Celebrating All Saints’ Day in church is a beautiful chaos; a messy day of searching, hoping, that we too are good.
All Saints and our holy witness
All Saints | Luke 6:20-31
This is the theologically messiest Sunday of the church year.
Now, you might be thinking: What about Trinity Sunday?
And you’d be right to bring that one up.
The old joke is that Trinity Sunday is the day in which the greatest amount of heresy is preached. Which is only funny to nerds like me because we know the trinity is kind of impossible to preach on. Which is also why, in all the big churches, the rector has someone else preach that day.
It is hard to preach about a paradox of God being three and one at the same time: always being three and always being one and yet also never not being three or one. Come on! Nothing makes that make sense.
So why is this Sunday worse than Heresy Sunday?
It’s not. It’s our messiest Sunday. And messy isn’t bad. It’s more like looking at a gallery full of realism and here’s an abstract painting. None of the lines are clean. Our intentions are fuzzy and what we like about it…can be unexplainable.
So let’s talk about the mess.
First: the day.
Today is not All Saints’ Day. That was Tuesday. Today is the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost. But we’re observing All Saints’ Day today.
This is the only big Feast with which we can do that.
Easter, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday always land on Sundays. Ascension Day always lands on a Thursday. And Christmas Day, Epiphany, and All Saints’ Day have calendar dates: December 25, January 6, and November 1, respectively.
In every other aspect of the church calendar, we bind our practice to the calendar, but that first Sunday in November comes along and we go Nope! Whatever you are, not today!
It is hard to oversell how weird it is to be barred from doing this every other time (with one exception). But All Saints comes along and we’re like, Nah, you’re OK. It’s like we’re waiting in line to get into the big club and the bouncer lets a couple people in who weren’t on the list. Wait a minute! What’s going on here?
The exception for All Saints’ doesn’t even make sense. The Epiphany is a bigger deal. But we’re like, NO! Come back in a snowstorm to a midweek service at night on January 6th!
So the day is one problem.
Second: What are we celebrating?
Most of us are celebrating All Saints’ Day liturgy with an All the Faithful Departed theology. Which is really…messy.
Let’s break it down.
For centuries, the church has observed a sort of fall Triduum on October 31st, and the first two days of November
With All Hallow’s Eve, the faithful prepare for the hallowing of the saints by mocking death itself. We laugh at the ghouls and ghosts knowing that no evil in this world will ever have the last word.
Then we gather for All Saints’ Day, to honor the brightest lights, who gave their lives as a witness to the glory of God.
We then conclude our three-day celebration with All Souls’ Day. When we remember everyone else.
The distinction between All Saints and All Souls is important. One allows us to focus on who we aspire to be. And in the other, we remember all who came before. These two offer different ways to see the grace of God. In our midst and in the cosmos.
All Souls’ Day is not considered a major feast in The Episcopal Church, and in recent times, it went through a name change. The church refers to this as The Commemoration of All Faithful Departed. Which is even more problematic for those of us with loved ones who were, let’s just say…less than faithful.
So what are we doing here?
We’re gathering on November 6th to celebrate the saints — the Great Cloud of Witnesses — all those saints like Stephen, Jackson Kemper, and King Kamehameha and Queen Emma. And we’re hoping that our loved ones are counted among them.
We didn’t do that last part about our loved ones in my church growing up, but every Episcopal Church I’ve been a part of since does. We think of All Saints as the day we remember people we love.
It feels a bit like:
Yeah yeah yeah, saints. We get it. They’re so perfect. But let me tell you about my Grandma. Now she’s a real saint!
And I get it. In every way that matters to me, my Grandma was a saint. And the hundreds of people she directly helped would agree. I’m not just saying that because she’s my grandma. She has all the hallmarks: deep devotion, servant’s heart, tremendous personal sacrifice, and people who witnessed Christ working through her.
This day in which the church invites us to reflect on the witness of so many who have done so much, it is hard not to think of our loved ones in the same way.
So what do we do with this messiest of holy days? This day we celebrate on the wrong day, focusing on the wrong people, ultimately trying to communicate something bigger about God than our tradition allows.
Our church is trying to say something. And because tradition takes so long to develop, we aren’t entirely sure what it is we’re moving toward. But I think there’s a glimpse of it that we all know.
Good Morning, Saints!
When the bishop visits us, she always says “Good morning, Saints!” She calls us saints. Not because a committee can prove we’ve performed miracles or because the General Convention puts a day on the calendar to commemorate each of us.
Every saint is named a saint by the living. And if the Bishop thinks we are saints, then who are we to argue?
She is affirmatively naming us saints because she knows we have God’s imprint on us. And we have all we need to be saints for one another. We are a witness to her.
And when Jesus invites us into loving, doing good, blessing, and praying, he’s saying that we are the blessing of the world. When we refuse to do the evil done to us and affirmatively replace that with good, we are the antidote to the evils of the world.
We don’t just break the cycle. Or stoop to their level. Whatever language we put on not being the bad guy.
We make the world closer to God’s dream for it.
That is saintly work.
Disciples, Apostles, Saints
In the gospel of Luke, Jesus will send his disciples out into the world, calling them apostles.
Disciples are students. Apostles are practitioners. They remain students as they also become practitioners. And eventually, we name all of those same people saints.
Perhaps we are ultimately to share that same trajectory and identity. Students, practitioners, witnesses. Disciples, Apostles, Saints.
All of it. All of us. Making a holy mess on this holy day. With compassion, hope, mercy, grace, and love. This: whatever we need to call what this is: let it be an act of love and devotion. Pray that we be filled with Christ’s love. And may we be a visible sign to a world so desperate for such grace and good news.