Worshipping with the Saints

Luke 6.20-36
 

I only returned home last night from being in Orange where I assisted a really helpful and sincere Catholic priest conduct the funeral of a very close long-time Vietnam veteran pilot friend of mine. As with all funerals, this event achieved the aim of making it quite clear that, in this life, I won’t see my good mate Ken again. The funeral of Judy Scotcher was held in this building last Monday and it’s not long since our Parish celebrated the life of Sylvia Hannah. Funerals are reminders for us of the reality that life in this world ends. Funerals raise our hope for the life to come.

Today we are pretending that it is 1st November. We are celebrating the feast of All Saints and we remember the song “O, when the Saints go marching in … I want to be in that number”. 

At All Saints we give thanks and praise to God for giving the world the lives of the Saints that we remember. All the outstanding saints of history. But that’s not all; we praise God for the lives of the Saints around us right now and we praise God for Saints yet to come. We ask God for continued strength and focus that we too will really be in that number when the Saints go marching in.

There’s a part of this festival of All Saints that has us looking back and celebrating the remarkable things we know about God’s Saints; the blessings brought about by their lives. Unfortunately, we have let commercialisation cloud our thankfulness for saintly lives. There is smart advertising in our big chain stores and Halloween things being sold in most smaller shops. We have let our indifference to rejoicing in the Saints reduce this great celebration into kids dress ups and extorting big bags of lollies from anyone nice enough to open up their front door.

Well, this festival of All Saints isn’t just a smart marketing event by the Church. Saints are a reality! Not just the “big” saints we associate with the Roman Catholics such as St Francis and St Augustine. There hasn’t always been an emphasis on these big Saints with huge amounts of energy and time going into the process of declaring that someone such as Mary McKillop is our own special Australian official or canonised Saint.

The first Canonised saint was declared only just a little over a thousand years ago in AD  993. There are about 800 canonised Saints but also about 10,000 others; many who have died for their faith. There are 110 “martyred Saints” of China, 103 of Korea and 117 of Vietnam. Hundreds of Japanese Saints are remembered in Nagasaki who were persecuted and killed well before the atomic bomb. There are Mexican, Spanish, and French Revolutionary Saints and Saints who were missionaries in New Guinea.

For the Protestant Church, Saints are all those in heaven; anyone who is a Christian. Protestants generally think that Saints are everyone who belongs to the church (and other people too if they show an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness to God). Put simply, Saints are Holy people who are living now or have died but are remembered.

So, All Saints is a special celebration day for all Christians. This day reminds us that, when we come to a service at St Barts, our worship includes more than the people that we can physically see around us here. We are connected with people all over the world who are saying or singing “Holy, Holy, Holy, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory”. 

It’s not just us here in Alstonville praising God. We are joined in spirit with people in millions of communities all around the country. All over the world!   

In the same way that some families are very close, even though they live in different towns and different countries, in our worship the Saints help us to feel close to the wider church. We celebrate that there are Saints in Lismore Parish and Murwillumbah Parish and in New Zealand, and in Switzerland. There are Saints right now trying to keep safe in Ukraine and Afghanistan and Lebanon and other dangerous places all around the world.

We celebrate this morning with the saints in the Baptist Church and the Uniting Church and Hillsong Church and the Roman Catholic church; Saints all around the world and even Saints above the earth. While Neil Armstrong took man’s first step on the Moon, ‘Buzz’ Aldrin (who was the pilot of the Lunar Module) took communion before he went down the ladder to be the second man to step foot on the Moon. The Presbyterian church that Buzz Aldrin attends still celebrates his communion service on the Moon every July. They still have the chalice that Buzz used on the moon. More recently, in 2017, a relic of St Serafim of Sarnov (a Russian Orthodox saint) was taken aboard the International Space Station by Russian cosmonaut Sergei Ryzhikov.

Not only are there “present-day” Saints in all Parishes and Denominations, but also in the Church throughout all time; the white robed army we remember. There is a multitude of Saints; “the communion of Saints” They are not just the ones we know and remember, but all the faithful departed. And we celebrate with all the Saints still to come.

Faith in Jesus draws us all together: “with all the company of heaven we praise your name!”

So why does our Lectionary ask us to hear this long reading from Luke (should I say Saint Luke) chapter 6 this morning? This message, that we know as the sermon on the plain, from Luke isn’t an easy lesson to take in.

Jesus says the poor and the hungry and people who weep are blessed (that is happy or joyful). And we are blessed if people hate you and exclude you and revile you because you follow Jesus. Jesus says we should leap for joy about that because our reward is great in heaven. What Jesus is saying is that you don’t have a truly blessed life from getting things or owning things or doing things. We will have a blessed life from being a person with a godlike character (a Saint).

This teaching from Jesus wasn’t just for the people he was talking to back then. This is very applicable to our lives today. It’s describing the kind of Godly character we should have as believers in this world. To be gentle, to mourn, to be merciful, to thirst for what is right, to be a peacemaker is a sign of the presence of God in our lives.

What Jesus did was to focus on attitudes. Our attitude toward circumstances, people, ourselves and God. Jesus wants us to see that we have a choice. We can choose either present gratification or future blessings. It’s our decision! Either short term satisfaction or long term blessing.

In this teaching, Jesus describes four “woes”. These woes all share a common truth. You take what you want from life and you pay for it. If you want wealth, fullness, laughter and popularity, you can have it but there is a price to pay: that is all you will get! Jesus didn’t say that these things were wrong. He said that being satisfied with them is its own judgement.

This lesson isn’t for us as individuals. All the “yous” here are plural. In Aussie language it is “youse”. Jesus is speaking to the disciples as an assembly, a group. Jesus teaches all his people as a church.

As you enter Winchester cathedral in England, a sign says “you are entering a conversation that began long before you were born and will continue long after you’re dead.” To be a Christian partly means that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We don’t have to make up this faith as we go along in our lives. The saints will teach us, if we will listen.

This brings us back to the very point of why we are asked to celebrate All Saints today. We see the love of God in all God’s Saints and we are given hope because of the lives that they have lived. We see the wonder of God in all God’s Saints and we are able to learn because of them. We see the beauty of God in all God’s Saints and we are able to be better Christians as we follow their examples.

As we get ready “to join that number as we all go marching in”!