All Saints Sunday, November 1, 2020
Penelope Bridges
Coming Out of the Great Ordeal
In any normal year we privileged North Americans would have a hard time identifying with those who have come out of the great ordeal. This year I think we might have some idea. The apocalyptic imagery of the Revelation to John seems peculiarly appropriate this week as we continue to endure the pandemic and await an election which may involve unprecedented ugliness, irregularity, and even violence. We are all anxious, we are all bracing ourselves for hard times ahead, and this is after we’ve endured eight months of isolation, contagion, and loss. How might God comfort us through Scripture on this All Saints Day?
All nations, tribes, peoples, and languages. Together, worshiping one God. Right now it’s hard to imagine this nation coming together let alone all the nations. We are divided in so many ways, including the scope of our imaginations: the traumatic experience of black Americans and many immigrants is almost inconceivable to those of us who are both white and fully integrated into this culture. We who have always had free choice of whom to marry or where to live have little notion of what it’s like to be prevented from living with the great love of your life or from buying a home in a good neighborhood. It’s painfully obvious that most of our faith communities are in effect segregated. Sometimes it even seems like American Christians worship several different Gods: we mutually disagree on what God desires for humanity. There’s the God who rewards the adventurer with wealth and power, and the God who takes the part of the poor and downtrodden; the God who leads us into battle and the God who offers peaceful resistance to all forms of war. To use current terms, there’s a red Christianity and a blue Christianity.
But in our Scripture we see a white Christianity, and I don’t mean that in racial terms but in terms of physics. White light is an equally distributed combination of all the colors of the spectrum. I’m thinking of Revelation’s martyrs robed in white, the traditional white robe of baptism, the one baptism that we all share. The white robe of baptism symbolizes our unity in Christ, the unity that results from all colors coming together and contributing equally in one life-giving community. What a beautiful and needed symbol for our time.
All Saints Day is a major baptismal feast, and baptism is all about unity: One God, one faith, one baptism, one Lord. This afternoon I will baptize one of our own: Luke Young was born during the pandemic and has yet to be welcomed publicly into the church family. But we are adaptable and creative people, and we can recognize the grace of baptism even when we are unable to gather in the cathedral. Luke’s parents and godparents will make promises on Luke’s behalf. They are daunting promises, and we cannot hope to live up to them without the support of our faith community and with God’s help. Even though you will all not be present this afternoon, I encourage you to pick up a prayer book around 3 pm and read through the baptismal liturgy, praying for Luke and reinforcing your own vows. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one united community of faith.
Back in the seventh century, Pope Boniface the fourth instituted a day for honoring all the saints, meaning all those who had suffered for their faith. In the early days when Christianity was illegal across the Roman Empire, this was a real possibility for any baptized person. But once the Empire adopted Christianity as an official religion, the likelihood of being martyred faded, and the definition of a saint expanded to include any Christian who had made a significant impact on the church, which was for centuries, and to some extent still is, identified with all the grandeur and power of Empire. There are still parts of the world where Christians risk persecution, but we are blessed with the freedom to follow Jesus as we understand him, even when that understanding sets us against the empires of our time.
In recent times we have broadened our understanding of sainthood further, to include people of faith who have made a difference for good in the world that Jesus sought to change. So we remember Episcopalian Frances Perkins, not for any change she brought to the church, but for her leadership in implementing the Social Security Act. And we remember Frederick Douglass who spoke out against slavery, risking his life to challenge the empire of his time.
To be a saint is to devote your life to making the world a better place for the sake of Christ. Each one of us can aspire to sainthood through simple things like telling the truth, acting with generosity and kindness, defending those who cannot defend themselves, condemning injustice, and discerning all our actions through the lens of love. In these days of division, of rampant falsehood, of tribalism, it may feel like our faith is far removed from the values of empire, and it may not always be easy to stand up for the teachings of Jesus; that’s why we can keep our baptismal promises only with God’s help.
The Revelation to John holds out a promise that some day God will claim the victory; that some day all living things will recognize the sovereignty of the God of love; that hunger and thirst will be things of the past; that there will no longer be any reason to weep. This is why we come to church, whether online or in person, and especially in hard times like these, to be reminded of this promise, to renew our faith in it, and to support one another in the effort to live up to it.
The images described in Revelation are especially hard to hear this year, because they remind us of what we are missing in our worship: the crowds, the singing, the splendid ceremony, the beauty of holiness that is at the heart of our practice of faith. But we can also turn to other Scripture for comfort: the first letter of John gives us words to live by. “Beloved, we are God’s children.” If Revelation gives us the “what” of being saints, John gives us the “why”. Why should we seek to transform the world into a kinder, gentler place? Because we are God’s children. Because we are beloved. Because we belong to God: that is the purpose of baptism, a relationship that cannot be undone. As children of God we are never alone, never abandoned in grief, and never exempt from being the best we can be.
And then there’s the topsy-turvy world of the Beatitudes. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells us that you’re blessed if you’re poor in spirit, if you are grieving or humble, if you are longing for justice and peace. Like Revelation, this text comes closer to home right now than usual. I want to focus on one line that really jumps out at me today: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” If we are God’s children, as the Epistle states, then it follows that we must be peacemakers. And God knows that peacemakers are sorely needed in our world today. What can we do to bring red and blue Americans, red and blue Christians together into the bright light of one community?
We can, first, remain true to what we know of the God we worship: this is the God of love, who longs for all nations, tribes, peoples, and languages to be one community; who loves us and every human being so much that God once came to us in human form to suffer and die for our sake. We can hold onto our conviction that no matter what happens, no matter who wins the election, no matter how much longer the COVID virus dominates our lives, our God reigns. Every line of the Beatitudes reinforces this conviction. God is with us in our poverty of spirit, in our loneliness, in our moments of feeling put-upon and ridiculed. In all the turmoil of this season, in the cacophony of political posturing and hate-mongering and fear-raising, we can find rest in the knowledge of God’s unchanging, indefatigable, enduring love, and we can form little islands of peace and generosity and kindness, resisting the seductive call to engage in name-calling, gloating, or despair.
We celebrate the saints not for being perfect – many of them were deeply flawed – but for what they did, in large and small ways, to bring the values of God’s kingdom to their communities. As the old hymn goes, “They followed the right, for Jesus’ sake, the whole of their good lives long.” That hymn continues to call us to action: “The world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus’ will.” On this All Saints Day we can honor the saints of old and recommit ourselves to following their lead, God’s beloved children striving to transform this deeply broken world.
