All Saints Day, Year A, 2014 – Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12
“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.”
My mother used to sing this hymn to us, my brothers and me, when we were little, and so every All Saints Day I think of it, and hear her voice.
It is a children’s hymn, so it says simply something quite startling—we can all be saints. This is our day, the people’s feast, the feast-day of all the baptized.
“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.”
They were all of them saints, and we rejoice in their company. Those who have gone before—grandmother, father, sister, friend; the irascible, courageous priest I knew, who was quite certainly a prophet. They go before us like a bright cloud, their love of God leading us on. They come after us, our children, teenagers; these young faces full of hope, this child who comes today to be baptized. Matthew: a good name, name of a saint, an ordinary man—not even a very good man; a tax collector—who met Jesus and found his life changed.
We can all be saints.
But it does not follow that we all are, or that we are…yet, entirely.
And so we have the Saints to help us. For we celebrate on this day too the extraordinary saints, the ones who stand out, Matthew and Peter, James and John, martyrs all, more than ordinary witnesses to Christ.
From the New Testament reading for this Sunday: After this I saw, and behold! a great throng, which no one could number, from every tribe and race and people and tongue standing before the throne and before the lamb, clothed in white robes and palm branches in their hands. [And they cried out with a loud voice saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”] “Who are these, robed in white?” the angel asks…and answers, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
These are the Saints, who have followed Jesus all the way.
We look today to the Saints with a capital S, so that we may have courage to follow. So that we may have hope—because saints are signs. In them the veil between earth and heaven, between the world as it is and the world as we long for it to be, is torn, and we see hope fulfilled. We see the reign of God walking abroad on the earth.
Take St. Francis, for example. Francesco, who is such a wonderful saint because, in part, he started out just like us. Francis from a small town in Umbria in the late 12th century, who was a romantic and wanna-be hero. He was the life of the party; he had a rich Dad; he dreamed of becoming a knight. He set off one day decked out in the best suit of armour money could buy, on the best horse, given a royal send-off by the whole town, and rode back that night to general bewilderment and his father’s deep chagrin.
Francis had heard a voice: “Go home,” the voice said to him in his dream. “This is not the way. Go home, and I will show you what to do.”
Francis heard a voice from God, and had the courage to listen. The road was neither easy nor clear; it was months and years before he knew what God was calling him to do and to be.
You know the story, how he heard finally another voice, this time from the cross. “Francis, go and repair my church; you see that it is falling down.” He stole precious cloth from his father for money to rebuild the church; he hid from his father’s wrath for 2 months in a pit in the ground; his father dragged him before the bishop when he eventually emerged, hungry and bedraggled, and demanded his money. And Francis stripped off the clothes on his back and naked in the public square he said, “From now on I intend to serve the Lord.”
Francis started out as a rich young rake, and became the man who gave up everything to follow the Christ. The Little Brothers, Francis and his followers, were not allowed even to touch a coin. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor,” and Francis took Jesus seriously.
Francis is a saint for this day, because in him the veil was torn. In him the Word was very near, on his lips and in his heart, and a few people in a small town called Assisi saw the face of the Christ.
He died young, and it was partly because his life was hard. He had no fur-lined coat in winter [when he walked through the hills from town to town preaching and encouraging the brothers.] He had no money; he often begged for his food. He spent nights and days in prayer up on Mt. Subasio, in a bare stone cell carved out of the mountain, with just the wind blowing through it, and the mystery of God.
Francis prayed there for hours, and he wept. Why are you weeping, Francis, his brothers would ask. Because it is so beautiful, this grace of God. Because it is so dear.
Francis wept for Christ crucified, for the joy of it and the sorrow. That we are so far from the love of God; that such a love was necessary. That such a love is ours. [When I survey the wondrous cross, another old hymn goes: that is what Francis did with his whole life.] Francis looked upon the Christ, and saw there an amazing grace. On the cross, the love of God, sorrow and love together. That this world is so lost and so lovely, that this need be the shape of grace. Sorrow and love flow mingled down, from the face of the Christ. Blessed are those who mourn. This is the shape of the kingdom. In Francis, we see God’s reign.
Francis is just one example. There are innumerable others. (behold! a great throng, which no one could number). But Francis is a particularly good example. For on this feast day, this year, we read the Beatitudes. And Francis lived them. Blessed are the poor in spirit: Francis clothed in burlap—in a bag, for heaven’s sake!—preaching to Pope and Sultan, yes, but also and with great joy to the birds. Francis loving the little ones, every last little one in all creation, because Jesus did. Suffer the children to come unto me; blessed are the humble ones, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, because they look like Christ. Francis went and nursed the lepers and lugged stones over to San Damiano one by one to repair the little church. He saw that hope does not lie in knights and kings, the palaces and strongholds of men, but in a cross and the crucified one. Strange hope that looks like death; strange joy that looks like tears.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Strange power, that gives up all power to announce the reign of God. This is the shape of the kingdom, this death that is life for us, this mourning that is good news, this humility that is the power of God.
Blessed are the poor, the meek, the little ones, because they look like Christ. Blessed are the saints, because they believe this; because they follow. Blessed St. Francis, St. Clare and St. Matthew, who walked away, he from his tax booth, she from her noble family, he from his privilege and parties, and walked into the kingdom of heaven.
The saints announce salvation, the greening of the heart of the world. Creation groans as it awaits its adoption. It groans for the poor and the persecuted, for all those who suffer. It groans for the terrible misuse of power. All creation groans, and the only way to live that is true in this time is to groan with it.
Francis wept for the beauty of the cross. For there God wept with his poor, his glorious creation. There Christ stretched out his arms over all the suffering world, world suffering most when it knows it least; world estranged from God. Jesus wept, for love of the world. Francis wept for the love of God, and found in the Christ his joy. Love broken and most whole, Christ crucified, this saving grace.
The saints make known by the shape of their lives the saving grace of God. They proclaim our hope: blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people persecute you and say all manner of evil about you for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, for now you look like Jesus. Now you look like the saints.
For we are the holy ones, sancti, chosen and called by God. In our baptism we are made Christ’s own, instruments of his peace. (Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.)
You are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified—made right with God—Paul says, in Christ’s death, in your baptism.
We are all called to be saints, and the Beatitudes are our charter. Let us look to Francis, and all the saints, and let us start with this day.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is error, let me sow truth,
And hope where there is despair.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
AMEN.
