All Saints’ Day: How Should We Then Live?

“Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.”

– The Book of Common Prayer

Monday, Nov. 1, is a day to honor the saints. And as we honor them, we also honor our inheritance, an inheritance that allows us to live in the power of God’s love even in the midst of tragedy. And what gives us that kind of ability?

It’s the hope of the resurrection. It’s the fact that we have been invited into those ineffable joys, as the collect says, “prepared for those who truly love you.” It is because we know that life does not end with the shedding of the body, and that we have before us the hope of the resurrection, that we can step into some of the most tragic and dark places and know that in the midst of that tragedy, something is happening that is taking this toward the new heaven, and the new earth, the kingdom of God.

And we can also know that God is at work in the midst of all of that.

Living With Heaven in View

You see, it’s our job, in essence, to step into those places with that kind of poise that the commitment, the promise and the invitation into eternal life really give us. If you want to say it in common parlance, “we live with heaven in view.” A part of the writing of the book of Revelation – given to a group of people who were themselves under persecution – was the commitment and the promise God had made to a new heaven, and a new earth, and the wiping away of every tear from every eye. It is a book of assurance that the promise of heaven is true and real.

And it wasn’t just that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, but that he who is the resurrected Savior invites us into the eternal reality that has been given to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Heaven is a real place. We are going to a destination that has been assured to us by the very words of Jesus Himself. We quote them at every funeral: “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2b).

It’s a place, it’s not just a state of mind. It’s not just the light captured on a beautiful flower on a spring day, even though that might speak to us of an eternal joy more real than the light that shines on the flower – because the heavens declare the glory of God. And that gives us the capacity to live in the midst of times of both beauty as well as great darkness, and therefore take our place following the Lord of hosts, the captain of the army.

Living With Poise and Promise

That’s our inheritance. That is what we have been given in Jesus. But the truth we see in all of those who live with that kind of poise in every single generation, including those upon whom the church has conferred the title of “saint,” is just this: It is ours. Ours.

That is both the call and the invitation and the blessing of the commemoration of this event. We live now in the reality of a victory assured, a promise that is a place where everything is made new, the new heaven and the earth are the reality. The shroud is taken away; that gives us the capacity to pray into and to be present for some of the very worst that happens in this life.

It seems to me is what it means when we pray the collect, we are committing ourselves to follow the example of these saints, to live our lives, our normal, regular, everyday lives, with that kind of poise and that kind of promise, because that is what is ours in Jesus – and I need to follow that example too.

So All Saints’ Day is a day to give thanks. And it is a day even more deeply to say yes to all that we have been given and to which we have been invited.

It is a day to live.

 

How has the life of someone who has gone before changed the way you live today?

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(This post is an adaptation of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on Nov. 1, 2018, in the Diocesan Chapel in the Diocesan Office, Orlando.)

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.