Now that we’re firmly in November, I trust everyone is looking forward to Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving is one of two uniquely American observations that are part of our 1928 Book of Common Prayer. As is our local custom, we will have Communion for Thanksgiving on the night before at 6:30pm.
We all have our family recipes and traditions for Thanksgiving Dinner. Some of us started new traditions when we got married and started our own families. Some of us continue to observe those traditions that we got from our parents and they got from theirs. When I was young and single, I typically plugged into whatever family traditions I was invited into. Indeed, my policy was to hit as many Thanksgiving dinners as I could in any given year!
The Church Year very much developed like those family traditions. It took about 500 years for it to reach what we’d recognize as a generally stable form. The Easter cycle seems to have developed first, with Lent added a bit later. Christmas and Advent came later still. And the various Saints’ Days pop up at different times and in different places. Today we’re celebrating the Feast of All Saints, one of the chief Holy Days on our calendar, but also one of the later additions to it, becoming universal in the West in the 9th century. The Feast was technically last Thursday, but our calendar continues to observe it for a full eight days, or Octave, largely so that we can indeed celebrated the Feast all together on a Sunday.
Hebrews 11 is sometimes called the “Hall of Faith.” In this chapter, we have a list of heroes of the Old Testament and a brief summary of how their faith points to Christ. It’s a great reading for today’s Feast, and indeed is the passage assigned in our Lectionary to the Eve of All Saints. At the end of the list, in Verse 32, the Apostle says, “And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of….” And then he lists even more folks, with an implication that he could go on and on. All Saints is the “What more shall I say?” Of the Saints’ Days. All Saints is when we remember everyone who doesn’t have their own day.
This is particularly significant for the Calendar we use in our edition of the Prayer Book. If you look on Pages Roman Numeral xliv – xlviii, you’ll find our official list of Saints’ Days in the 1928 Prayer Book, organized first by Church Year, and then by the civil calendar. It’s frankly pretty sparse. For the most part, we only have New Testament characters or events in Jesus’ life. And we don’t really have all of those. Marian Feasts are limited to the Annunciation and Purification. Mary Magdalene, St. Timothy, and St. Titus are missing. Later folks like St. Patrick and St. Valentine weren’t even on the radar, though most Americans would recognize their Feast Days much more readily than most of the folks on our church calendar! This makes All Saints Day particularly special. This is when we do indeed remember everyone else, from the Church Fathers, to our Anglican Divines, to the Ugandan Martyrs, to the little old lady who’s all but unknown outside her friends and descendents.
So the first thing we ought to do when talking about the Feast of All Saints is define terms. That is, let’s begin with a question: what is a saint, anyway? Typically, when we hear the term “saint” we think of someone who lived an exemplary Christian life and is now before the Lord in heaven. That is, we think of the heroes of the faith throughout the ages. We think of the Christians whose lives we remember and try to emulate. And this is indeed an appropriate definition.
Our Liturgy tells us that this is why we remember the saints. In just a few minutes we will bless and thank God for “all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear.” We will ask for his grace “so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom.” And if you look at the Collects for our various Saints’ Days, they often point out a particular aspect of the given saint’s life and ministry that we should remember and try to emulate. So, whenever we come to one of those Feast Days, ask yourself what St. Peter, or St. John, or whoever, can show you about following Christ. Pay attention to the assigned readings, as they often highlight those very teachings. And then, do indeed try to live after the examples of those saints, as we prayed in the Collect:
Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys which thou hast prepared for those who unfeignedly love thee.
Like the saints, we want to follow Christ faithfully, and one day join the saints before Christ in heaven.
