Good morning, friends!! What a fabulous day this is—and yesterday was! Amazing! And thank you all so much for everything you did to make yesterday wonderful, through your prayers, through your presence, and through your food. Thank you!
So, today is the Sunday after All Saints Day, and I’m so glad we have the All Saints readings. But you know, All Saints Day wasn’t really my first choice for ordination. I knew it had to be a major feast day and on a weekend. And so, when I first contacted the bishop back in March regarding setting up a preliminary date—contingent of course upon the final approval of the Standing Committee—I started in mid-September with Holy Cross, and then the Feast of St. Matthew. And then to October: the 4th was St. Francis Day—who doesn’t like St. Francis? But that’s not a major feast in the Episcopal calendar. And it was the Youthquake Golf Tournament. October 18th would have been cool: St. Luke’s feast day. St. Luke is one of my heroes, too. He talks about women in Jesus’ life more than any other gospel writer. And the Feast of St. Luke was my dad’s birthday. But none of these worked for the bishop, for one reason or another. We even thought about doing it after Synod, but there wasn’t a major feast day, and I think it would have been just too much. So it was decided: November 1st, the Feast of All Saints. And the more I thought about it, the more I was delighted to have this day for my my ordination day. I don’t have just one Saint to remember, I have them all!! I don’t have just Capital S Saints, I have all the millions of lower case s saints. Ordinary people who lived ordinary lives for Christ, and who have died and joined him in the heavenly places. Shopkeepers and undertakers, teachers and authors, housewives and monks. [We will sing about all of these saints at the end of the service, hymn 293]
One of the images I’ve had regarding ordination in the Episcopal Church—in a church with apostolic succession through the laying on of hands—is the image of hands through the centuries, passing on the mantle of presbyter or priest. Hands after hands after hands being laid on heads after heads after heads. .And all those saints celebrating with us both yesterday and today. And when I think about All Saints, I think of the Apostle’s Creed where we say, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy catholic church, and the communion of saints.” I think of the part of the Eucharist where we praise God, joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven. And then we ask God to sanctify us—to make us saints—that we may faithfully receive the Holy Sacrament, and serve God in unity and constancy and peace, and we pray that at the last day He will bring us with all the saints into the joy of the eternal Kingdom.
With a nod to my Welch ancestry, which seems to includes a 7th century archbishop in Wales, the ancient Celts believed that All Hallow’s Eve on October 31, which we know as Halloween, and All Hallow’s Day—which we call All Saints Day on November 1, and All Soul’s Day on Nobember 2nd, were thin spaces. These were times when the veil between heaven and earth was especially thin and permeable. And so I imagine thousands and millions of saints, peering through that thin space, an opening in the curtain that separates the earth from the heavens. Stadium seating where there are no bad seats, no back rows, somehow reaching into eternity. All the saints, everyone who has died in the faith, very much with us both yesterday and today. And at the very front, looking on with great love and joy, is my Dad, who has never ever been more proud of me.
So those are some of the images I have in my mind of being ordained on All Saints Day. And it’s such a great reminder that we too are all saints. We tend to think of All Saints as being a Christian memorial day, remembering those who have died in the faith, but saintliness is also for those who are alive in the faith—it’s for all of us. Our sanctification—our sainthood---our being made holy---is one of those things that’s already and not yet. Because of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, because he died for our sins once and for all, we are already made saints. In the book of Acts, Luke refers to the living saints in Jerusalem, the saints in Lydda, the saints in Joppa. Paul writes to the saints in Rome and even to the saints in Corinth—and the church in Corinth was as confused and dysfunctional as they come. Yet to Paul, to God, they were saints, not because they were sinless, but because they believed in Jesus.
To be a saint is to be sanctified, to be made holy. And we have all been made holy. We spend the rest of our lives growing into that. The work has already been done, it has been accomplished, but we need to learn how to be what we were made to be—through the death and resurrection of Christ. It’s kind of like when we get married, we are made one flesh, and we spend the rest of our married life perfecting that, growing into that, becoming closer to God’s ideal. And so in our holiness, we were made holy, bought with a price, once and for all, and we spend the rest of our lives growing into holiness, growing closer to Christ, closer to being his image, his arms and legs and feet in the world. Holiness is a gift from God, and all baptized persons are hagioi, holy, sanctified.
We are called to be holy, and like Paul said in Phillippians 1:6, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” God will give us the grace to be what he wants us to be, but we still have to make some effort, don’t we. Not that we have to try to be saints, to work at it, but that we already are. And what does a saint do? She prays and listens. He reads and studies. They are involved in outreach and mission. As saints, we might be like sailboats. We don’t go anywhere without the wind, which we can’t manufacture or control it. We need, however to set the sails, to discern for each of us as holy ones, where the wind is at work, and how we can position ourselves to sail gracefully. One way to do that is to find out more about some of the Saints who have gone before. Pick one and read about him or her, read biographies, read what he or she wrote, and you might find yourselves inspired to become a little more saintly.
I saw a great little story this week about Anatole France, the French novelist of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Anatole France said that when he was a little boy he read the story of the life of St. Simeon Stylites, that strange gentlemen of ancient times who lived for thirty years on top of a sixty-foot pillar in Syria, and for some reason Anatole decided he was called to perform a similar act of saintly heroism. So he went into the kitchen, climbed up on the kitchen cabinet, and stayed there all morning. At lunchtime he got down. His mother, who understood what was happening, said: "Now, you mustn’t feel bad about this. You have at least made the attempt, which is more than most people have ever done. But you must remember that it is almost impossible to be a saint in your own kitchen."[1]
But of course we are called to be saints in our own kitchen, saints in our own homes, saints at work, saints in the world. And in a few minutes, in our Holy Communion, we will
“join with the saints of all times and all places, in heaven and on earth, celebrating the love, grace, and forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ. As we Commune this morning, we are joined in a mystical communion with ourloved ones and saints, past and present, in the company of Jesus Christ,and we anticipate that Final Day when we will be reunited for all eternityto share this great banquet in the presence of Eternal Light, Joy, andPeace.
[May we sincerely take to heart this prayer]
Almighty God, whose people are knit together in the one holy Church, thebody of Christ our Lord: Grant us grace to follow your blessed saints inlives of faith and commitment, and to know the inexpressible joys you haveprepared for those who love you; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now andforever. Amen[2]
”
[1] http://www.homiliesbyemail.com/Special/Saints/siqs.html
[2] http://www.homiliesbyemail.com/Special/Saints/sermon4.html
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