All Saints Sunday 3rd November 2024 at Southwark Cathedral

 When I first landed in parish ministry, I felt rather embarrassed that expediency demanded that we keep All Saints and All Souls alike on one day. It made me sad that I knew we’d not get a congregation of any size if I kept the feasts on their proper dates...but one year I noticed that the readings set for one service could equally well suit its companion, and the penny dropped. All Saints and All Souls are, you see, two sides of the same coin, festivals that belong together, and yes, even on the same Sunday.

 The Creed reminds us “I believe in the Communion of Saints” and that’s a wide term – encompassing both those whom we love but see no longer, and the official representatives of sanctity, revered and canonised by the Church. We all know about the latter category. They come in two gothic varieties, male, with a page-boy haircut, and female with long flowing tresses. Dressed in white, carrying some incongruous object or other – a wheel, a gridiron, a set of keys- they can be recognised above all by their haloes Two-dimensional characters, frozen in perfection, bright in their stained glass shrines… finished products from the beginning of their lives…but honestly, too remote and ethereal to be much use to anyone here today. What do they know of the struggles, hopes and fears we lesser mortals face

No. Stop right there, Kathryn!

That's arrant nonsense.  Really think of some of those whose holiness is celebrated by the Church. I doubt if any of them was sufficiently self-conscious to notice their own holiness at all...would laugh outright to hear themselves described in these terms. They were real...and like us, they struggled constantly with their own shortcomings. Take Peter, founding saint of the church…commissioned by Jesus to be the rock, on which the Church would stand. Peter the impulsive “have a go hero” who dived in where angels fear to tread, and shed blood among the olives in dark Gethsemane. Peter, the frightened, quick to deny his friend and master. Peter, who ran headlong to the tomb but couldn’t believe the evidence of his eyes on the morning of the Resurrection. I very much doubt if he thought himself holy!

Or Mary of Bethany…so emotional that she dared even to lay into Jesus for his neglect of her family. “lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died”, so blinded by her tears that she didn’t recognise her risen Lord until he called her by name. An example and inspiration? Apostle to the apostles? I’m sure she didn’t see it that way.

True saints are absolutely human...and we know that to be human is to carry within us the potential to bless the world by our life choices..There really aren’t two categories of people – those born to outstanding holiness and those heading at speed in the opposite direction. We feebly struggle – but that does not exclude us from coming to shine in glory too.

But how? It’s clearly not a question of donning a mask of false piety...

Thomas Merton wrote

“For me to be a saint means to be myself...Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and discovering my true self”.

In other words, if we live out our vocation to be ourselves, rather than attempting to be unsuccessful imitations of someone who APPEARS to be more holy, then –bingo!. One of the great Rabbis in the Jewish tradition told of imagining himself standing before God on judement day, to be asked not “Why weren’t you Moses? Or Why weren’t you Elijah?” but “Why weren’t you yourself..”

Because, of course, the glory of God is a human being fully alive...and THAT is what makes the saints, saints. They have given glory to God by being fully and wonderfully themselves, and in so doing have enabled God’s light to shine through them. Our calling too.

Here this morning we are celebrating two particular ministries...the Mothers Union who both model and support what it means to live as families in so many different ways...and our choristers, who offer their gifts to lead our worship. Much though I love and admire them, I have to admit I don’t think they’re perfect. But they are saints all the same – because they show us something of God. 

It’s as simple as that.

Think for a moment about your own personal saints. Not those whom we admire because their stories are part of our heritage of faith, but the everyday saints who would blush or guffaw at being described in that way...the friends and family who have loved and prayed for us, encouraged us, inspired us. For me, there’s an elderly couple who used to invite my toddlers to sit with them in church – giving me the space I so badly needed, to worship and to listen to God  There’s godfather whom I saw very seldom, but who, wonderfully, prayed for me each and every day of my life, and whom, together with a much-loved Bishop and mentor, surely continues to pray for me now that he has found his home in heaven. There’s my first director of music, who helped a teenage chorister recognise the beauty of God in the beauty of worship. When I first presided at the Eucharist, the day after my ordination as priest, I was completely bowled over by the overwhelming presence of that heavenly company….MY saints. - the people whom I’d known and loved, who had shaped my journey…and those who had died long before I was born, but whose words or deeds had inspired me. They were all there, standing beside me at the altar – and when I’m properly attentive, they are there still, week on week, singing with us, lending power and life to our song. Pause to listen for their voices yourself, this morning, and be thankful for our everyday saints – shining forever with God's love, just as we too are called to shine.

In the collect for All Saints' Day, we pray:

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord.

The mystical body...All sorts of men, women and children – ALL SOULS who have become All Saints – those whom we have loved long since and lost a while...people dealing with a myriad different issues, facing their own struggles in life and faith – and numbered among the saints not because of their talents or personalities but because of God's action in them and through them

And what is true for them holds good for us too.

Through Jesus' ministry, we have been knit in one communion, one fellowship, one Body of Christ. It is in Jesus that we find our true identity, and our passport to the Communion of Saints.

In other words, "For all the saints ..." is for us – you and me

We are part of one communion of saints with all the heroes of the faith, with our loved ones who have gone before us, with our friends on earth and friends above...In all our doubts and fears, in all our joys and certainties we are not for one moment alone. Together we are part of that great company in whom God's love shines...

I believe in the communion of saints

Flawed, imperfect people. People like us, through whom the Light of the World is content to shine. Ordinary, broken (for we need the cracks to let the light shine through) but transfigured by God's grace and God's glory.

 All are one in Thee, for all are thine.

Alleluia!  Amen. Thanks be to God