by CCW | 1 November 2009 17:00
“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.
All Saints’. There is something wonderful and mystical about All Saints’. What is the teaching? Simply this. We are part of a communion. We are not autonomous individuals pursuing like so many egotistical atoms our own selfish interests. We are not our own. We belong to God (and not God to us). All Saints’ is the timely reminder of the potentialities and actualities of our human condition. We find our end in God and that is found in a community, the Communion of Saints.
What does that mean? Simply this. The saints are not heroes, as we would have it in our worldly ways, calling attention to this accomplishment and that pretense, a dominant feature of the expressive individualism of our world and day, the culture of idols, we might say. No. They are simply those whose will and being has been defined by the grace of God in Christ Jesus. That is why the great gospel lesson for All Saints’ is the Beatitudes, the blessednesses.
Blessedness is something more and something greater than happiness. It is about the grace of God, the grace of God that restores, heals and perfects our wounded and broken humanity, gathering together all that is scattered and in disarray, bringing to wholeness and salvation all that is partial and incomplete.
The Beatitudes belong to the first part of the greatest sermon ever preached, The Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes are the precepts of perfection. They challenge and convict us all. In a way, they turn the world on its head. They establish a new foundation and a new way of looking at our lives. The new foundation is grace. The new way of looking is something inward and spiritual which shapes all that is outward and social. In short, the Beatitudes speak to a new reality of our humanity, our humanity as defined by the grace of God and not by circumstance and self-will. And they speak about the perfection of our humanity, individually and collectively, precisely in the context of controversy, indeed, even in the face of persecution. The last “beatitude”, so-called, is really the application of them all to each of us. “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake”. As the lesson from Revelation puts it, “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”. When all seems scattered, shattered and in utter and dismal disarray, then we are called to rejoice. “Rejoice and be exceeding glad”. For “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” and from ours, too, if we will repent and rejoice.
I am, as you know, more than a little suspicious of Halloween in our contemporary culture, wondering whether we are teaching our children to be beggars or terrorists or both. Literally, the Eve of All Hallows’, the Eve of All Saints’, Halloween takes on an entirely different complexion by the day itself, All Saints’ Day. Perhaps, just perhaps, in the fun and fantasy of dressing up with all of the ambiguities about whether more is revealed than concealed about ourselves, there is also a yearning for a deeper connection and meaning for our lives than what the world can possibly provide, a desire and a longing to rethink the disenchantment of our world and day, as our contemporary philosophers put it, and to rediscover the spiritual principles which along can give dignity and purpose to our lives. It means to discover that larger dimension and reality known as the kingdom of heaven.
“For theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. The first and the eighth beatitude, like the musical notes of the octave, signal our spiritual home; the homeland of the spirit is the Communion of Saints, “the kingdom of heaven”. In short, there is a gathering. We are incomplete in ourselves, in our existential self-determinations, in the parade of our vanities, and in “the devices and desires” of our all-too-foolish hearts. The Communion of Saints is the celebration of our redeemed humanity by the grace of God which alone sanctifies human lives. That Communion, too, is the true meaning of the Church, the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church”, which is not to be confused with its bureaucratic and institutional expressions, whether that is the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Church of Canada, or the Diocese of Nova Scotia & Prince Edward Island, except as they are measured and ordered by the spiritual principles of redemption and sanctification.
The Beatitudes are the spiritual principles which define that redemption and shape that sanctification. It is found only in the gathering, in our being part of a communion, the Communion of Saints, without which our humanity is scattered and in disarray. Here is the vision. Will we strive to live it? How? Only by our openness to God’s grace, the grace that gathers us into glory, something beyond calculation, “the countless host, singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Alleluia! Alleluia!”
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church
All Saints’ Day, 2009
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2009/11/01/sermon-for-all-saints-day/
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