2015 Wisdom of Solomon

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All Saints’ Day, Year B 11/1/2015 Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 Psalm 24 Revelation 21:1-6a John 11:32-44 Who Are the Saints? All Saints’ Day is today, November 1, also know as All Hallows’ Day. The day before All Hallows’ Day is called Halloween, a title shortened over the years from All Hallows’ Eve, to Hallows Even, to Hallow-een. In pre-Christian, Celtic Britain, October 31 was the feast of Samhain that “marked the end of [fall] and the beginning of winter, the time of year associated with death.” This was thought to be a “thin time” when the threshold between the world of the living and world of the dead was porous. Sometimes, people believed, ghouls from the spirit world would cross the threshold to cause trouble, and so developed a custom of dressing up like them to trick them by leading them away from populated areas. Or, if the spirits were those of family and friends, one could lead them to the light by inviting them in to gather around the family fire to be “warmed and fed” with treats.1 Tricks for some spirits, treats for others. Sound familiar? The Church has always loved appropriating things from the surrounding pagan culture and making them her own, and All Hallows’ or All Saints’ Day is a great case in point. The church needed a day to celebrate all those saints known and unknown, who didn’t have their own particular day, and All Saints’ Day was the solution. Throw it in around the time of those ancient pagan festivals, and you make it your own. Voila! All Hallows’ Day and All Hallows’ Even, a place where church and culture come together, like chocolate and peanut butter—two great tastes that taste great together. 1

Full Homely Divinity, “All Hallows And The Day Of The Dead,” accessed October 31, 2016, http://fullhomelydivinity.org/articles/all%20hallows.htm.

So, who are the known and unknown hallowed we commemorate? Are they just those long dead people that we honor in the calendar of the church year? People like St. Paul? St. Mary? St. Julian? Or those more modern saints, like our Louisiana saint Blessed Frances Gaudet, whose legacy gift to our diocese still provides scholarships for AfricanAmerican students in our Episcopal schools? Or more widely known figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. and C. S. Lewis? Now, those last few names we have a little more trouble applying the term “saint” to don’t we. We still, I think, hold in our imagination those “saints” canonized by the Roman Catholic tradition. We celebrate many of those saints in our communion, too, but also many others. Our understanding of saints is a little different. So who do we believe are the saints? Well, if you look at our readings, in some sense saints are those people we celebrate who have died. All the readings are readings that could easily be read at a funeral, and in fact are quite often. The Wisdom of Solomon says, “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.” Souls of the righteous, the reading talks about. And I love that line, they seemed to have died. Like one wise gentleman who I have heard say, “Death is impossible.” Like the line from the Prayer Book that reminds us that “life is changed, not ended.” So, here’s one of our readings on All Saints’ Sunday that seems to imply that the saints are the righteous who have gone more deeply into the great mystery ahead of us.

How about Revelation? Revelation talks of the great multitude that no one could number coming before the throne of God. In this morning’s reading says that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more. And then there’s the gospel reading where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus tells the disciples just before this scene that Lazarus is merely sleeping. He says in the reading to roll away the stone from the tomb, and Mary means us all to know Lazarus is really, truly dead when she says, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Do you really think opening the tomb with all those people here is really a good idea, Jesus? It’s going to stink! This doesn’t dissuade Jesus. “Lazarus, come out!” Wake up! And out emerges Lazarus in his All Hallows’ Eve mummy costume. Jesus says, “Get him out of those bindings. There are no mummies here. Death is impossible.” Wisdom of Solomon. Revelation. John’s story of the raising of Lazarus. Funeral readings one and all, readings that focus on sorrow turning to joy, of death turning to life. Most funeral readings are not primarily about mourning and sadness, but about joyful expectation of the hope and new life God promises. Have you ever noticed what we clergy wear at funeral services? Not black, but white. Just like this morning. A funeral is an Easter service because it witnesses to the hope of resurrection. It witnesses to God’s kingdom already breaking through into this world, a kingdom we believe will come in fullness when Jesus comes again “to judge the living and the dead.” The living and the dead. The living and the dead. What I often notice about funerals is that people remember about the dead not just that they died or how they died, rather that and how they lived. As we stand around at a visitation or a reception following a funeral what ends

