(Image) All Saints by Kelly Latimore
Happy Feast of All Saints.
Across many faiths, these days when the night grows longer and the days grow colder are understood as a time of transition, a moment when the veil between life and death wears thin. That word “thin” has been used by the Irish to talk about “thin” places, places where the prayers of the people may have made the divine feel a bit more accessible, places where it is sensed that God has grown close. I have heard Northern New Mexico described as a “thin place.”
If it is fair to talk about thin places, I believe it is fair to talk about “thin time.” The days around All Saints day are a time to remember that those who have died, those who have gone before us in faith are not gone forever. In the language of the prayer book, they are those we love “but see no longer.” We celebrate that the saints are with us, still now, here, especially here.
In a congregation like this one, some of us grew up surrounded by the saints, Saint Francis and San Isidro, Mary and Joseph and the like. Others of us were raised to be suspicious of the saints. So I want to take a moment to talk about the Episcopalian sense of the saints.
Episcopalian Theology of Saints
Like many things Episcopalian, our theology may be best summed up with a hymn; “I sing a song of the saints of God.” The hymn was originally written for kids. Many organists I know have complained about the childish tune, but I know Episcopalians who don’t think we’ve celebrated the day if we haven’t sung this hymn. Did you know there are several alternative versions of the lyrics? My favorite goes like this: “And one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was both, if you know what I mean.” But if you continue, you get to the best theology in the hymn. “The saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”
There’s a deep invitation in the hymn, in the feast of All Saints. The invitation is to consider how a life lived in love and in service of others, prepares us for life after death. Jesus didn’t say much about what happens to us after we die. He promises that in God’s house there are many mansions. In God’s house, as my favorite translation puts it, there is room to spare.
Jesus didn’t come to teach us the way to heaven.
Jesus came to remake the world in which we live. Jesus, in our Gospel today says, “Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the hungry. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers.” God knows, we could use a few more peacemakers. Jesus came to teach a way of life, a way of love which would upend all the expectations. We don’t expect to see blessing among those who mourn. We don’t expect to hear that the meek are blessed. But that is what Jesus tells us.
We live in a world, like Jesus did, with an implicit theology. We live in a world where a whole lot of people proclaim themselves to be hashtag blessed. Folks make displays of wealth, of abundance, of so-called success and they say “I’m so blessed.” In the beatitudes Jesus is saying, “don’t trust that theology. Don’t believe that signs of wealth and status are signs of blessing. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the mourning. Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness. Blessed are those who hunger for a spirituality that is about more than status, a faith that is about more than how much is in your bank account.” When you discover that spirituality is not about accumulating stuff, is not about how you look on instagram, then rejoice. The reign of God is yours.
Saints Help Us to Know the Way of Jesus
We celebrate saints, in part, because they help us to know that the way of Jesus is not the way of the world. This morning, I want to talk to you about just two saints who are important to me. Both of them lived in the last hundred years. Both have been declared saints by the Episcopal Church.
The first is Saint Oscar Romero. The Roman Catholic church eventually caught up with us on Monseñor Romero, but we Episcopalians can be proud that we called Oscar a saint first. You probably know, Oscar Romero was named Archbishop of El Salvador at a tense time in the late 1970s. He was seen as a compromise candidate, a conservative, who could help the Vatican keep a lid on the growing liberation theology movements in Central America. They were expecting a peacemaker who could smooth out the tensions, but they got a different kind of peacemaker.
Romero once preached, “Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.” Romero was a peacemaker who understood, as Dr King said, “peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is the presence of justice.” Romero worked, preached, and organized to bring justice to the Salvadoran people. He paid for his witness with his life. He was executed by a government death squad in 1980, while he was celebrating Eucharist. For his courage, his faith, and his vision of a just peace, Romero was made a saint by the Episcopal Church in 2009. The Romans caught up in 2018.
