by CCW | 9 November 2025 10:00
The reading from Hebrews appointed for the Octave of All Saints’ (BCP, p. 302) reminds us that “we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.” Such is the Communion of Saints, a multitude beyond number comprising persons past, present, and future who are known and embraced in God’s eternal love. It is pictured as “an heavenly country,” indeed, a city, heavenly Jerusalem. It is an image of the true homeland of our humanity, the patria with God which defines the via to God, the end which orders the way. Hebrews reminds us that the conditions of our journeying belong to our participation in what Christ has accomplished for us and therefore in us.
At this point the readings for this Sunday come into play and help our thinking about what is a kind of secular All Souls’ Day, namely Remembrance Day. We endeavour to remember all those who sacrificed their lives for their country in the great, defining, and utterly devastating wars of the last century and beyond, the legacies of which remain with us in our world of endless wars. Far from a glorification of war and military power and might, it is really a remembrance of the horrors and cost of war, on the one hand, and of the dedication and sacrifice for the sake of others for what they took to be good and true, on the other hand. Timothy Findley’s classic Canadian anti-war novel, The Wars, reflects profoundly on the technology of war which destroys both the natural world and our humanity, turning what is life-giving into what is life-destroying. It is about us but the novel counsels against falling into the tragedy of victimhood which negates our agency and dignity; instead the challenge is “to clarify who you are by your response to when you lived,” a life lesson for all of us in the face of the ugly spectacle of human sin and evil that bedevils us all.
We are asked to remember the many hundreds of thousands who went forth from our communities to fight and die in the World Wars in far away lands for what they thought was worth fighting for; in so doing we place them in the greater struggle for good over evil in our own hearts and lives. In other words, the real causes of the wars and conflicts of our world are ultimately spiritual. Thus Hebrews bids us “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” This is to transcend the divisions and animosities of countries and cultures but only by looking beyond ourselves to Christ Jesus, the alpha and omega of all creation and of our lives in faith. “These all died in faith,” Hebrews says, referring to the pageant of Old Testament figures, named and unnamed, who are gathered into the greater sacrifice of Christ.
It is all about faith which Hebrews defines as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen” (Heb. 11.1). We are more not less than the material and economic circumstances of our lives that become so often the occasion for sin and violence. We go from last Sunday’s images of “putting off mortality” and “putting on immortality”, from being “knit together in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of Christ”, from the theme of the “wedding-garment”, emblematic of our participation in the marriage feast, to the powerful imagery of the panoply of war. “Put on the whole armour of God,” Paul bids us, “above all, taking the shield of faith.”
The traditional accoutrements of warfare, breastplate, shield, helmet, and sword, highlight our spiritual life as a struggle against what is named in the baptismal liturgy as “the world, the flesh and the devil.” What is profoundly inward often manifests itself in things outward. Yet Paul says it is not about “wrestl[ing] against flesh and blood,” but “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world’; in summary, “against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Such images belong to the struggles of faith. It is not easy to be Christian. Grace is not cheap. “It cost the heart-blood of the Son of God to redeem us,” as Jeremy Taylor puts it.
Paul’s point is illustrated in the Gospel reading from John. It, too, contrasts the outward and the inward. “A certain nobleman,” a ruler actually, seeks out Jesus in Cana of Galilee for the healing of his son in Capernaum. He wants Jesus to make a housecall, to be physically present, it seems. The exchange is compelling. “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe,” Jesus says to him. This is a rebuke to our over-reliance on signs and wonders, things seen but without any sense of what they mean; a critique of our cultures of utilitarian and expressive individualism that default entirely to outcomes. That is about putting God to the test of our expectations and tendency to measure reality simply by way of what can be empirically seen in terms of what we have or what we claim about ourselves. Seeing is believing, we tend to say, no doubt with some truth but not the whole truth. After all, seeing can also be deceiving. What is a signum – a sign – without a signatum, what it signifies? That requires thinking the thought. It is the heart of a sacramental understanding: the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. This Gospel story reveals three wonders of faith.
The nobleman re-iterates his request. “Sir, come down ere my child die,” to which Jesus simply says, “Go thy way, thy son liveth.” At this point we see exactly the power and truth of faith. “The man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him.” This is the first real wonder. He grasps something of the meaning of God in Christ. God’s will cannot be constrained to the finite conditions of our world even as it engages with that world. He hears the word of Jesus, to be sure, but the real point is that he believes; he has faith in Jesus. This leads to the second wonder. Making his way back to Capernaum, his servants meet him and tell him “Thy son liveth.” Something again is heard in words that echo Jesus’s word, “Thy son liveth.” Faith is the Word of God alive and resonant in us, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” John repeats it with his insight into his faith: the nobleman now is the father who “knew” that his son’s healing “was at the same hour when Jesus said to him, ‘Thy son liveth.’” This results in the deepening of the man’s faith: “himself believed, and his whole house.” Faith is not just individual; it is corporate and belongs to the greater healing of our whole humanity.
And the third wonder? John makes known to us the significance of this encounter. “This is again the second sign that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judaea into Galilee.” We are immediately recalled to the first sign: the miracle at Cana of Galilee which signifies the deeper meaning of what Christ seeks for us: our good and our joy. The first sign was the turning of the water into wine signifying that God seeks our joy and delight in him and even in and through the things of the world, but only at his word, and even more, only through his passion and death, “his hour” which is our redemption. It is not constrained to Cana, nor Capernaum; it is for us everywhere. “For Christ plays in ten thousand places.”
Our text reminds us that it is really a question of what we seek: will it be signs and wonders of outward show or an inward and spiritual grace?, one in which by grace we participate now in via ad patriam. It is all about the radical meaning of faith.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XXI, 2025
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