Sermons

Nov 5 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor - All Saints Sunday

Listen to audio version of this sermon.

The Feast of All Saints we celebrate today has a long, rich history. Many cultures honor their dead and their ancestors, and as the Christian church developed over time, we incorporated this custom. It is believed that some kind of pre-Christian festival of the dead in England gave rise to All Hallow’s Eve, or Hallow’een – which literally means the night of all the holy ones. This commemoration spread throughout the European church in the Middle Ages.

Then it expanded to the next day, Nov. 1, when the well-known saints were remembered. This is where our reading from Ecclesiasticus begins: Let us now sing the praises of famous men…those who ruled in their kingdom, made a name for themselves by their valor, who were intelligent…and wise…composing musical tunes or verses in writing…rich men…the pride of their times. A few famous saints come to mind for me – the Virgin Mary, Francis, Benedict, or more recent ones like Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

The festival went further, to set aside a day for all the people of God who have gone before, on Nov. 2, known as All Souls Day, or All Faithful Departed. These are the ones whom Ecclesiasticus names in the second part of the reading: These also were godly ones, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten, all those who through history have given witness to God. These are the ones you and I remember, whose photographs are displayed behind our altar today – mothers, fathers, children, friends, and fellow parishioners. They will not be forgotten.

Today we celebrate both the famous and the unknown, as we bring them together on the Sunday after All Saints. But we go further. We include ourselves, and we include new members into the family of God. The word saint in the Bible means sanctified, or holy one, and it therefore includes all those who live in God, in this life and in the next. So on this day we baptize, to welcome new members into God’s family. We also renew our own baptismal covenant, to strengthen our belonging to this same company of saints.

What is it that binds all the saints together? It is, as I’ve said, our belonging to the great household of God, that great cloud of witnesses, no matter what our station in life. But belonging to a family only has meaning when there is some kind of faithfulness to that family. A household whose members betray or ignore one another – this is not a family. Yes, we belong to God and to one another, but we’re called to be faithful to that family and its head, God.

And how do we do that? Recently I helped lead a week of renewal for clergy, as I now do twice a year, called CREDO. We take them away from their jobs, give them good food and rest and worship and plenty of conversation with their peers, give them information to consider, and in this atmosphere of loving support we ask them to look seriously at the hard question How am I living and working, and how is God calling me to live and work? The amazing thing is that very little comes up about job skills, effectiveness, knowledge, and plans for improvement of programs. What every one of them is most concerned about is faithfulness: faithfulness to their calling as saints, faithfulness as ordained witnesses to Christ.

They wrestle with the difficulties of modern life, as you do, and how to keep centered in prayer. They worry that they spend far too much time doing urgent but unimportant things like email and administration, and far too little time doing non-urgent but very important things like studying, imagining, and visioning. They want to be faithful; they want to be saints. And just like you, they struggle with how to do that in the middle of this busy and demanding life we live.

The temptation is to think that if we just had enough will power, we could do it. We think that faith is a possession, a thing that we have or don’t have, forgetting that it is a verb. Faith is something we do. The temptation is to think that we can commit to a plan for ourselves: we’ll get up earlier for meditation, read the right kinds of books, watch less television, eat the right foods, tithe our income, and remember to seek God’s presence constantly throughout the day so that we’ll exude peace and mercy to all who touch the hem of our garment as we pass by. Then we’ll be faithful to God; then we’ll be saints.

It doesn’t seem to work that way. Those clergy at the CREDO conference who approach it like this find that their good intentions run like sand through their fingers, either during the week of reflection itself, or after they get back to reality at home.

One of my fellow faculty members helped me to see the way through this predicament last week with a passing comment. He said I think it’s all about allowing a space for willingness. The more these simple words sunk in, the more I saw their depth: allowing a space for willingness.

We cannot willfully acquire faithfulness. But we can be willing to receive. All the good stuff – trust, mercy, hope, wisdom, peace, gratitude, and generosity – these things are gifts of the Spirit. The self-made man who has disciplined himself to fulfill list of virtues, like Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard, or like our school’s Character Counts program, will never have the grace and freedom of someone who asks for guidance and then lives out of the gifts of the Spirit.

This is why today, in renewing our baptismal covenant, we can only promise to fulfill these vows with God’s help. We commit to resist evil, to repent and return to God, to seek Christ in others, and strive for justice and peace – we are willing to be faithful, to be saints, all by the grace of God. We can’t do it alone. And so we say I will, with God’s help.

But in order for this willingness to be meaningful, we must, as my friend said, allow a space for it to be. It’s all about allowing a space for willingness, he said. As I reflected on this, I thought about how we do and how we don’t allow space for this willingness in various parts of our lives.

What God wants, I believe, is not perfection, but a broad willingness to allow everything in our lives to come under his influence. Many of us compartmentalize. We put faith in a little section, like Time magazine does, and alongside it are all the other sections, separated from faith: relationships, reason, leisure, money, politics. But God wants it all. God wants us to be willing to be guided through everything.

This space for willingness includes how we spend our time, so that some of it is with God in prayer, where we declare our daily willingness to be open to work of the Spirit. It includes our money, a willingness to let go of a generous proportion of what we have for God’s purposes in the world. It includes what priorities we take into the voting both on Tuesday – are we willing to let God’s intention for this world be what guides us when we consider who and what to vote for? It includes our relationships, especially when they are going badly, a willingness to understand and to reconcile.

None of this is about striving to be good and feeling guilty when we’re not. It’s about allowing a little space in every corner of our lives to invite the work of the Spirit to take place. We won’t ever do that in all circumstances and at all times. But when we remember to do so, especially when we are conflicted or confused, we stop, wait, create a roomy environment, pray for help, wait some more, listen, and consider seriously what comes to us in that spaciousness. We then talk about it with loved ones and trusted counsel, since we cannot do this alone, listen some more, and feel our way forward into God’s intention. The Spirit will enter and transform every corner of our life if we are but willing.

This is what it means to be a saint, and to live into our baptism: not to strive for spiritual greatness so that generations to come will sing our praises; not to be scrupulous about fulfilling all the virtues - but to allow spaces everywhere, where we exercise a simple willingness towards God, not reserving for ourselves any separate compartments.

Where do you still need to let God in? What corners are you still filling with willfulness? Your job, relationships, time, money, worry about the future, or your politics? Open them up today, and say yes to God, in love and in trust. That’s all that is asked of you. When you do, the Spirit will guide you, and you will, as we prayed in our Collect for this festival, come to those ineffable joys prepared for those who truly love God.