Sermon on November 1, 2020: All Saints' Day
Four years ago, on All Saints’ Sunday, 2016, I was sitting in the Church of the Epiphany in Washington, DC, listening to a sermon by the guest preacher of the day, who was none other than Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Then, as now, it was the Sunday before the election, and Bishop Williams was speaking about the meaning of All Saints’, and about how God calls us to be human and to be holy—and that being human and being holy are ultimately the same thing. And yet we’re used to thinking of holiness as something other than human, right? A saint is like a superhuman, capable of feats of virtue that ordinary humans like us cannot perform. So the thinking goes. But Bishop Williams, in his sermon, was inviting his listeners to think differently about All Saints’: not as a celebration of Christian superheroes, but as a celebration of humanity. He told us that “the saints, the holy people of the Most High, are those who are fully and truly human.”
Truth be told, I did consider simply reading his sermon to you instead of preaching my own, because everything that he said then is exactly what I want to say to you now. I won’t be doing that (instead, you can listen to it here), but my sermon is going to assume that Bishop Williams is right: that God has called us to be human, and to be holy, and that at the end of the day, these are one and the same.
John has had a vision: a scene of heaven, filled with a countless multitude of people, who worship God day and night, alongside the heavenly host. In John’s vision, someone comes to him and says, “Who are all these people,” and John is like, “I have no clue.” And then he learns that this great multitude are human beings who have suffered greatly, who have hungered and thirsted and wept, but who do not weep any longer, because “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” What on earth could that mean: to make your clothes clean by washing them in blood?
Have you ever gotten your clothes very bloody, like from an injury? Blood is not very easy to clean. Now imagine immersing your clothes completely in a wash-basin of blood. When you draw them out, how are they going to look?
You might be picturing a scene like something out of a horror movie. When we imagine that kind of exposure to blood, we recall to mind all the ways that human beings have sought the blood of our neighbors. The history of calling for blood, and turning others into scapegoats. The well of this history is so deep that we cannot even begin to plumb its depths. The countless throngs of people in John’s vision suffered because their neighbors demanded it. Because their neighbors had called for blood. And the reason that these people are holy is because they did not call for it back. They knew that the life offered by the blood of Jesus will never be found in the blood of another person. They knew that only the blood of Jesus will wash us clean, and make us able to love our neighbors, so that we can be holy. So that we can be human.
What these saints are doing is embodying the kingdom of God. That phrase (the kingdom of God) is a hard one to understand. But we can think about it as being shown to us through the lives of those who are not afraid to say that they are profoundly in need, that they are vulnerable. That we need one another, and cannot find life by building walls against one another, whether literal or metaphorical.
When Jesus went up the mountain and began to teach his disciples, he is describing a people who embody the kingdom of God. These people are nothing in the eyes of the world. They are not the sort of people to be in positions of power, whose lives are not likely to matter to most. They do not they cry out for blood when they believe they have been wronged. They are people who have learned to rely upon the faithfulness of God rather than the machinations of the world. And they are not superhumans. They aren’t lofty types who exist on a higher plane of virtue. These saints are ordinary human beings. They are the holy community of people who follow Jesus. It’s the community that the church is called to be. What we are called to be. To be human, so that we can be holy.
A few days ago, I sent out a letter to our parish with a few points of reflection as we approach Election Day. I won’t rehearse to you now what I have already written, but I do want to add another layer to it on this All Saints’ Day, and take a cue from the sermon I heard from Rowan Williams on this Sunday four years ago. All Saints’ Day is a celebration of humanity, Williams said, and so it is crucial that “we think of what kind of human face we want to see on the far side of every election—on the far side of every political decision.” When we vote, are we voting toward a vision of humanity that is meek? Toward a vision of humanity that is merciful? That has purity and integrity of heart? That can show our love of neighbor without calling for blood? Is that the vision of humanity that we want to see?
The fate of the kingdom of God is not in the hands of election results, of course. It cannot be voted into or out of being. And yet Christians must seek the good of the earthly city, even if it is not our home. So the question that Bishop Williams posed in his All Saints’ Day 2016 sermon, I now pass along to you: “what kind of humanity are we serving, recognizing, nurturing, in the way we discharge our [democratic] duty?” What is the face of humanity that we want to see?
No matter what happens after Tuesday, the work of being human goes on in a world that is always trying to distort it. The thing is, the humanity that Jesus imagines in the Beatitudes has always been a hard sell. It sounds wonderful on paper, but who would really want it in reality? It’s far better, it seems, to laugh than to mourn, to dominate rather than defer, to get revenge rather than to show mercy. Better to pummel one’s enemies into submission. Forgiveness is for the weak, and for losers. And if all that is true, then there’s no need to bother with going to church.
But something tells me that we are here because we’ve seen a face that we just cannot get out of our mind. A vision of a person who gives a peace which the world cannot give, come what may. Who shows us what it looks like to be a human being. The saints saw his face and it changed the course of their lives. It can change the course of our lives, too.
God has made a home in humanity so that humanity might be drawn into God. So that at the end of the story, on the far side of time, our faces may be transformed into the face of Christ. Otherwise, how can we see God face to face, “till we have faces”?
May God give us the grace to follow the saints into a life of holiness, a life that is fully alive, walking in the way of Christ—who is God in the flesh, and the vision of perfect humanity.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.