Every time we say the Apostles’ Creed, we say “I believe in the communion of saints.“ Most likely that phrase in the Apostles’ Creed has become for most of us just a phrase we say, to which we really haven’t given much thought. By affirming the communion of saints, however, we are saying to ourselves and to all who care to listen what the Church is all about. We are saying that the Church is a community, that we are a group of individuals joined together through our Lord; yet, because we are joined together, united, we are more than individuals. The bond which unites us joins people of every Christian denomination and communion and joins Christians of every time and place. Even death does not destroy that bond. The bond of which I speak is Christ. Together we form the mystical Body of Christ.
But you still may be wondering why I am talking about us on this day when we are celebrating the Feast of all Saints. Most likely there are few, if any, in this room who would call themselves saints. Over the centuries there have developed two different definitions of a saint. The most common definition of a saint is a saint as a person who is perfect, who has been obedient to God in his or her life to such a degree that we are inspired by that life. Frederick Buechner gives this definition of a saint: “In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.”
In fact, most of the people we think of as saints lived many centuries ago. We call the disciples saints; St. Mary, the mother of Jesus, St. Paul, and St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, we call saints. We think of Saint Augustine and Saint Francis of Assisi. The historic Church often equated sanctity with what is bizarre. People lived on top of pillars, like St. Simeon Stylites, and never washed, like St. Joseph Laboure, and never slept, like St. John of the Cross, or loved suffering, like St. Louis of Gonzaga, or fled the world, like St. Teresa of Avila.
These images of saints make them seem very remote. However, there’s another, much older definition of a saint. The word saint means one who has been made holy by God. We tend to think of someone who is holy as someone who does holy things—someone who’s like our first definition of a saint. But the understanding in both the Old and New Testaments is that anything is holy that belongs to God. “The Jewish people,” says one theologian, “were said to be holy, not because they were extremely good, for they never claimed any such thing, but because they belonged to God and were his chosen instrument for effecting his will in the world. So also with the Christian fellowship. Members of Christ’s body were certainly expected to be good, reflecting in their lives the moral qualities manifested in Jesus himself; but they were members of that body not because they were morally excellent, but because they had been called to share the life which is in Christ.” Holiness, in this biblical understanding, does not stem from what a person does, but from what God does.
Thus, we see St. Paul referring to all Christians in Corinth as saints. He opens his letter to them by saying, “Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, to the Church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
St. Paul called these Christians saints, not because they were leading exemplary lives, but because they belonged to God through their baptism. In fact, his letter was written to help the church in Corinth clear up some serious problems. The church was divided, with members going to court against other members; St. Paul speaks of jealousy and strife among them, and refers to immorality of a kind that is not found even among pagans. Yet, he addresses these people as saints.
The celebration of the Feast of all Saints is a celebration of all saints by both definitions. It’s a celebration in which we give thanks for the many heroes of our faith, some who even died for our faith, because through their exemplary lives we see God’s work in beautiful ways. We thank God for the writers of the accounts of the Gospel, through whose efforts we have a knowledge of Jesus’ life among us. We give thanks for the many Christian martyrs who died that the faith might live. We give thanks in a more personal way for those whom we have known and loved, through whose lives and words we have experienced God’s love—parents, teachers, priests, friends. Through these heroes of the faith Christ has come to us in meaningful ways.
The Feast of all Saints is also a celebration of who all of us are and of whose all of us are. God has made us his people. Through our baptism, we belong to God. That’s why we should celebrate this ancient holy day—to remind ourselves who we are and how we have come to this point in our journey of faith.
All of us are saints of God. We are a holy people, not because our lives are what they should be, but because God has made us a part of his family. However, since we are a part of his family, we are called to be responsible members of that family. We begin our life together as a holy people, because God has made us holy. He then calls us to be holy in our daily lives. Our pilgrimage together is one of becoming what we already are.
Whenever we affirm our belief in the communion of saints we are affirming so much: our debt of gratitude to Christians in the past who have passed on the faith to us; our belief that the Church is indeed a community of people united in Christ and that we have been called into that community through the grace of God; and our hope that God will enable us to become what we already are—the plebs sancta Dei, the holy common people of God, the communion of saints.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
All Saints’ Day
1 November 2017