Sermon November 1, 2009

All Saints' Day

Isaiah 25:1-9, Psalm 24, Revelation 21:1-6a, John 11: 32-44

All Saints' Day - today! Every year we move All Saints' Day to the nearest Sunday because it's a major feast of the Church. This year we didn't need to move it - it's today.

And there are so many different ways to talk about today. I remember being at a conference at the college of preachers at the National Cathedral back in 1987 - we were all invited to present a sermon to each other. One priest talked about a particular saint in the history of the church. Afterward someone wondered aloud why he didn't talk more generally rather than just about one particular person, and he replied, "Well, I said that last year!"

The particular or the general - which one? Well, probably both! That exchange highlights some of the reality of this day - a reality created at least in part by the dual identity of the Church.

One of those identities is as an institution. Like any other institution - secular or religious - the church has a formal structure, a recognizable hierarchy, rules and regulations, particular forms of dress for its functionaries: an official face. It has official locations with signs where these official representatives can be found. While that official face varies from denomination to denomination "you know it when you see it"!

Within that institution there are official ways of recognizing important institutional people. Some of them are heroes, others are simply good institutional people.

And - I suspect because of how long the Church has had to develop its structures - there are rather odd and arcane ways of identifying who's who. Some of those officially designated folk - "saints" - are folk we would obviously identity as wonderful, great, important people: Francis of Assisi always comes to mind. Others might leave us cold, such as King Charles the First of England (at least, Charles leaves me cold!).

And there are others who have been intentionally excluded by some religious institutions who - we would think - should have been included. For instance, William Tyndale, the first person to translate the bible into English - a translation which forms 80% of the King James Bible translation - is not a saint. Even though he died a martyr because of his insistence that ordinary people should be able to read the bible in their own tongue. "Why isn't he officially a saint?" you might ask. Well, it was the church that killed him! So you could hardly expect that same institution to validate his work!

So these are the institutional saints - official 'good or important institutional people'. These official saints tend to show up in stained glass windows, or have local religious outlets (churches) named after them.

What about that other identity I mentioned? Well, that's the biblical identity, the one Jesus talked about - the one St. Paul talked about.

You'll notice, if you look, that Jesus never talked about the coming of the Church. He only talked about the coming of the Reign of God, the kingdom or commonwealth of God. I would imagine he'd be quite surprised to find out what actually emerged! His vision was of a community of compassion and love that focused on a servant ministry to the poor and excluded. I'm sure he'd be disappointed with the way many things have turned out - such as the vast wealth in some parts of the Church, locked away in vaults, while homeless people sleep on the street outside.

Paul does talk about the Church. But he doesn't talk much about Church as institution, except when he was telling various communities how they were screwing up their common life by becoming one.

Somehow, Paul said, in some mystical way, the gathered community of believers were more than a budding institution. They were more than just a group of people who got together on a particular day to worship God. hey were something alive - an organism, a body. And not just any body either. What Paul said was that this new community was a particular body: the Body of Christ. This language is not new to most of us - which in some ways is a shame, because we tend to take it for granted, and not really listen to what Paul was actually saying.

In baptism, he said, we die; we are buried. But we do not die alone, and we are not buried alone. In baptism we die with Christ; in death we are buried with Christ. We are dead to old ways of living, to traditional ways of living, to the way most people live, to the usual standards and expectations of our culture and society. We shed all of that the moment we go down into the waters of baptism. Of course, we've forgotten most of this, if we ever knew it in the first place! Most of us were baptized as infants, we were denied the decision, and the power of the experience.

It doesn't end with death and burial, Paul continues. In baptism we die with Christ, and we are buried with Christ, so that we might also be raised with Christ. In baptism we become a part of Christ's risen body.

There is, he continued, a particular calling that comes with that sort of baptism - because there were other sorts of baptism common in the ancient world. If we are the Body of Christ we dishonor ourselves if we live in an un-Christlike way, and we dishonor Christ too. We are accepting, in baptism, a different way of living, a special way. Paul used a specific Greek word for that way of living: "(h)agios" - we are called to be "(h)agios". He said that again and again, and he mostly said it in his opening greeting to all of the Christian Communities he wrote to. Sometimes it took him a few verses to get to it, but he always did, whether the community was doing what he wanted or not. In his letter to the Church in Rome, for instance, he doesn't get to it until Chapter 1 verse 7: " To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be (h)agios"

That word - "(h)agios", is most accurately translated as "holy". Everyone baptized into Christ, Paul says, is called to be holy. However, it gets translated with a different word in almost every New Testament translation out there. What word, do you suppose, is used to translate "(h)agios"?

Saints.

In baptism we are all incorporated into the Body of Christ; we are all called to be saints, to live lives that reflect our calling, that honor our calling and the one who called us. To live as Christ in the world, because we are Christ in the world.

That means being a Christian isn't a "Sunday thing", it's an everyday thing, it's a 60 seconds every minute, sixty minutes every hour, 24 hours every day thing - after all, when can you put your baptism aside? When can you "take off Christ" (to reverse Paul's comment about "putting on Christ)?

Wouldn't the world be different if every person who has emerged from the waters of baptism lived a Christ-like life?

I wonder what this place would be like if we all held in front of our faces the remembrance of our baptisms and saw in each person we met the face of Christ?

Welcome to All Saints' Day! A day that demands a great deal more of us than simply rejoicing in those who have gone before. Those demands are underscored in what we now do: renew our baptismal vows. For the waters of death and life have been poured over us, and we have been raised with Christ, and given a new name: "(h)agios. Saint.

We are different people now.   Amen.