up happening? We tell stories about those we’ve lost which helps us to grieve well, but which also encourage and strengthen us for our Christian journey. We tell stories that give us hope. Some of you may remember Fr. Bill Morris, a faithful priest of this diocese who died just a few years ago. I remember being at the reception after his funeral and hearing one story of how Bill, in the early 1970s, had the audacity to marry an interracial couple at All Saints in River Ridge. People were not happy about this. A vestryman showed up at the church on the day of the wedding with a gun. Bill stood him down on the steps of the church and said, “This church is open to all of God’s children, including you, if you take that gun home, put it away, and never bring it back.” I remember thinking, “Wow! That sounds like something that saints do!” And it dawned on me: saints aren’t just people from the past who did pious things, they were real people not unlike people we know, people like you and me, who witness to the love, sacrifice, and courage of Jesus Christ every single day, and particularly when it matters most. My grandmother also comes to my mind when I think of the saints. She had a prayer life that would rival that of any monk. No matter what was going on she never failed to get up every morning at 3:00 am—yes, 3:00 am—to read her Bible, to pray, to write in her journal. I found her old journals after she died, and every entry—every single one—begins the same way: “Awoke again today in the Lord.” That was how she saw the start to every single day, a day to awaken anew in God’s presence. Her Bible, which I also still have, is a worn out mess. Pages are dog-eared, nearly every page is scribbled on in the margins, the binding is falling apart, the leather is cracked and worn with holes in it. This wasn’t just some pious ritual. What she gained from her study and prayer spilled

over in the way she cared for other people. That’s what saints do. She was a saint. The witness that journal and that Bible provide is a witness of steadfast faith and devotion, a witness to the power of Christian discipline to shape our lives. It’s important to recognize that what we remember about those long dead saints is their witness to Christ when they were alive. When Paul talks about “the saints” in his letters he doesn’t talk about the dead, but the living. He addresses his famous letter to the Romans to “all God’s beloved in Rome who are called to be saints.” He tells them he is “going to Jerusalem in a ministry to the saints.” He instructs them to “share their resources with the poor among the saints” there. In scripture, “the saints” are those who are part of the community of the faithful, both living and dead. Those gone, those present, and those to come. It’s what the creeds call “the communion of saints,” which we profess to believe in, that “fellowship in Christ in which living and departed share.”2 The saints are not just those who appear to have died, but all who are alive in Christ, whether in this world or in the world to come. This gives us a whole new perspective on our beloved football team, doesn’t it? Ever consider why our team is the “Saints”? One reason is this city is dripping with Catholicism. Most of our streets are named after saints—it’s just kind of who we are. But I think Saints is a great name because it’s a name all about character and final victory. What we believe and hope for is that in the end, the saints—that great company of believers, that fellowship of love, prayer, and worship—those saints will have the victory in the end. That despite the bleak outlook of things in this world, those things that will endure are the kinds of things that we admire in “the saints,” namely their witness to the

2

The Commission on Christian Doctrine, Doctrine in the Church of England (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938), 213.

faith, hope, and love of Jesus Christ. The kind of courage and love for all God’s children that Fr. Bill displayed. The kind of prayerful, holy life my grandmother displayed. The kind of faith, hope, and love that all of you display when you love one another as Jesus loved us. Those are the qualities that we are told will win out in the end, the qualities that define the world to come where the saints reign victorious with Christ. Falcons don’t have that kind of character or assured victory. Cowboys don’t have that kind of character or assured victory. Colts don’t have that kind of character or assured victory. That kind of character and sureness of victory is what all teams must aspire to in order to be great. So, who are the saints? The saints are those who have gone before us, but they are also . . . us. We, like all those to whom Paul wrote and ministered, are called to be saints. We are the saints when we do the kinds of things we promise to do in our Baptismal Covenant. We will renew that covenant in just a moment with those who are committing themselves to Christ on this All Hallows’ Day, and I hope that you will consider well what you are promising: to continue in the faith of the Church; to persevere in resisting evil; to proclaim the good news; to love your neighbor; to strive for justice and peace among all peoples; to respect the dignity of every human being. That’s what saints do. And in the end, those are the qualities and values that will have the final victory. To that, I think we can only say, “Who dat?”

WORKS CITED Commission on Christian Doctrine. Doctrine in the Church of England. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938. Full Homely Divinity, “All Hallows And The Day Of The Dead,” accessed October 31, 2016, http://fullhomelydivinity.org/articles/all%20hallows.htm.