All Saints Day 2009                                                                  Christ Church, York

It may be true that we got an extra hour of sleep last night, but one of the things I dislike about having turned our clocks back is the darkness of the long evenings that now lie before us for the next few months. After the brightness of the summer and even the glory of the autumn leaves, when we have been able to see them through the persistent rain that is, the impending darkness carries with it a tinge of despair, with little to look forward to except more rain, damp, fog and cold.

So if we have to enter into this season I am glad to have this Festival Day on which to begin it. For this day stands as a beacon of light at the beginning of these dark days, a day of radiance as we remember all the saints of the Church who have died and gone to their eternal rest, great saints of the Church and others more ordinary and humble, some who held important positions and others whose names will never appear on the roles of the great and the famous. But regardless of their status, regardless of the role they played, regardless of their name or their fame, the Church today holds all of its saints in great honor on this All Saints Day.

But of all the saints we remember today, we recall with special affection those men and women, those saints of the Church, who lived and died here at Christ Church and even more especially those who have died since last All Saints Day - Frank Benedict, Gwendolynn Brenneman, Helen Dressler, Trudie Hare, Jim Quickel, Leona Rehmeyer, John Reier, Jean Spangler, The Rev'd Fred Weiser, Mildred Wilt, Philip Witman, Phyllis Wolf. These saints sought to live lives of faithfulness to God in worship, in prayer and in godly living. They were not perfect of course. They had their share of the tensions of living with others and all the normal difficulties and uncertainties of life, coping as they did with their own personal problems and weaknesses. But no matter how great their difficulties and their faults, they knew in the depths of their being that God loved them and they relied upon that love more than anything else. For that faithfulness we honor them this day as children of God and saints of the Lord forever.

Celebrating these saints, giving thanks to God for their lives among us and rejoicing in the light of this day which shines as a beacon of brightness in a darkening world, we nevertheless acknowledge that there is also sadness, tears and sorrow here today. For those whom we have loved, honored and cherished have left this life, left this earth and this Church militant to enter into that other part of the Church we call the Church Triumphant. We have missed them and will miss them still, for there is always pain at such passing. Martha and Mary knew that pain only too well at the death of their own brother Lazarus. In pain and in despair they come to Jesus hoping that He would comfort them in their time of distress. But Jesus offers them more than comfort, more even than simply words of hope and promise. Instead Jesus raises up the one who has been dead four days, so that Lazarus emerges from the tomb still bound from head to foot in his wrappings. In this resurrection a new day dawns; a new hope is born; a new promise is given. For now the brightness begins to shine in this darkened world, a brightness that not even the darkness of death can overcome. For in raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus gives a sign of the new and eternal life promised to all His saints that will come, in due time, from His own death and resurrection, when all the dead shall have life in Him.  

Today, on this All Saints Day, we stand with Martha and Mary between the death of our loved ones and their raising up on that great day of resurrection when all the dead shall be raised imperishable and we shall be changed. We grieve their loss yet we entrust them to God confident that they now rest in the presence of Jesus the Christ. And we are even more confident that on that great day this same Jesus, who through His own death and the promise of His resurrection has defeated death forever and given us the promise of eternal life in Him, will raise up all His saints and gather them around His heavenly throne so that they might sing their songs of praise before Him forever. We cherish this day for it calls us to celebrate with thankfulness the lives of our faithful departed, those saints of the Church who so generously shared their faith with us, their lives with us and who now rest with Christ. For them we give thanks to God with grateful hearts always living in the hope and faith that one day we too will be called to join with them in the great victory song of praise around the throne of God.

 For while indeed we celebrate the lives of those departed saints of God the story of this All Saints Day does not stop there. After all we know that a saint is not limited to those who are dead but rather it includes all those who are holy in the sight of God. All Saints Day is not simply about those who lives were especially great or wonderful or magnificent or indeed even those who are dead. Rather on this day we celebrate what we call the “communion of saints” that is those who have gone before us but also those of us gathered here now and those who will come after us. We are all saints of God, made holy in our baptisms. And because we are such saints we are part of that great communion of saints bound together through our baptisms in that Body of Christ we call the Church.  

It is our baptism which makes us a saint, makes us holy. That is why we will shortly renew our baptismal vows, to remind us of that act which made us holy, not through our own merits but through the grace of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord. In that baptism we are joined with all our sisters and brothers who have come to the font before us and who now rest with Christ as indeed we will join with all those who will come after us in this place. Together we are all joined together in that great communion of saints, the Church militant of which we are a part and the Church triumphant of which they are a part, joined together in the one mystical body of Christ. That’s what we meant when we sang stanza 4 of our entrance hymn. Listen again “O blest communion, fellowship divine; we feebly struggle, they in glory shine; Yet all are one within your great design, Alleluia.” We are one – one in baptism, one in faith, one in Our Lord, one in Christ, one in Church, one around the throne of God. We, the saints of the Church past, present and even future are made into a living reality called the communion of saints, gathered together into the one body of Christ. And make no mistake about it, that body of the Church militant and the Church triumphant will become even more a living reality when we gather around this table in a short while. The saints who have gone are now blessed to be gazing upon the very face of Christ Himself. But we, we who walk as yet by faith and not by sight, we gather at this table where through our eating and our drinking the Body and Blood of Christ, we will find ourselves united with Christ and with all those saints who have gone before us. And then it is that our voices will join with those of the whole host of heaven into one glorious hymn of praise and together we will feast upon the very Lamb of God who reigns supreme, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords until the whole world is gathered there before the throne to celebrate the joyous victory of our God.

These November days may now speak to us of a deepening darkness and the death of winter yet to come. And on this day of days we will remember with sadness and even some pain those who have died and gone before us. But our baptismal promises which we will shortly renew remind us that death is not the end but only the beginning and that our hope is not in vain as Martha and Mary came to understand. For now Christ has come and in His coming has brought new life. Indeed Jesus says that He has not come to talk about the resurrection but rather that He is the resurrection and new life and that those who believe in Him will not perish but have eternal life. So today we celebrate the lives of Frank Benedict, Gwendolynn Brenneman, Helen Dressler, Trudie Hare, Jim Quickel, Leona Rehmeyer, John Reier, Jean Spangler, The Rev'd Fred Weiser, Mildred Wilt, Philip Witman, Phyllis Wolf those saints who have gone before us. But we also celebrate the lives of those other saints still among us who have been washed in the waters of baptism, making them holy, making them saints of God. And as the saints we raise our voices, joining them with the great communion of saints of every time and every age, to sing praises to our God for ever and ever until that great and glorious day when from every land and nation the saints shall be gathered into that eternal kingdom where death shall be no more, crying and pain shall be no more for the old things will have passed away and a new day, with eternal brightness will dawn for all eternity. Amen