In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Ever since Jacob set up his stone pillow at Bethel, anointed it, and declared it to be an everlasting reminder of the close presence of God in a particular location, the idea of the “holy place” has been a feature of the Abrahamic tradition. Jacob set up his stone as a witness to all those who passed by that here was a hallowed spot where the veil which separates earth and heaven was particularly thin. Surely we have all had our own experience of such a place. The Anglo-American poet, T S Eliot certainly did in a chapel at Little Gidding in Cambridgeshire. There he found the “intersection of the timeless moment” and, abandoning the desire to sightsee, “verify” or “inform curiosity,” could only “kneel where prayer has been valid.” For those of us lucky enough to live in Norfolk, England, one does not have to travel any further than Walsingham, to the Holy House, to find such validity but for others there is Lourdes, or Santiago de Compostela or a host of other places of pilgrimage, ancient and modern, that continue to draw believers and searchers after truth in their thousands.
But there are those who are sceptical about the localised presence of God and thus suspicious of the concept of the holiness of place. Such people claim not to be susceptible to “atmosphere” – the numinous – and demand rational explanations for the apparently miraculous. For them, the idea of the holy person is equally unacceptable. But when the relics of Saint Therese of Lisieux were taken round the countries of Europe recently, tens of thousands of people in England, from a variety of Christian traditions, queued patiently and prayerfully to spend just a few moments in the presence of the Little Flower’s earthly remains. This surely goes to show that the attraction of evident sanctity is still a powerful force for religious revival and the strengthening of faith.
The equivalent to your Lesser Feasts and Fasts, the resource book we use in England for the celebration of saints’ days is called Exciting Holiness. Holy people, God’s saints, are exciting and I believe their example can excite holiness in others. We may have our favourites – perhaps our name saints or those on whose patronage we make some claim. Saints of every shape and size, possessed of every human virtue, fighting and overcoming every human vice. Every saint is unique, just as each one of us is a unique creation of God and the special object of his wholly focussed love. But in all this diversity and variety there is something in common – palpable holiness. What makes this holiness? Wherein lies this sanctity? Maybe the Gospel reading we have heard today can offer us some help.
The Beatitudes, which we have heard in St Luke’s version this year in Jesus’s so-called Sermon on the Plain, have been called at various times, “a blueprint for sanctity”, “a recipe for holiness”, “a job description for saints.” There is more to be found in them than in the simplicity of these sound bites – I think we should look more closely.
First of all, let’s be clear what these sayings of Jesus are not. They are not a new set of commandments to be added to those proclaimed by Moses. Instead of being normative like laws, they are surely descriptive and thus prophetic. Through this series of blessings and woes Jesus paints a portrait of the life that is possible for those who believe in the love and compassion of God. The portrait is impossible to live up to perfectly, but Jesus invites us all to do our best to see it as a paradigm for Christian life. So, yes, here we have some sort of blueprint.
Although Jesus was entirely clear that he came to tell us about God’s passionate and unquenchable love, we have still tried to persuade each other over the ages that we have to earn his love by doing just about the hardest things we can find. Goodness me! Turning the other cheek and all that goes with it is one of the hardest things we proud beings can find to do! Somehow we can never quite get it into our heads that our good works reflect God’s love rather than earning it. So, I say again, these blessings and woes are not new obligations, they are rather descriptions of how to recognise those who fully understand God’s love. They do not cause sanctity but rather they are indicators of it. Moreover, no one ever lives up to them adequately because we are such flawed and incomplete beings. However, the presence in every age of men and women who live the life, walk the walk, however imperfectly, is a sign of God’s abiding presence. Saints are stories of God’s love.
So in today’s Gospel we have not a new set of commandments, nor a manual of practical advice for successful living. We find it better to understand this teaching as a prophetic declaration made in the conviction that the Kingdom of God is both coming and already present.
There is, however, an ethical dimension to these Blessings and Woes. Far be it from me as a visitor to issue any sort of admonition but with a passion I believe what I have to say now to be important: The community that hears itself pronounced blessed by its Lord does not remain passive, but acts in accord with the coming kingdom. The saints work to comfort those who weep, to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, they show mercy and teach purity, they turn the other cheek, strive after peace and to bring an end to persecution. The language Jesus uses is unconditionally performative. He does not merely describe something that already is, but brings into being the reality his words declare and so inaugurates the community of the saints. What we have heard are a series of eschatological blessings – not “entrance requirements” for outsiders, but a declaration about insiders. All these blessings apply to one group of people – a united community; they do not describe four different kinds of good people who get to go to heaven, but are four declarations about the blessedness, contrary to all appearances, of the eschatological community living in anticipation of God’s reign.
And so there must be the ecclesiological dimension to our search for the saints. It is in and through the Church, that you and I are saints-in-the-making. Becoming and remaining a saint, one of the blessed, a Holy One, comes from being in contact with God and God’s people. The Holy Bible and the Holy Communion keep us connected to the Holy One. This connection maintains us in being as God’s Holy People = hoi hagioi = the Saints. We need the Church – as imperfect as it is – for us to be saints, for us to be in contact with the loving, forgiving, reconciling, and holy God. The Church is not merely the carrier of the gospel, a place to hear the good news preached and taught, an organization to preserve as history. The Church is good news, the radical, possible impossibility of being joined together with people different from ourselves, even with people we may not like very much. For Christ’s sake, the Church is the reality of the alienated reconciled, the rebellious returned, the lonely encompassed with love, the community of the saints.
This beatific community, this community of the Beatitudes, the saints of yore and the saints alive should be irresistibly attractive to the outsider. Let us make it so. Let us give its plans and aspirations our fullest support and wholehearted commitment. We should not need to journey to holy places to find God. We ought not to have to queue for hours to be in the presence of the relics of one who has been conspicuously holy. Here, here and now, we should find exciting holiness. O God, make us to be numbered with the saints in glory everlasting. Amen.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Canon Jeremy M. Haselock
Preceptor and Chaplain to HM The Queen, Norwich Cathedral
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
All Saints’ Sunday
6 November 2016