by CCW | 1 November 2016 21:00
“Our revels now are ended”, it seems, as Shakespeare says in The Tempest. All the fuss and fun, fantasy and delight, horror and scare of Halloween is past. But is it? Or are only the ways in which contemporary culture co-opts the real meaning of Halloween finally over and finished, perhaps? What really is Halloween all about? Teaching children to become beggars and terrorists? Trick or Treat? All in the service of the candy world? Another commercial venture in pursuit of profit? There is no doubt that a number of events and activities have become associated with Halloween. But are they what it is really all about?
It is interesting to see how certain customs and practices arise and dominate our imaginations. In a way, Halloween has become hijacked to other secondary aspects and features of something else, something much more profound and significant which is easily lost from view. The point here is not to declaim against its ludic qualities – the sense of play and especially the play of the imagination signalled in masks and costumes, for instance. No. There is a deeper point captured in a wonderful Latin phrase. Abusus non tollit usum. The abuse or misuse of something does not take away from its proper use.
This is wisdom. We live in a world where all kinds of things are misused, a world where there is an abuse of language, of the world itself, of ourselves and of one another. The answer is not to be proscriptive but to recover a deeper sensibility and understanding of the better and proper use and purpose of things. And so, with Halloween. It is important to recall its truer meaning. Monday was properly speaking All Hallows’ Eve, the Eve of the Feast of All Saints in the western Christian traditions. While it connects with older themes about the borderlands between the living and the dead in many, many of the cultures of the world, it celebrates another view of our humanity than simply our mortality, another view of our humanity than the transformations of our own imaginations about ourselves. It offers us a profound vision of our humanity as a community of spirit which finds its truth in the worship and praise of God signalled in the lesson from The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine.
We are recalled to who we are in the sight of God and to the idea that reality is more than the social, the economic, the political, and the sexual. The idea of our humanity finding its perfection not in our own schemes and fantasies but in God is quite powerful. It is a vision of heaven that contrasts with our experience of hell on earth, a vision which challenges us about who we are. The lesson shows us a picture of heaven with angels, and elders and living creatures all falling down before the throne of heaven in the praise and worship of Almighty God and with that heavenly company is our humanity universally considered as arising from “all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues” all joined together in that one and the same activity of prayer and praise. We are part of a company, “a great multitude, which no man could number”. That company of the spirit is the communion of saints, a communion which connects us to the created order and to our being as spiritual creatures.
It signals the perfection of our humanity which cannot be found in ourselves alone but by our being found in God. All Saints’ reminds us that we are more than our experiences and our sufferings. Those things are acknowledged as being made part of something greater, the ultimate perfection and truth of our humanity as found in God. “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more …. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes”. Who are they? The saints, the holy one. All Hallows’ Eve means the Eve of the Holy Ones, the saints. You know this word because we pray it at every service in the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy Name.” And we too are called to holiness. All Saints’ is a strong reminder of our vocation, our call to be who we are in the sight of God in whom we find the real truth and dignity of our humanity in contrast to “the devices and desires of our own hearts” and the folly and foolishness of our own schemes and fantasies. It is an old truth that sometimes the more we try to make things better ourselves the worse we make everything. We need something more. The vision of All Saints as the true community of our humanity is that something more.
The saints are those who “have come out of great tribulation”, John says in his Revelation. The Beatitudes, the blessednesses that we hear about in the Gospel from the Sermon on the Mount, are the qualities or virtues of Christ in us, the properties that belong to our life in God. They constitute the most amazing teachings in Christianity and have, to some extent or other, their counterpart in such things as the Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism or the Fire-Sermon of the Buddha not to mention many aspects of both Judaism and Islam.
“Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”, Jesus says in the eighth Beatitude before driving the point home to each 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.” The eighth Beatitude has as its reward the same as the first Beatitude, “the kingdom of heaven”. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” What does it mean? It means that humility is the necessary condition for our blessedness. Humility is the check and counter to all the forms of human hubris and arrogance in thinking that we can remake the world in our own image. That would be to deny who we are called to be in the sight of God. It would mean to deny the idea of redemption by which God can make something good even out of evil, even out of our evil. The vision of All Saints is the greater revel in which we find our true delight and good.
Fr. David Curry
All Saints’ Day, 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/11/01/sermon-for-all-saints-day-4/
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