Ephesians 1.11-23, Luke 6.20-31
All Saint's Day: Sunday, 3 November 2019, Eldroth
We don't celebrate All Saint's Day like we used to. This most primal time of year has ever been a time of the setting-of-fires, of trickery, and of the remembrance of the dead: it's deeply ingrained in us. According to the historian Ronald Hutton, ‘By the end of the Middle Ages, the Christian feast of the dead, known as Hallowtide, Hollontide, or Allantide, had developed into a spectacular affair.’
After lamplit processions and lavish entertainments, revellers dispersed to their respective parish churches for evensong for the most famous ritual of the night, the ringing of church bells to comfort the souls in purgatory after the congregation had offered prayers for them…. In these ways the opening of the season of darkness and cold had been made into an opportunity to confront the greatest fear known to humans, that of death, and the greatest known to Christians, that of damnation. [1]
Now as Hutton points out, the Protestant Reformation outlawed many of these activities, doing away with the notion of purgatory and the need to ask the saints to intercede for us. All Saints became ‘a day on which to commemorate saints as outstandingly godly human beings, not as semi-divine intercessors; the prayers for the dead were, of course, abolished once more.' Opposition to this was strong. Especially in the particularly-Catholic north of Lancashire, where bonfires blazed on the hills along the Ribble Valley. In Whalley families would gather on the hills at midnight on the eve of All Saints', one holding a large bunch of burning straw at the end of a fork while the others, in a circle, prayed for their dead.
In our ecumenical times we gather here today as a company of people who have embraced Protestantism but who may also still have a feel and a respect for the value of some of the older rituals. We understand that rituals can and should alter as society constantly shifts. We can live with the contradictions this brings, even embrace them and learn from them. Today I imagine that most of us here probably don't regard the saints as semi-divine intercessors. Though we may respect those who do. Do we, though, still regard saints as outstandingly godly human beings?
Some of us struggle with this idea. A friend of mine wrote about his experience of soul-searching about his own life and faith, saying: "I needed to recover words like 'saint', the 'righteous' and 'prophet' from the religious ghetto where they mean long dead people who weren't ordinary like me. They did magic things, and God spoke to them in magic ways and theologians had buried them under mountains of words. I decided that the real, breathing men had to be like us if they were to be of any use to us." [2] When we talk about saints we assume we're talking about the great people of faith. Those who put their lives on the line for their faith, those who made amazing sacrifices to witness for God. But we can also embrace the seeming contradiction that the saints were not perfect. That is something which today's Halloween invites us to see: that we each have a darker side. We are all riddled with contradictions. The church at its best also recognises this. We mustn't forget that even the greatest saints were - and are - also sinners.
From Mary Magdalene right through to Mother Teresa of Calcutta - whose working methods have been posthumously questioned, causing some to call Mother Teresa 'a sign of contradiction', that is, a holy person whose holiness is nevertheless under dispute. [3] So the saints can be 'signs of contradiction’. Even the saints are human. And this opens up for us the beautiful truth that even you and me, we - flawed contradictory humans, can be saints.
Jesus himself was called 'a sign of contradiction', by Simeon in the temple. The old man held the child Jesus in his arms and praised God, calling Jesus 'a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.' But he also said that Jesus would be 'a sign that will be spoken against’. The early Christians were also held in question, being a sect of people who others were wary of. In the current questioning in our society, we practicing Christians know how that feels.
And the teachings of Jesus seemed to embrace contradiction too, not least his sermon which opened with the words 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven' - a statement which suggests that the least likely people are the sainted ones. Jesus regards the unlikeliest people as saints. The most blessed ones are the little ones, the struggling ones, the hungry ones, the wounded ones, those who feel the injustices of the world so keenly that it upsets them deeply.
These blessed ones contradict all expectations. They sound, oddly, rather like you and me, trying to live faithful lives, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. How then, do we come to this question of what makes a saint?
We might come to this question feeling poor in spirit, but if we come to Jesus then he tells us that the kingdom of heaven is ours.
We might come mourning, but if we do then God promises that we will be comforted.
We might come meekly, nervously, with just a tiny bit of faith, but if we come in this condition Jesus says we should expect to inherit the earth.
We might come hungry and thirsty for righteousness, full of concerns about the world's suffering ones, aching to see wrongs righted. And if we do then God promises to respond.
So, if we come as we are - that is, if we come to Jesus as we are - then we find that he places us in the company of the saints. It is astonishingly simple. It is all there is to the kingdom of heaven.
The saints are those who accept their membership of the kingdom, and despite feeling unworthy, despite being mocked, perhaps, or opposed, despite imagining themselves to be 'signs of contradiction', the saints are those who hold on to their membership of the kingdom and let it deeply affect the way that they live. Remain in the love of God - and belong in the company of all the saints.
Now that is something worth lighting fires for; that is something worth ringing bells to celebrate. That is something to dispel our fears of death, and of damnation; that is something to enlighten us at this dark time of year.
Notes
Previously preached in Liverpool in 2008, St Columba’s Church Gruline and Sparkford, Somerset 2017. The beatitudes section of this talk borrows heavily from my earlier sermon Kingdom healing and the beautiful game, 2005.
[1] Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun; A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, p.371
[2] Jim Hart, quoted in my blog of July 28, 2004.
[3] At St Columba's Church Gruline I here discussed the ancient saint Columba, holding in tension being a warrior-prince with Irish blood on his hands, and being the leader of a monastic missionary community.
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