All Saints

Ephesians 1: 11-23

Good morning and grace and peace to you on this All Saints Sunday.  Thanks always to Peter Luley, to members of our Choir and Orchestra, to Tom Octave—so great to have you with us again.  

With the calendar of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer the profile of All Saints Day was significantly advanced from the general practice the Anglican world.  Not simply a “red letter day” on the calendar with a set of propers of its own, as has always been the case in our BCP tradition--but a day that is now moved to the next Sunday and given the status of a Major Feast.  

Of course here at St. Andrew’s for a number of years a special day not only because of the meaningful memorial of our loved ones, but also because for a number of years now we have made the day the centerpiece of our Music Festival.  Mozart this morning, and looking ahead later to Thursday evening and the orchestral and choral offering of the Faure Requiem in a service of Holy Communion observing All Souls Day.  A plug for that evening, and “please tell your friends!”  Exceptionally beautiful and meaningful, and with thanks to all who make it possible through the Music Guild and the Friends of Music, who are acknowledged in the leaflet this morning—and may their tribe increase!  Enriching our Christian life and worship in so many deep and substantial ways always.

These readings from scripture appointed for All Saints in Year C of our new Revised Common Lectionary are fascinating, and it was fun to talk them over at our midweek Bible Study Wednesday morning.  Daniel’s great vision, as the roaring winds of heaven swoop down and the great beasts explode from the depths of the sea, and then the promise of the coming of four “Kings,” perhaps a foreshadowing of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the sixth chapter of the Revelation to St. John--and into the subsequent cosmic drama this grand conclusion, “the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—for ever and ever.”  Wow. 

No reading from the Revelation directly in the lectionary this year, but to hear again that passage following from the 7^th chapter: After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb.’  We remember our loved ones in our prayers today, and around us always the witness and reminders of the “Capital S” Saints and heroes of the faith over all generations.  But to emphasize that this is a day not about the past, but about who we are now, about our hope, and about the future, about a destiny that we share in Christ Jesus, who was, and who is, and who is to come.  Not only about who they were but about who we are, and about what he will make of us.  Who says, 21^st chapter of the Revelation:  Behold, I make all things new.

So blessings on this Sunday of All the Saints, and I want to pause for one moment before the Mozart Credo this morning for this passage from the Letter to the Ephesians, to hear again and underline from St. Paul, the first chapter, verses 15-19.  The congregation of this small city of Ephesus in Asia Minor, modern Turkey, so dear to Paul. As we read in Acts chapters 18 and 19 of his first days there, to witness and so slowly and in the midst of serious opposition to share the gospel and to gather the first members of a new Christian community.  And after he left and for years later his continuing pastoral care and love for them.

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.  I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 

What we learned in those chapters of Acts was that ancient Ephesus was a center of cultic worship of the Greek goddess Artemis Diana, a site for religious pilgrimages for devotees who would come from far and wide to visit a shrine and believing themselves to receive a kind of special supernatural blessing—and that one of the major industries of the area was the production of religious souvenirs and good luck charms for these pilgrims to take home with them.   The folks who maintained these shrines and businesses were greatly opposed to the new Christian fellowship and began to mount an active and apparently even violent opposition.

Easy to be discouraged.  There is the first morning of faith, the freshness of a new awareness of who Christ is and of what he has done for us.  The first Good Friday afternoon to stand in awe and wonder, repentance, conversion of life, in the shadow of the Cross.  The first Easter morning, to stand before the empty tomb.  The joy of the First Morning of the World.  But then to sustain this from day to day.  In the flat and ordinary times.  Susy Robison’s old friend, the Buddhist writer Jack Kornfield, has a book, “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.”  Or as for the Ephesians, even harder times.  Opposition and persecution.  Never unknown to Christian people in any generation, and in places especially like Syria and Iraq and Pakistan even today.  Hard times.  To be held in faith.  To open ourselves, our minds, our souls, our bodies, make ourselves vulnerable, to give up our insistence on our own shape, so that we might be refashioned in his image.  To step off the old path, and to follow him in a new way.  To seek with all our heart and all our strength to live and die as Christians.  To have heard the gospel reading this morning from Luke.  Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  

And that a part of the story, as we each of us would struggle in our own way of what Bonhoeffer called a “costly discipleship.”  Seeing inspiration where the Spirit meets us in Scripture, in the common inheritance of those who have walked this Way before us.  To live and die in him, as Christians.  When there is opposition.   Or perhaps simply to live in a world that so often makes another way easier.  Hate your enemies, bless your friends, get even with those who abuse you.  Be the center of your own universe.  The one who dies with the most toys, wins.  It might have been in Ephesus, and it is easy to be discouraged.  But hold on, friends, to what is true.  Paul to the Christian friends of Ephesus, and to us here on this All Saints Sunday.  Don’t be discouraged.  Don’t let it defeat you.  Hold on to what is true.  Holding on as you have already begun to do so beautifully, to him, and to him alone.

So to emphasize a day not about the past, but about today, about the future, about the destiny  we share in Christ Jesus with Christians of every time and place, who was, and who is, and who is to come.  We have been called in this deep mystery to give ourselves as a part of his future, his hope, his promise and intention.  To be of his goodness, of his power.  To be made a blessing, to be built up into his new body.  

And this day, which is simply a reminder that as his new world dawns, every day is All Saints Day.  So not only about who they were, all our saints, but about who we are, and about what he will make of us. “You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea, for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.  I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.