All Saints Day Sermon

I don’t know about you (I suspect it’s true for many of us), but we humans have this insatiable urge to find ways to connect with people we think are more glamorous or impressive than we are, because (we think) that, by association, their prestige will rub off on us. And then we like to name drop.

“I was talking to my friend the other day, (she’s that one with that fabulous house on Maui. God knows how much she spent on it)…”

But the problem with this is, it doesn’t work. Maybe it does at some superficial level, and that’s why we keep doing it. But at a deeper level, all it does is feed our own sense of inadequacy and shame. We’re leaching off their glamour to conceal what we believe to be lacking in ourselves.

The same thing can happen in the church. You’ll hear the same kind of name dropping. For people like me, professional Christians, we like to name drop the impressive academics we know (like I did in last week’s sermon!), or which bishops we’re friendly with. Our own egos get a boost by their reputation.

But compare this kind of behavior to those times in our lives when we aren’t just saddling up to someone else’s glory, but instead, we’re being brought right in to the center and told, “Now you belong here, too.”

I was three or four years old the first time I visited the home of my new step-grandmother. Now you have to understand, I come from working class stock. My mom’s dad was a farm boy who moved up to factory work. My dad’s dad was a union man; he operated dredging equipment. But now my dad was remarrying, and my new stepmom came from a different tier of society. And when they brought me to her childhood home, I was stunned. It was fabulous. The little designer-boy in me was already fully awake. But what was most amazing, most soul-forming, wasn’t simply visiting a beautiful home; it was the implicit message, “This is your new grandmother. This is her home. And you belong here now.” Of all my vast array of grandparents and step-grandparents, she became the one I had the closest relationship with. Her home did become my home. I really did belong.

I had the same experience the first time I walked onto the UCLA campus as a freshman. It’s a really pretty campus. And I came from this little town of El Sobrante, which is Spanish for “the leftovers.” Really. And here I was in splendor. And not as a visitor, but as a card-carrying member of the student association. I remember just how ennobling it felt. It was my campus. And for four years (well, four and a half!) I never stopped basking in the glory of belonging there.

And it’s this sensibility – this deep appreciation for belonging to something so good – that lies at the heart of All Saints Day.

This is the day of the year when we in the church particularly remember and celebrate those noteworthy people of faith who came before us, who lived out the faith with such beauty, with such clarity and resolve. Because there have been men and women throughout the centuries who have done it! Who have heard Jesus’ voice in the Sermon on the Mount, believed it was true, then had the wherewithal to live in that truth.

It’s one thing for Jesus to believe it and do it; but there’s something different when it’s one of us who believes it and does it – who really does love their enemies; who really does turn the other cheek and give away their clothes and do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.

There’s something extraordinarily vindicating about our faith when we see it lived out with such integrity. We can argue about doctrine all day long. And at the end of the day, these arguments are normally more about ego and power than they are about God. But when someone lives out the values of the Kingdom of God, it’s beautiful. And we know it. It’s filled with the aroma of God – of love and grace and mercy. There’s a confidence and a peace that flows through them from the heart of God.

And when someone does it, and we bear witness to it (either in the flesh or as recorded in books), we’ve got two options:

We can feel bad about ourselves because they’re better Christians than we are.

Or, we can celebrate, with a spirit of gratitude that we should belong to such a company of people.

For this is the beauty of God’s Kingdom: It’s not a competition. Nor is it a hierarchy. It’s a community, a body, with Christ at its center – our brother and God – and we one with him, and with one another. What is true of Christ is true of us. What is true of the saints becomes our own. For all is shared in the economy of God.

On Tuesday night we celebrated the Feast of All the Faithful Departed. It’s like All Saints in that we’re recalling those of the faith who have gone before us. But in this case, it’s not the memory of their substantial faith, necessarily, that we’re celebrating, but more simply, our ongoing love for them, and our hope that – in God – we all remain one. S

o at that service, we named those who have died, then lit candles from the paschal candle, then put them afloat in the baptismal font. It was a sign of our hope, that as Christ is raised from the dead, and we are joined with Christ, so we are raised with him. Then throughout the requiem – this song of God’s redemption – we watched those candles float, flickering and alive, emerged from the watery tomb.

And as we remain one with our beloved, we remain one with the saints of God throughout the centuries. They, too, are as candles floating with us through the one faith, the one baptism.

For surely, the substance of the saints and their witness is both the beauty of their deeds and their assurance of God’s grace. For they, too, were sinners just like us. They made mistakes. They knew their share of doubts. But they also entered into a deeper knowledge that it was God and God’s love and God’s mercy, which now defined the substance of who they were. And it was this love that animated the way they now chose to live.

Two weeks ago, at the rededication of our church building, we named and blessed the entrance to the church as “The St. Francis Narthex.” Which pleases me to no end.

For of all the saints who have graced this earth, there is perhaps none whose witness compares to St. Francis of Assisi, that 13th century friar whose faith, humility, joy, and love changed the shape of the world.

What’s so captivating about Francis is his unique witness of a heart fully given to the entire substance of the gospel. Every bit! Every portion of the Sermon on the Mount was appropriated in his life, not with a squinched-up determinism to do the right thing even though it seemed dreadful, but with joyful abandon. To bless the poor, to hug the leper, because he knew them as Christ in his midst. To preach to the birds, because he knew them as truly his kin, fellow creatures of God, called with us to the same vocation of worshiping God, our creator. To know himself, so joined with Christ, that he experienced in his flesh the nails that pierced Christ’s hands and feet.

Who knows what came together in his life to foster such a faith – what circumstances, what divine grace, what costly volition on his part? But it did. And the world beheld the Spirit of God through him.

And it is he, and so many others, that we celebrate today.

We celebrate the values of God they bore witness to and the Kingdom of God made manifest through them.

We celebrate all whose lives were changed by their faith.

We celebrate our dignity of being joined with them.

And we celebrate God, in whose image they are made.

And in our way, with them as our mentors and friends, we discern whatever step lies before us. It doesn’t look the same for all of us. The destination is the same. The values are the same. But the journeys differ, just as each of our lives and circumstances differ one from another.

And we do it together. That’s part of what it means to belong to the church. We encourage one another, through our love, to persevere in the way of faith. That the way of the saints – not only is possible – but worthy. It is worthy of our lives, for it comes of God and it leads to God and all along the way, we encounter God, with us, our redeemer and friend.