Sermon for All Saints’ Day
“After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number”
“I believe … in The Communion of Saints”. Do we? And where is that in the Creed which we just said? “And I believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church;” that’s where. The Communion of Saints, professed in the Apostles’ Creed, is intimately connected to the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church”, professed in the Nicene Creed. We forget this at our peril.
The Feast of All Saints’ teaches an important lesson, especially for a world fixated on the present and pressing pragmatic and practical concerns that belong to the culture of instrumental reason. It is not that such things don’t matter but that they aren’t everything. The great Feast of All Saints’ reminds us that there is more to reality than meets the eye, that we are part of innumerable company united by one thing, the love of God in Jesus Christ. It is a powerful and important message. It places us in a great company. We are, as The Letter to the Hebrews points out, wonderfully “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.”
There is more to reality than meets the eye, even in the culture of scattered minds and in the season of scattered leaves. Thank God. But here is the point. We are not alone. We are part of a spiritual fellowship which is not to be defined or confused with the culture of our world and day. For contemporary Christianity, which has been taken captive by the cultures which it itself has produced, this is a salutary and timely reminder.
