 St Alban’s Episcopal Church Bolivar, Missouri Wednesday, October 26, 2022 The second feast: All Saints’ Day (celebrated at St Alban’s on October 30) All Saints’ Day Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. We can’t actually celebrate the three feasts in their regular order – their appropriate order, because we don’t live in either a small European town where nearly everyone shares religious and cultural identities – where it is normal to attend church for the great feast days in the middle of the week – OR in a monastery where everyone participates on the regular rounds of feasts and fasts no matter what anyone else in the area is doing. So we do the best we can. And sometimes it’s weird. We will celebrate All Saints’ Day – which is really November 1 – on October 30 – before the Eve of All Saints – Hallowe’en. And we will just have to make our own internal sense of that. Fortunately, there is no time in God – no time in eternity – and no need to worry about any of it. But why DO we celebrate all the saints? And what is a “saint?” Technically, in the Bible, at least, the believers are all called, “saints.” The word literally means “consecrated to God, holy, sacred”. “The “saints” are the Body of Christ; all Christians are saints, and yet all are also called to be, and to become saints. 1 Cor 1:2 says, “To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy.” And yet – reading the letters from Paul, we know perfectly well that the believers in Corinth are not exactly being what they are! Very early in the history of Christianity, the martyrs, those who witnessed to Jesus even when it cost them their lives, were especially named and honored by the believers. Those persons were called “saints” because they had already run the race, completed the course, and were now with God in the resurrected and eternal life of the blessed. They served as models and mirrors for other Christians who needed encouragement to remain firm in faith under pressure. Later, women and men who had led exemplary lives in the service of Christ were remembered and honored as well. All Christians are “saints” but most of us do not serve very well as examples to fledgling believers, or as direct challenges to the world around us that teaches us to value power, money and prestige more than service, forgiveness and love. So we take a day to remember all of those who came before us who really did allow God to make of them something beautiful – to enrich our world and that that continues to affect each of us – a wave of love, a tide of love that has swept us up and taken us along. During the year we remember some whose lives were in a sense larger than life – whose names we know, whose biographies we can read, whose deeds are told and retold. But most of the saints are unknown to us – They are someone’s great grandmother or a woman who put herself in the way of a bullet to protect a child, or a man who continued to trust God under pressure we know nothing about. And so we celebrate them all – known and unknown, and they help us to determine to live in Christ ourselves, well – not perfectly – but with intention – so that someday someone will remember us as having shown Jesus to them in our own bodes our own imperfect lives. That’s what the saints did. They kept going in the same direction – in love.  Light as the symbol These are not bonfires or carved pumpkins designed to scare away the evil that might be roaming the earth. This is All Saints night in Belgium. These are candles, gift of the bees, symbol of the Light that is Christ, the ever-burning Light of the world. It is a cemetery full of the symbol of victory of life over death, of light over darkness, of joy over despair. It is our Paschal (Easter) candle multiplied a million times, placed on the graves of those who have died in the Lord. It is a witness to everyone of the trustworthiness of Christ Jesus the risen Lord. And it is defiance, in case any of the powers of this world or any other world, might look. You might consider lighting your Easter candle, if you still have one – or any other, on Tuesday, November 1 – or on Sunday afternoon after Church – and talk, or think, about what it means for us to be children of Light – the privileges and the responsibility to be a testament to Light.  Come EARLY Sunday so you can write the names of those you love who have died on the large sheet of paper on the altar. We will cover them with the altar cloth so that they are with us during these November days. There will be lunch after church for those who are able to stay. And there will be pumpkins to carve or to paint, for anyone who wants to do that, too. The Epistle for All Saints’ Day Ephesians 1:11-23 In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ might live for the praise of his glory. In him, you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory. I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which you are called, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. |
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