequence: we
hear the word, it takes root, it becomes faith, we are baptized as a sign of
that faith and our becoming part of the family of God. For that reason, All
Saints Day is a day considered especially suitable for baptism. We don’t have
one today but will still renew our Baptismal Covenant together.
Then in the Gospel, Luke’s sermon on the plain – similar to but not
identical with Matthew’s sermon on the mount –Daniel’s promise of the
inheritance of the kingdom of God for those considered blessed is repeated,
while those who rely too much on their current earthly wealth and power,
especially if it is coming from exploiting and taking advantage of the weak and
the powerless, are warned. It will not last, God likes turning things upside
down. The kingdom that the poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are
hated and persecuted are promised, is meant as an encouragement. We look to
that glorious future as we act in the present. We draw our strength from this
promise, from the knowledge of “the hope to which (God) has called you, what
are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the
immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.” (Eph. 1:18-19)
And we need that hope and that assurance if we are to act as Jesus
tells his disciples to act, radically opposed to the values of the world. Loving
even our enemies, doing good even to those who hate you, blessing even those
who curse you, praying even for those who abuse you. Sometimes we are called to
give seemingly beyond our means. And most difficult of all not to respond to
persecution and hate and violence with more of the same. Jesus does not say, do
to others as they do to you, but do to others as you would have them do to you
– even if they don’t and even if the chances of them doing so are slim to say
the least. If you do that, you certainly count as a saint in all definitions. This
is not about accepting abuse for the sake of abuse, not about tolerating
violence. This is Jesus saying, when you preach and live the gospel, when you
try and change the world into what it is intended to be, you will meet significant
resistance, you will be reviled and defamed. Don’t become like those you want
to change. That is the easy option, that is the evil one’s way. Instead remember
that God’s great power, the same power God put to work in Christ when God raised
him from the dead is working in you.
In the end though, the question is not, what makes a saint but who
makes a saint. Our behavior, our witness is important. But God makes us saints;
God sets us apart. What makes someone a saint is not that they are holy, but
that the God they love and live for is holy.
Amen.