But we should also remember that the New Testament uses the term in a difference sense. In the New Testament, the term “saint” applies to all whom God has called to himself and is in fact most often applied to the living. The word “saint” literally means “one who is set apart,” which is why the New Testament applies the term to all true Christians. If you belong to Jesus, you have been “set apart” from the world, for God and his purposes. That is, you, too, dear Christian, are called a saint in the New Testament. You share in the same sainthood as the apostles and martyrs, as do all who have died in faith. This is why our Prayer Book does not have a separate “All Souls’ Day” to commemorate the faithful departed; our Reformers collapsed All Saints and All Souls into a single observance, because the New Testament does not make a distinction between the faithful departed and the saints. Massey Shepherd, the liturgical historian, puts it this way in his commentary on our All Saints collect and readings:
In Scripture the word “saints” is used of all the people of God, that is, all who have been sanctified by the Spirit. It does not refer to personal character, or to a special class of more distinguished believers. It was only after the church began to develop the cult of the martyrs that the distinction between saints and other less noteworthy Christians was made. The Prayer Book propers for All Saints’ Day are intended as a commemoration of all faithful departed souls.
There are a few practical ways this affects us as Christians. First, because we have the examples of the saints, known and unknown, we do not have to fear death. Most of the Apostles and many of the Prophets died martyrs’ deaths. Speaking of Abraham, Hebrews 11:10 says, “For he looked for a city which hath no foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Verse 38 speaks of the saints as those “Of whom the world was not worthy.” That is, in Christ we know that we look forward to something much grander than what we have here. We look forward to a heavenly country and heavenly rewards. And this frees us up to to live our vocations and Christians to God’s glory and to the betterment of the world here and now, just as the saints did.
This leads to the second way this understanding of the saints as including all the faithful affects us: because our sainthood is based on belonging to God rather than on our good works, we are indeed freed to do those good works. Whether we are called to evangelize the heathen like Saint Paul, or to display the mystery of Christ’s love for the Church in an ordinary Christian marriage, or to use the free time of a single life to volunteer, or to feed the hungry, or to sing God’s praises in the choir, or to protect your neighbor as a cop or soldier, or any other Christian vocation, whether ordinary or extraordinary by human standards – whatever good works you do as a Christian, you are free to do these to God’s glory without worrying about your merit. Your sainthood has nothing to do with your merit; it has everything to do with Christ’s merit for you. No one has ever earned extra credit before God. Indeed, as Jesus says in Luke 17:10, “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.” Such a perspective allows us to keep our eyes upon Jesus rather than on ourselves. Indeed, looking to Jesus is the only path to sainthood. And because of Jesus, you can have assurance and confidence that he will complete what he has begun in you.
Finally, this sainthood of all the faithful is a reminder that our loved ones who die in Christ are still part of the Church and thus part of us. Indeed, this is what our Collect for All Saints is driving at when it addresses God as the one “who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship” (emphasis added). “Elect” is just another way of saying that you belong to Jesus. And the Communion of the Saints (alluded to in our Collect and confessed in the Creed) is the teaching that our fellowship as Christians extends beyond space and time.
It is certainly appropriate to mourn our lost loved ones. Every time we gather for Communion and we give thanks for those departed in the “faith and fear” of the Lord, there are people from this parish whose funerals I officiated that I remember before the Lord. Even as I rejoice that they are with the Lord, I still mourn the empty space in my life caused by their death. But, as St. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.” We have a hope, even in our mourning. And that hope is the Resurrection of the Dead. Just as Jesus died and rose again, so everyone who has died in Christ will rise to new life one day.
That means that we will indeed be with our loved ones who die in Christ, along with all those heroes of the Bible and Church History. It is never about just me and Jesus. It’s always about Jesus and all of us. Indeed, Hebrews 11:50 speaks of the Old Testament saints as needing us to have completion of their promises, “that they without us should not be made perfect.”
All Saints Day is a reminder that even Heaven is not the end of the story. In our reading from Revelation 7 we say the 144,000 and the uncountable multitude praising God before his throne. And they are indeed at rest. Our reading ends saying of these saints in heaven:
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
They are the Church Triumphant. Their battle is over. They have the Lord as their reward. But it’s still only Chapter 7. We have another 15 chapters to go before the final resurrection in the New Heavens and New Earth! Our Lord will set all things to rights. He will not cede the earth to the enemy. Just as he died and rose again, so we will also rise again along with all who belong to Christ. Death is not the end. Sainthood and resurrection is our inheritance. And in the meantime, we get to live for the Lord, following the examples of all the saints, all the faithful departed, both known and unknown.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
