Liturgy Pacific: A Letter for Eleanor (All Saints Sunday, 4 November 2018)

Saturday, November 3, 2018

A Letter for Eleanor (All Saints Sunday, 4 November 2018)

This Sunday we're baptizing Eleanor at Holy Trinity Cathedral. For the past seven years I have written a letter to the person being baptized, especially when it's a child, in the hope that the child's family will read it to her or him in a few years' time.

Here's my letter for Eleanor.

4 November 2018

Dear Eleanor,

I am writing this letter to you because, in a few years, you may want to ask some questions about your baptism and what it means to be a Christian. These are good questions to ask and I thought that writing a few things down for you will be helpful when that day comes.

You are being baptized on one of the very special days of the Christian year, a day we call All Saints Day. During the year Christians remember many of the people who have been followers of Jesus ever since he lived among us and showed us the way to love God and to love one another. We call these people ‘saints’, a word that means ‘holy ones’. Some of them are famous and are known both by Christians and by non-Christians. Others are remembered only by Christians and many are only remembered by some but not all Christians.

Because there are so many people to remember who have followed Jesus and who have helped other people follow in Jesus’ way, we long ago decided to have one day when we celebrated all the saints, known and unknown, famous and not so famous, important to everyone and important only to some.

All Saints is one of the days during the year when our church family, the Anglican Church, sets aside as a good day for baptisms. You might wonder why. After all, how do we know that you’ll be a ‘saint’? Well, Eleanor, I’ll tell you a secret that many people don’t know, including some Christians. Anyone who follows Jesus, no matter how young or old, no matter how well known or not so well known, are saints. We are all God’s holy ones because we are all trying, as best as we can, to love God and to love one another.

Today, in your baptism, we are saying to the whole world, ‘Here is Eleanor, a saint of God, a holy one who can show you how to follow the way of Jesus.’ Being a saint is something we work at being for our whole lives. Sometimes we’re really good at it and sometimes we know that we’re not at our best. But what makes us saints is that we keep working at following the way of Jesus

by serving the world God created and gave into our care;
by gathering with Christians to pray, to share in the bread and wine and to listen to what the Bible is saying to us today;
by sharing with other people what we know about God and God’s ways;
by learning as much as we can about God’s ways, and
by caring for others when they are in any need or trouble.

I also need to tell you that being a Christian is not always easy. It’s not easy because God has given us a job to do. Our job is to work with God to make a new world possible, not only for us but for everybody.

I know some Christians who may walk for two or more hours on a Sunday to join other Christians for prayer. As they walk, they sing a walking song:

We have another world in view, in view,