All Saints
What comes to mind when you hear the word saint? Is it an adjective or a noun? Does it echo the images that fill our windows, persons scrubbed clean, peaceful looking with a halo surrounding their head? Or is it a quality of a person up to their elbows in feeding, clothing, caring, serving, a quality that hasn’t sat down or gotten a bath in a while? Is what comes to mind with the word saints, is it a grand celebration of God’s best friends, or all God’s friends, surrounding you as close and as far as you can imagine? Do you hear the word saints and think of the football team?
In the Apostles Creed which is said at Morning and Evening prayer, and at Baptism, we align our hearts and lips with the communion of saints. If you search the prayerbook, you will find the word saint, but it is usually like I just said, in the plural – and usually paired with ‘communion of’ saints. When it is solo, it is an instruction or attached to the name of New Testament persons or attributed authors- Mary’s, Paul, Peter, Luke. There is no statement in the prayer book, not even in those tiny print historical documents at the back, about what we mean by a saint, only our repeated trust in the communion of saints.
It is an understanding of cosmic meaning beyond the limits of cellular matter, of what happens in the life of faith and sacraments, a community of belonging that transcends death. It is in the metaphor of mathematics a roundness, in that it surrounds us and has no end. It is also not far from us, helping us if we participate, assisting the faithful in the mystery of a relationship beyond time, Supporting us in how to serve, how to be ethical, Jesus-like in our love and our generosity and our mercy. Saintliness in its adjective or adverb is rather like a work of art. There are moments when someone has offered something amazing They know it. It glows with the possible, is sketched in heart and tears and sweat. Our own generosity, and commitment to God’s grace in our giving, has a touch of the feel of a true work of art – it is a risk, it is a passion, it is knowing that there is more than enough. Our stewardship campaign, is so titled. It is focused on how there is more than enough to equip this organization to equip you to follow the saints, to learn and grow and mourn and strive with the holy ones. My question today is – does your commitment of wealth and work and wonder begin to measure up to the offering of the saintly ones? Do you think of your pledge as fuel for others’ saintliness?
In our second lesson today, where they speak of ‘our love toward all the saints’ the author isn’t talking about the dead. The word is so common to Christian language, so normal in that manner, that we don’t notice at first that we read into it all we have inherited. But a saint as we think of it isn’t a concept in the ancient Judaism context these New Testament authors assume they are speaking to. The text there is an adjective. A word that is more correctly offered as holy ones, and most directly translated as awful not as in wretched, but as in awe – full. Holy means awe and trembling and whoa filled. So the more precise translation of saints here would be awe-full ones.
Holy ones – diverse and complicated prisms of God’s brilliance and purpose. This day is about all the saints who have passed over the further shore – the many who are full of whoa-ness – of people who trusted God’s abundance and justice and mercy more than they feared life or death. This month I invite you to a time of exploring the adjective part of saints, with paying attention to the nouns. In the booklets in the pews are guides to the saints who line our windows, the saints we focus on in our children’s ministry Godly Play. Most of these are more historical and well-known than modern or obscure, so, In the prayerbooks of the sanctuary are little yellow tags with witnesses officially recognized by this church and that are more modern than ancient – unless I find them very interesting. Take a book, or a tag, and this month pay attention, deep attention, like getting to know someone: look them in the eyes, watch their actions. For a month. Get to know at least one, but maybe you can try one a week till Advent. (That’s just 3!) Take the questions on the back of the booklet – and wonder with them. Ask them and answer out loud either in writing or art on on your lips. Where is my story in theirs, and did they think they were holy?
Post reformations deceased holy friends of God in this tradition don’t officially get the adjective saint tacked onto their name. There are all sorts of well-thought-out and argued official reasons for that, all of which I agree with. One of the questions we would ask now is ‘Did this person want to be a saint’ and that thinking you are saintly might be a disqualifying attribute. Luther thought he was a failure. Teresa would likely reject the adoration. My attachment in the 20th-century saintly people is Bonhoeffer. He asks me what I would do when push comes to shove, and he would never embrace the adjective. For modern saints – our closest awe-full ones – we let that ambitious adjective remain in the mystery of silence. We find examples and mysterious friendship in them, but maybe let them have a rest, not to be tchotchked more than emulated. Saint is an adjective, it is describing an art a passion, and a mystery, telling us of ones who lived with Jesus as Lord more than as an occasional gig, more than doing what you have to do to survive- perhaps or even most likely flying in the face of that goal. All Saints is always to be about our ultimate belongingness to the beauty of God’s grace, in the context of a still harsh and fractured, and beautiful world.
November 6, 2023 All Saints (Transfered) RCL C