All Saints Day Yr A

Twenty-three years ago on this day, our son Tom was baptized, and twenty-one years ago on this day our son Willie was baptized. All Saints Day is my most favorite church day, next to the Easter Vigil. I love it because in word and sacrament on this day, we are so clearly part of something beyond ourselves, we are part of a communion and a community that shows forth God's amazing and abundant love. We tell a story in which we are active participants and that connects us to all those who came before us, and to all those who will come after us.


It is important to be active participants in this story, it is important to tell the story, and it is important to shape the story as it moves into this young 21st century. That's what we, as saints, as part of the communion of saints, do. In the New Testament, the word “saints” is used to describe the entire membership of the Christian community, and in the collect we read for All Saints Day the word “elect” is used in a similar sense. Our problem with the word "saints", is that from very early times, “saint” came to be applied primarily to persons of heroic sanctity, whose deeds were recalled with gratitude by later generations.


But we use “saints” today in the former sense, to describe the entire membership of the Christian community. This day we are intentionally connected to all those who have come before us, all those who are here today, and all those who will come after us. Today we stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder as we remember the stories of our people, and we look toward those stories to show us the way of this life of discipleship. We are shaped by these stories, and who we are and what we do in these days, shapes the world around us. Who we are and what we do makes a difference here today, and each day makes a difference. Those we baptized here today enter into this story with us, and make a difference to the communion of saints.


These people we have called upon today lived or live lives that attest to the Beatitudes, the passage we heard from Matthew. Their stories attest to the struggle to live lives that have been formed and informed by Scripture. Their stories are part of the bigger story. Our stories attest to the struggle to live lives that are formed and informed by Scripture.


These are stories of creation, of blessing, of sin and our need for forgiveness, of being reconciled, of dying and rising to something absolutely new and different. As we tell our stories we reflect on our own suffering and joy, we realize that we are participants in the story of God with us. Our stories tell of our relationships with one another, our relationships with God, our relationships to those who came before us, and our relationships with those who will follow us.


The importance of telling our stories is two fold. First, so that we can find our place in the story of God in our midst, and second, so that we can find our place in history, we can see how we are related to one another and to the world; so we can see how all of us have been given a gift of relationship, and how with that gift is a responsibility to care for one another and to care for the created order, and to care for ourselves.


It is responding to that gift that makes us participants in creation, and as participants, we are not perfect. That's why it's unfortunate that word "saint" has taken on a meaning that connotes perfection, or heroism. There is nowhere I can find in the bible that God has required any one of us to be perfect, but time and time again I find where God has required us to respond to what life throws at us with mercy and compassion, born out of our suffering and sadness.


And it is on this most appropriate of days that we baptize Hannah, Alivia, and Kaitlin. There are four days of the church year on which Holy Baptism is especially appropriate: the Easter Vigil, the Day of Pentecost, this day All Saint’s, and on the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord.


On these days, and at each baptism, we renew our own baptismal vows. We renew our resolve to respond to the gift of Jesus Christ in our midst in ways that form us as disciples.
We renew our commitment to live as saints, as participants in the coming of Christ, as participants in the story of new creation, as participants in the story that Love wins.


On this most festive of days, let us give thanks for the communion of saints, for the saints that have gone on before us, for all who gather here this day and who gather around the world, and for those who will follow us.
Amen