Daniel 7:1-3,15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31
Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
Greetings to the Reverend Doctor Charles H. Warnock III and the saints from Chatham Baptist, to the saints at Emmanuel Episcopal, and any saints that may have come from other traditions. I greet each of you in the Name of Jesus Christ and with the kiss of peace, notionally and symbolically if not literally.
I am so thankful that we saints have come together this All Saints’ Day to celebrate all the saints of God and to give glory to the one who gives them and us life without end.
I want to begin and end with this use of the word “saints”: how it is used in holy scripture to refer to those who have been baptized, born again, put on Christ, share in his death and resurrection, are members not so much of this church or that church but the one church, the very Body of Christ, that lives and dwells under the headship not of Chuck nor of Christ but of Jesus Christ and him alone. This, I think is the foundational meaning of the word saints.
This is certainly how it is used some 68 times in the New Testament. The first time we stumble across the word saints is when after Saul-turn-Paul is struck down on the road to Damascus and Jesus asks “why are you persecuting me,” so closely does Jesus identify with all who have “put on Christ.”
Admittedly always referring to those now living, saints is used throughout the New Testament. One of my favorite references comes in Ephesians where we are reminded of a key purpose that attaches to this gift of ministry:
the gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. (4.11-13)
And I understand our gathering this morning to have at least something to do with that “unity of faith.”
So “saints” at the very least are people who through baptism are united to Jesus Christ and thus to one another as brothers and sisters, as children of the one God and Father of all.
Yet early on in the Christian church it was recognized that certain men and certain women (and even certain boys and girls) reflected this light of Christ in a very unique and special way. These are they, as the Book of Common Prayer proper preface says, “who have been the chosen vessels of your grace, and the lights of the world in their generations” (380). Lights of the world, not that they themselves the light but only insofar as they reflect and shine forth the light of the one who reveals himself as the “light of the world.”
These are they who have died and but yet alive in the Lord, for Jesus, in responding to his questioners he says quite clearly: “Have you not read what said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living’” (Matthew 22.32; cf. Mark 12.27, Luke 20.38).
And it is this belief that once we have been born anew, made a new creation in Christ, we can and do live forever with the one who says, “I am with you always” (Matthew 28.20) is the ground of our celebration this morning of all the saints.
When we parse scripturally what happens at the point of death, we find that some verses suggest an event that is as yet still off in the distance (a day of resurrection to a temperate climate . . . or to a very warm one! [e.g., 1 Thessalonians 4]), while others verses speak of “now” (“today, you will be with me in paradise” said to the penitent thief [e.g., Luke 22.43]), still others of an event that happened sometime in the past, as in Revelation where white-robed martyrs (and the first saints who were celebrated on All Saints’ Day) who have come through the great ordeal and are giving praise to the Lamb [e.g., Revelatin 7].
But, unless we have actually died, our vision of what exactly what happens is but “through a glass darkly.” And we would do better to stand on the promise of one who says, “all that the Father gives to me will come to me and I will in no wise cast out” (John 6.37) and boldly declare with Job “I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. After my awaking, he will raise me up, and in my body I shall see God” (19.25).
These affirmations are only possible through him who is the Resurrection and the Life, and thus our celebration of All Saints’ is firmly rooted in the resurrection and in the belief that we are bound together in a “communion of saints.”
So, fellow saints of the Lord, we come today as people united one to another by being united with Christ, to give glory and honor and worship to the God of father of us all. And we understand that “we” means not only us here in Chatham but Christians around the globe and not only today but Christians who were before us—the few whose names we know and the myriads whose names we do not know—but so too those particular ones we have known and loved and may sorely miss even now, people who were for us windows—however imperfect—through which we saw the love of God for us and were able to bask in its warmth, delight in its joy.
These we will remember—in a real sense re-member, re-connect with—before the altar of the Lord as together we share in that one communion and fellowship of all the saints, living and dead, past, present, and to come.
So dear saints of Chatham Baptist Church and of Emmanuel Episcopal Church and perhaps saints who have joined us from other churches, we gather this All Saints’ Day with saints throughout time and space to remember those saints who standing upon another shore and in a far greater light [paraphrasing the prologue to the Christmas Lessons and Carols from Kings College], singing praise and honor to Lamb, and sharing in the messianic banquet . . . of which in just but a moment we ourselves will have a foretaste.
So now God be all glory, majesty, dominion, power and eternal praise by all his saints in heaven and earth, forever and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.