All Saints’ Sunday (First Proper, BCP)
Saint David’s Church, West Seneca
4 November 2007
Baptism of Nathan Michael Matthews, Meadow Christine Mayer,
and William John Mayer, Jr.
We keep this day as the Solemnity of All the Saints. The oldest traces of this feast are found in the Eastern Church in the fourth century, though the day of the celebration differed in the various local churches. It became a universal observance in the seventh century, and in the eighth century Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in Saint Peter’s Basilica to all the saints on November 1, on which day we still keep The Feast of All Saints. In England, the feast was once called All Hallows, and its eve, of course, Hallowe’en –– All Hallows Even, meaning Holy Evening. Major Feasts of the Church always begin the night before, at sunset, reflecting an ancient understanding that a day is from sunset to sunset, not sunrise to sunrise. As the first day of Creation began in darkness, so all days and all life begin in darkness, and move toward the light.
Because attending weekday services, even on significant holy days, is, in modern times, simply not possible for many people, the revisers of our prayer book allowed the option of repeating the All Saints observance on the following Sunday. All Saints’ Day is one of the seven Principal Feast of the Church Year, along with Christmas, the Epiphany, Easter Day, Ascension Day, the Day of Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday. All Saints’ is a Feast of Christ, a Feast of the Whole Mystical Body of Christ, the Church in every age, and to eternity, of which we are all made members in Baptism. We are not members in the sense of being part of a club, names on a list of those who have paid their dues. We are not members even in the sense of aligning ourselves with a particular denomination in the Christian Church. Rather, we are members in the sense of being vital parts of the Body, as eyes, and ears, and noses, and arms, and legs, and hands, and feet are vital parts of the human body. That tells us something about our value in God’s eyes, and the necessity of knowing ourselves to be indispensable to the proper working of the Body, for without all its parts, the Body cannot function in the fullness of its created purpose. As members of the Body of Christ, we –– you and I –– are the means by which Christ’s love is made known in the world, the means by which it becomes real, and efficacious, and incarnate.
On All Saints’ Day and this All Saints’ Sunday, we celebrate the saints whose lives are commemorated in the Church Kalendar, and we celebrate those known only in the heart and mind of God. We celebrate the saints we have known in our own lives, those dear to us who have taught, and encouraged, and cheered us on in our Christian calling by their examples of faithful living, who now behold the fullness of God in his presence. These are not dead people from the past, buried and gone from us, but living members of the living Body of the living Jesus Christ, the great numberless company of heaven that surrounds us at all times. On this All Saints’ Sunday, 2007, in this community whose patron is David of Wales, we celebrate also the making of three new saints, through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. All of us who have been baptized are saints, which is to say, holy. We are not called saints because we never make mistakes, or because our lives are always in order, or because we are always do the right thing, or because we have reached some pinnacle of moral perfection. No one would ever attain to sainthood if that were what it takes. We are saints because we are set apart, in Baptism, to serve God, and to serve the world in Christ’s name, wherever we find ourselves. God has chosen us to be his people, and his partners in the completion of Creation.
This is what will happen to little Nathan Michael Matthews, and Meadow Christine Mayer, and William John Mayer this morning. All unknowing, these precious children of God will be incorporated into God’s Holy Church, and made worthy to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. They will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to sustain them in their life in Christ. They will share with us the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, which strengthens them and us to do the work God gives us to do. We pray these children will grow in grace as they grow in age. We pray they will never be ashamed to confess their faith in Jesus Christ, crucified, resurrected, ascended, and reigning in glory. We pray they will continue Christ’s faithful servants to their life’s end. Though they do not know it now, they take on, this day, all it means to follow Jesus Christ.
In the words Blessed Teresa of Avila wrote in the sixteenth century,
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world.
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes. You are his body.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
