Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

November 5, 2006 - All Saints Day

The Rev. Harriette S. Sturges

This is All Saints Sunday. And if you think you are a saint, you probably aren’t. If others call you a saint, you may be, at least part of the time. However, no one I know aspires to be a saint these days. This is understandable. I’m not sure there are any tangible advantages to being one. It’s hard to always be good and pious if that what being a saint requires. However, the hymn we will sing shortly ends with the proclamation “that I want to be one too.” Be a saint? It’s hard to earn a living being a saint.  I never see any employment opportunities for saints listed. You can’t get a degree in sainthood from any university or seminary. Saints traditionally get martyred, misunderstood, and seem to live in miserable circumstances.  Moreover, the Episcopal Church doesn’t beatify people as saints. Instead, we believe all baptized persons are saints by virtue of our baptism.  And you and I know that all baptized persons don’t always act like saints. So why does the church insist on having them or calling people saints? These and other mystical questions are good fodder for the Adult Forum or in other words, “Ask Vicki or Cathie.”

All I can tell you is that All Saints is a principal feast day of the church.  Since there are only seven principal feasts in our church, the other six being Pentecost, Easter, Christmas, Trinity Sunday, Ascension, and Epiphany, this puts All Saints in important company. It is to be celebrated on November 1 every year but can also be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first of November which means unlike Christmas or Easter it can be celebrated twice. We remember those who have died in our community during the past year and any others we want to list.  We name saints like Julian, Martin Luther King Jr., and Philip the Deacon. We hold them up as witnesses and examples of life in Christ. Our gospel reading of the Beatitudes describes this life as being poor in spirit, meek, merciful and peacemaking.  It has the challenge of possible persecution and mourning.  Its identifying marks are a hunger and thirst after righteousness and a purity of heart.

Saints come across as heroes of our faith congruent with the opening lines of our reading from Ecclesiastes: Now let us sing the praises of famous men … our celebration and remembrance are of women and men and children who are important for the church as a whole and for us as individuals.  But the reading goes on to include those others “of whom there is no memory” and calls them godly also.

What about all these others of whom there is no memory; these ordinary, easily forgotten ones who have touched our lives in direct and indirect ways? A friend the other day was bemoaning the fact that so many women in their 40’s and younger have no idea of what life was like when women couldn’t be on the vestry at church or be ordained or be judges or dentists or mechanics or sport icons. The generation of women today expect women to be presiding bishops and on the Supreme Court. I can imagine those who marched in Selma and risked their lives wondering if the current generation appreciates the freedom to register to vote or eat in any restaurant they want. I hope that a new generation of lesbians and gays will not understand the pain and uncertainty of what coming out means because of those who came out and spoke up before they were born. It is true that we remember representatives of the forgotten ones but there are many who are unnamed, unsung who prepared the environment and provided the foundation for others to be seen and heard.

So today is a day to remember not only those who are famous but those of whom there is no memory. The names of the welders who put the first space rocket together.  The people who work to renew the earth.  Those who put their savings in Self-Help Credit Unions, who mix the mortar, who harvest our food and clean up our trash, who serve our children in school cafeterias, and who pray daily for the world.

Having All Saints Day as a principal feast day gives us a chance to recollect and remember those who have been credible and heroic examples; but there is also this call of remembering those we don’t know. We put those we know and love, those we know by reputation, and those we don’t know in the context of worship. This is what I want to call to our attention today.

As Thomas Kelly, an American Quaker and author, puts it, “Worship does not consist in achieving a mental case of concentrated isolation from one’s fellows. But in the depth of common worship it is as if we found our separate lives were all one life, with whom we move and live and have our being.” This explains and justifies the rationale of All Saints Day for me.  It leads me to appreciate those unknown pilgrims who risked coming to the New World as they perceived it and building a new country.  It makes me aware of the violence these heroic acts involved. Therefore, I can begin to understand both the promise and threat of illegal immigrants today. Those who fought hard to allow voting rights in this country and turned it gradually into a democracy allow me to appreciate the responsibility and privilege of voting. Moreover, it compels me to accept the election regardless of who is elected. Can you follow me here?  I’m struggling to make this connection of the past to the present and to those known and unknown who acted and cause us to reflect on their actions and see where to act now. The need for a communion of saints both famous and unknown.

Who are our Saints today?  You might name Nelson Mandela or Katherine Schiori-Jefferts, or George Bush or Ralph Nader, or Coach K, Dean Smith or Kay Yow.  You might also name a funeral director, your pediatrician, a friend or a stranger like the farmer who plants the seed, the migrant who harvests it, the baker who makes it edible, the men and women who build our roads.  You might also be forced to accept the title yourself.

What would our world, our lives be like if we saw everyone as a saint of God including ourselves? Would we be slower to criticize or blame?  Would we be more gentle and kind? Would we indeed enjoy a world where we will hunger no more; where the sun will not strike us, nor any scorching heat for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be our shepherd, and will guide us to spring of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes?

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