The second saint I want to mention today is Pauli Murray. Murray has long been celebrated as the first African American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest in 1977. But in recent years, based upon Pauli’s writings, we have come to understand that Pauli’s gender identity did not fit the binary. I will use they/them pronouns, following the lead of the family foundation started in their name. Born “Anna Pauline Murray” in Baltimore in 1910, they chose the name “Pauli.” Friends with Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Eleanor Roosevelt, co-founder of the National Organization of Women, most of Pauli’s life and work centered on the deep intersections of racism and gender inequality.
Pauli was a person ahead of their time, arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus in fifteen years before Rosa Parks. Pauli once sued because they were refused admission to graduate program at the segregated University of North Carolina. In recent years, we have learned the argument that Thurgood Marshall used before the Supreme Court to win the desegregation of American Schools in the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education, that argument was initially made by Pauli Murray in a graduate thesis at Howard Law School. After Law School, Pauli was supported by the United Methodist Church Women to compile a book compiling all the laws on race throughout the United States, before you could look them up on the internet. Thurgood Marshall called the book the “Bible of the Civil Rights Movement” because it laid out all of the laws that needed to be challenged.
Pauli’s is one of the stories that were not told. We stand on the shoulders of giants in this tradition, and some of their stories we are just learning how to tell more fully. Pauli helped build the framework for a more just society for women, for LGBtQ+ people, for people of all races and skin colors. I am proud to be part of a church that eventually figured out how to ordain Pauli and 25 years later to declare Pauli Murray a saint. And I have no illusions that if I hope to be one too, aspiring to be a saint like Pauli Murray, means there is a great deal of work ahead.
Church is a place for grief
We remember the great Saints of the Church, and we remember the more local saints. We remember grandparents, spouses, friends. We remember all of those beautiful and imperfect people who helped point the way for us.
The longer I have been a priest, the more I have come to understand that one of the roles of the church is to be a container for grief. I have sat beside countless parishioners walking through the death of a partner, a spouse, a parent, a child. I have known more than a few parishioners who have said, “I don’t know why I get to church and just cry.” The answer, I hope, is that church is a place we don’t expect you to wear a brave face.
Church is a place that exists to care for souls. Sometime you need a safe place for grieving. You need a place where you know you’ll get a hug, but only if you want one, where folks won’t try to fix you. At church we believe that Love became flesh and so part of our work is to incarnate love for one another, to be present in the very human times of life.
I wish we were better at death outside these walls. I wish this time of year was more celebrated. But our culture avoids death, avoids people who are dying. We don’t like reminders that we will all die, but death is simply a part of life. Death, for Christians, is a mystery. One of the mysteries of our faith is we believe death is not final.
The Heavenly Banquet
The way we do All Saints and Día De Los Muertos is an act of resistance. We push back on our death-phobic dominant culture. This year Gilbert and the Liturgical Arts team did an incredible job building our Ofrenda, our altar of remembrance out there in the Narthex. When I said to Mandy and JP that we were going to move the Ofrenda, at first there was a lot of resistance. I know, part of the associate clergy’s job is to resist the rector’s new ideas.
But JP said, part of what he loves about this time of the year at St. Michael’s is that we are literally surrounded by the photos and mementos of those who have died. In this church, we are a people who gather around a table. We believe this table extends out beyond this earthly room. We gather to break bread. When we pray the Eucharistic Prayer, we say, we join in the heavenly banquet. Gathered around us, as we pray, are those we “love and see no longer.” Here, at this meal, we believe that the veil is not just thin. It doesn’t exist. The saints of the church, living and dead, are part of one fellowship.
When news of injustice and violence in our world seems overwhelming. When it seems that the worst theologies are shaping policy, are shaping how our society treats one another, remember you are not alone. There are saints of God like Oscar, like Pauli, who have walked this way before. Our work is to make love incarnate, to make justice incarnate, to witness to a world where the meek, the poor, the hungry, those who thirst for righteousness, where the peacemakers are blessed. The work isn’t easy, but we are never alone. We have doctors and queens, activists and scholars, bishops and martyrs. We always have companions on the way of love.
Happy All Saints Day.
Amen.
Mike Angell 