RCL All Saints A
5 November 2023
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
I sing a song of the saints of God
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green:
They were all of them saints of God – and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.
The Hymnal 1940
One of the prevailing myths of the Anglican Communion is that you can anywhere in the Communion and pray the same prayers and sing the same hymns. Like most myths there is an element of truth in this, but there are also significant differences between the Anglican churches throughout the world. Sometimes the changes are subtle – a prayer worded slightly differently, a different tune to a familiar hymn. But then there are moments when one realizes that they are not at home.
I ran into this my first All Saints in Canada in 1987. I was preparing the order of service for the Chapel of the Epiphany at Vancouver School of Theology and began looking for a hymn or two to be sung. I was still becoming familiar with the ‘Red Book’, the 1971 hymnal of the Anglican and United Churches, but thus far I hadn’t run into any challenges. But that day I did. One of my favourite hymns was missing. I looked in the 1938 ‘Blue Book’ and my hymn wasn’t there either. What was wrong with these people? Surely they wouldn’t have omitted ‘my’ hymn.
When I began asking around, it turned out that no one other than one or two other Americans at VST knew the hymn. We were hooped and my All Saints celebration wasn’t all that I had hoped it would be.
What I love about this hymn is its sound theology. In his letters to the early Christian churches in Asia and Greece, Paul uses the word thirty-nine times to describe the disciples of Jesus, the followers of the Way.
They loved their Lord so dear, so dead,
And his love made them strong,
And they followed the right, for Jesus’ sake,
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
And there’s not any reason – no, not the least –
Why I shouldn’t be one too.
We tend to think of saints in romantic and sometimes sickly sweet ways. For example, Saint Francis whose icon we have in the Chapel is often described in ways that I call ‘ah-full’. Saint Francis loved animals – ah, isn’t that sweet! Saint Francis lived in holy poverty – ah, isn’t that inspiring! But Saint Francis was more than a sweet and gentle soul. He had a passion for the poor and gave up all his wealth to serve God. When the crusaders invaded the Holy Land, Saint Francis travelled unprotected in the hopes of having an opportunity to preach the good news to the leaders of the Muslim kingdoms. There was a frame of spiritual steel that was clothed by Francis’ simple habit.
When I think about it, the proper way to talk about what it means to follow Jesus as the way, the truth and the life is a life-long commitment to ‘becoming’ a saint. This is what the writer of the 1st Letter of John has in mind when he addresses a group of early Christians who were not, to be truthful, a community at peace with one another and with God. They were divided by competing understandings of who Jesus was and what was necessary to be faithful to him. Some thought of themselves as ‘perfect’ and more knowledgeable than others. But the writer, in five simple sentences, states what I believe to be our destination as followers of Jesus.
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. (1 John 3.1-3 NRSVue)
Friends, we are God’s children now, but what we will be is being revealed, day by day, choice by choice, prayer by prayer. We are a ‘holy’ people, holy not because of some intrinsic sanctity that evades other people, but holy because we are following the right for Jesus’ sake.
And God has shown us what is right. It is right to do all we can to ensure that every human being is treated with dignity and respect and that we work to remove any and every obstacle that prevents any child or any adult from becoming more Christ-like in their lives.
It is right to love faithfully, to love as Christ loves when he reaches out to those who may believe themselves to be unlovable, when he touches people’s physical, spiritual and emotional hurts, when he continues to love even when that love is not reciprocated.
It is right to live with humility in a world where humility seems to be in scarce supply. Humility makes room for others to use their gifts, leaving us in the wings. Humility means accepting limitations on our use of the gifts of this fragile earth, our island home. Humility acknowledges that I cannot be fully myself unless you are free to be who you are without fear or favour.
Today we celebrate all the saints of God, those whose names are known and remembered through the ages, those whose names are known only to ourselves, their families and their friends, those whose names are our own. Today we sing a song of the saints of God, past, present and future. Today we sing a song about the persons to our right and to our left, in front of us and behind us.
They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still,
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus’ will.
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.
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