November 4, 2007
(All Saints' Sunday)
Saints, New and Old
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Daniel 7:1-3,15-18 • Psalm
149 • Ephesians 1:11-23
• Luke 6:20-31
(From
The Lectionary Page)
One of the wondrous joys of parenting is responding to the Big Questions your kids throw at you at unexpected moments. Cady, our 8-year-old, was ready with one such Big Question last Wednesday. “Mommy,” she asked before she was even out of bed, “Why did God invent Halloween?” Wow. Theology at 7:15 in the morning. It just doesn’t get any better than that!
So over breakfast I reminded her that Halloween is really the day before a big church holiday called All Saints Day. Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve (to say it slowly) is the day before All Hallows Day, or All Saints Day. “I know that,” she said. “But why? Why scary stuff on Halloween?”
Ah. The question behind the question. The REAL question.
And it’s an interesting question at that. The fact of the matter is, scary stuff happens. All the time. What each of us specifically fears may change as we grow from childhood to adulthood. Similarly, what we fear as a people, as a nation, changes from age to age. Fear has the capacity to shape our consciousness. The ways in which we symbolize and ritualize our fear, and what we expect to triumph at the end, also shapes our consciousness. It is no surprise that the Eve of All Hallows, at least in this country and in my neighborhood, involves a journey that is both exciting and fearful and which ends with great blessing – much of it coming in the form of chocolate.
In the centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ, during a time of great fearfulness and national tribulation for the Jewish people, apocalyptic literature began to develop. These were writings, some of which found their way into the canon of Scripture, which described fantastic, scary visions of cosmic warfare and of the ultimate triumph of God over the forces of evil and darkness. The book of Daniel, from which our first reading this morning is taken, is one such example of apocalyptic literature. Though the imagery is terrifying, its purpose is to give hope. It conveyed a powerful reminder to a suffering people that God is in charge of all eternity. It’s no surprise that apocalyptic literature flourished during times of national crisis. The message of hope was crucial. To suffer was bad enough; to suffer with the fear that it all ultimately might be meaningless was untenable. And so God assured the people through strange visions that no one will be lost. All will be gathered together, present and accounted for, beloved by God for all eternity.
We Christians use the term, “Communion of Saints” to describe this divine economy of God’s – where those whom God has created and redeemed, God has also claimed for all eternity. It’s an article of faith that we find in our baptismal creed. This peculiar, almost cosmic, way of understanding the Church dissolves geopolitical boundaries, dissolves even the boundaries of time itself. We are more than congregations or dioceses or provinces or denominations. We are God’s beloved, made brothers and sisters all of us, linked in a sort of holy DNA through the blood of Christ shed for us all. We are together on this earthly pilgrimage, bidden to seek and serve Christ in all whom we encounter. Those who have gone before us join us in praise of the One who holds all our beginnings and our endings in his gracious hand.
Into this Communion of Saints, four new members are added today. Neither Cooper, Maeve, Hadley, or Jessa understand any of this yet, but I daresay they each do understand one thing very well. They know what it is to be loved beyond all reckoning by parents, siblings, godparents, and extended family; and in that way, they have an inkling of what it is to be beloved by God. It is our task, as fellow saints gathered corporately at Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral, to build on those early experiences of unconditional love. It will be our task to teach them by word, and especially by example, how much God loves them, and of how connected they are with all others whom God also loves.
The most moving part of the Baptismal liturgy, to my way of thinking, is when the baptized person is anointed with chrism and told, "You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own forever." Forever. What a gift! An eternity of belonging to God! We, who are parents, watch our children grow from babyhood into childhood and into adulthood. We love them, we safeguard them as best we can, and we try to teach them resiliency because we know that fearfulness and suffering is part, though certainly not all, of what it means to be human. We know, though we don't like to think about it now, that the day will come when Cooper and Maeve and Hadley and Jessa will each have to say goodbye to those who gave them life and who will have loved them their whole life through. The day will come when the children and grandchildren of Cooper, Maeve, Hadley and Jessa will have to say goodbye to them. The day will come generations from now when these four beautiful children will be names on their descendents' respective family trees.
And still they will each be beloved by God.
And so on this day, they each receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. They join the great multitude. And they receive the assurance that nothing will ever separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Behind all that they will encounter in their life's pathway – their sorrows, their joys, their exciting and sometimes fearful journeyings and their blessing-filled returnings home – is a God who will never let go of them.
