1 Nov 2009 - All Saints Day

Diane Whittaker
Isaiah 25 v6-9
Revelation 21 v1-6a
John 11 v32-44

So – we all know about saints don’t we? They are people such as the Apostles, the great and the good – such as the Saints we’ve got pictured in our windows in churches, the ones that we know and love – St Francis, St Claire of Assisi, St Celia, St Hilda, St Cedd, St Cuthbert – the list goes on forever – did you know that there are over 10,000 Saints recognised by the Catholic Church alone let alone all the other Christian denominations – we have our own lists of people we remember, as do the Orthodox churches?!

No wonder we have a day put aside when we remember ‘all saints’ there’s no way each of those could have a day of their own!

So – how come so many people have been identified as saints? What makes a saint? Are there really that many saints around – surely they are very special people?

Questions, questions..

So – how to begin…I decided to go to Wikipedia and get a definition – that’s a good way to understand this Saint business, I thought…

Unfortunately, there were quite a few definitions,

For example – paraphrasing some of them…

Saints are those who have definitely booked their place in heaven, they led lives that were pious and holy enough to get there – else they were martyred in a particularly horrible fashion and got there through a short cut if you like.

Hmmm – but I thought that all Christians had a place booked in heaven – through belief in Christ we have eternal life, teaches Paul - so maybe we are all saints!

But, I can hear you saying, we aren’t good enough to be saints. (You are saying that aren’t you?)

So maybe this definition is better –

Saints are people we can look up to and emulate – in the hopes that we will make it to heaven also… that sounds reasonable, and takes the heat off us!

but I liked this definition best - A saint is always someone through whom we catch a glimpse of what God is like -- and of what we are called to be. This definition was written by Kenneth Woodward in his book Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn't and Why.

Someone through whom we catch a glimpse of what God is like – and of what we are called to be.

Strangely enough – Jesus also gave us a glimpse of what God is like through his teachings and life – so maybe saints are those who manage to live particularly Christ like lives – but through living those lives, they show us how we should be going about things also – how we can also become more the people God wants us to be.

However, we still come back to the teaching of Paul that all who confess the name of Jesus are to be considered saints. Maybe we could look at it this way – we are all saints if we are Christians, but there are some who are Saints with a capital ‘S’ – these are the ones we look up to.

While I was looking through the lists of people we now commemorate in the Anglican Church, I came across some very interesting people – people who do reveal through their lives something of God…people we could consider to be role models for our own walk of faith.

There’s Saint Seraphim – a Monk who lived in the 18th Century – he was a mystic very much in the style of the saints of old – someone who led a very austere life, but who influenced many who visited him. A saying attributed to him is “acquire a peaceful spirit and thousands around you will be saved”

There’s Mary Slessor – a missionary who ended her days in Nigeria – she did much for the status of women in that country. A story about her, which I love, was from her days in England before she followed the call to be a missionary – it is said that she dared some boys to swing a metal weight closer and closer to her face and she wouldn’t flinch. She won – and the boys had to attend her Sunday School!

There’s Oscar Romero – he was a Bishop in the Roman Catholic Church in Canada. When he was made Archbishop of San Salvador, he became aware of the fact that many people were suffering under the regime there. He initiated and gave his status to a group which spoke out on behalf of the poor and the victims of the Salvadoran civil war. He was assassinated in his own Cathedral by a right wing group that objected to the work he was doing to support justice.

There’s Mary Sumner – a very ordinary priest’s wife, who felt passionately that mothers needed support and recognition for their roles as home-makers – she founded the Mother’s Union.

There’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer – a German Theologian who was determined to live out his faith – it led to his imprisonment by the Nazi regime and his death just before the end of the 2nd WW

There’s Margorie Kempe – an ordinary woman who had the desire to write about her pilgrimages – this was in the 14th Century – she became the first woman to write an autobiography in English.

There’s Charles Lowder, a missionary priest who worked in the slums of London in the 19th Century and founded the Society of the Holy Cross.

I could go on and on – and it was difficult to restrict myself to just these few who caught my attention, and no doubt you can think of more examples of people who could be regarded as saints – both those who are famous and those who have influenced only a few around them.

These are the people who have revealed something of God and have set an example for us to follow.

So, at the turn of this Christian year, when we begin to look towards Advent and those great themes of God’s kingdom breaking into this world and the final revelation of God’s new heaven and earth – subjects of today’s readings, what are we going to do to take to heart those examples that have been set for us? How are we going to order our lives so that we are ‘saints’ to others around us?

That is the challenge that lies before all of us – yes, I firmly believe that we have our place booked in heaven through our faith in Christ – as Paul writes in his letters, we are all saints, but as Paul also writes - we are still works in progress – saints with a capital ‘S’ in the making, because God has a plan to work within us to make us more and more Christ-like throughout our days on earth.

This is also the challenge presented to us by the new Bishop of St Albans – who is challenging everyone next Lent to dare to live by the words of Jesus. To take a verse a day from Luke’s gospel – read it, learn it, pray it and do it.

If we take up the challenge to allow God to work within our lives, we too will become people who will reveal to others a little of what God is like.