Today we celebrate the festival of All Saints and All Souls, and of course it’s the Feast Day of our church because of the name it has been given. What’s important to realize is that All Saints / All Souls is not only about our church, rather it’s about the Church in general, the assembly of God, the people of God, of whom we have a vision in the passage of Revelation we have just heard. What’s even more important to realize is that when we talk about all the Saints and all the Souls, we don’t just turn back to those who were there before us, those who have built this church, like your grand parents maybe, and neither do we turn back to those who have built the Church a long time ago, and even led exemplary lives like St Paul or St Teresa. What we do is that we actually turn towards the future. The book of Revelation, with many images and symbols, talks to us about the future of the church. Theologians call it a story of destination. In the Bible indeed, we have stories of origins, many stories of origin:, the Creation, the Flood, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and we have also stories of destination, we call them apocalypses, there are several in the Old Testament, and even in the New Testament, and the most famous of apocalypses is of course the Book of Revelation.
Origins are important, that’s what define us in many ways. We want to know where we come from. Many people now have their DNA tested so they can learn more about their ancestors, maybe you’ve taken the test yourself. And yet, if you would like to talk about yourself, to introduce yourself, would you start talking about your ancestors, those who have died, or would you talk about your activities now and your family and your children, and your children’s children? That’s right, who we are now, who we are becoming, defines us even more than our past. We have to look at the future to know who we are, what we want to accomplish or have accomplished. We build for the generations to come. In the same way, the Book of Revelation tells us what we are destined to be or, maybe better, who we are called to be, and we cannot understand who we are if we don’t have a peek into the future and that’s actually what apocalypses are for: literally it’s a “lifting of the veil” on what is to come. It does not mean it can predict the end of the world, it’s more about the true nature of our reality: Being from God, we are called back to God. God is calling us to make a choice about God, God is calling us to be with God. God says: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
Church is about destination much more than it is about origins, and I think it’s very important to bear that in mind when so many of our churches seem to have become museums. My sister was telling me about visiting Chartres this past weekend, Chartres the big cathedral, one of the greatest churches on earth…but is it, in God’s eyes? Is it a great church? Or is it more about the glory of its past? Here at All Souls, we were recently talking about advertising for our church and wondered if we should talk of the history of our church, but then we decided we’d better stick to talk about what we are doing now, that would probably be more relevant to newcomers! That’s often our temptation as Episcopalians, because we have a church with such a rich history, and so if people want to know about our church we think we need to tell them about what happened in the last century.
Yet I wonder if it is about that that people are inquiring. Rather, they want to meet the living people doing the church today, they want to get involved in what’s happening now and in our plans for the future. Xavier and I have been watching this show recently about John Adams, and it’s really fascinating and it helped us to understand so much about this country. But I guess the burning question now is not who was president yesterday but who will be president tomorrow, the question is not so much where this country comes from, the question is where it’s headed. Nations aren’t museums, they are real people with real problems and real hopes. In the same way, churches aren’t meant to be museums. It’s important to have roots but roots in themselves won’t bear fruit. We used to represent the church as vessels and it’s because they’re supposed to be going somewhere. Born from God and returning to to God, God is calling us to be with God and we are called to become the holy city, the Saints, the holy people.
Now how do we do that? Well I guess holiness is a scary word, and for most of us I imagine it’s hard enough to just go through the motions, who have time or the energy to become a Saint? Well, actually, I was sick recently and I took the opportunity to learn more about the saints (most saints have written their journals like St Augustine or Teresa of Avila). I actually read the life of Teresa of Avila and one thing that surprised me, as she was sharing her deepest joys and struggles, is that the life of saints, it’s really nothing grandiose, if anything it’s actually quite the opposite of grandiose. Jesus calls us to be like little children to enter the Kingdom of God (Matt 18:3) and that’s what Saints have been about: They have spent their lives not trying to puff themselves up (to paraphrase St Paul) they haven’t even tried to accomplish something big, most of the saints have spent their lives trying to become more humble, trusting, learning to let go, to find the courage to ask for forgiveness, courage to start again. courage to confess their ignorance, courage to carry their infirmities. Mostly they have asked God to change their hearts and to be able to do God’s will…They didn’t ask God to change their circumstances, they asked God to open themselves to God’s presence in their own circumstances. Well, I guess it’s something all of us can do, wherever we are in our lives. Jesus says to Martha: “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”. He does not say: If you’re good enough you will see the glory of God. Our job is to believe, to open our eyes, to open our minds, to ask God to help us roll the stone of our hearts if you prefer, and that’s the core of holiness. I don’t know if you have noticed but there is a little bit of a tension in our Gospel today. In Chapter 11, Martha and Mary are mourning their brother and they both tell Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And the group of mourners also says about Jesus: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”. So there is sadness, but there is also some anger, bitterness, resentment towards Jesus. People are making some reproaches. And Jesus does not fight with that, he can accept all of their feelings, he himself is sad and he cries in front of the reality of death. Yet he’s asking them to believe, because if you believe, even a little, you can leave the door ajar and Jesus can come in and bring grace, comfort and consolation which is actually what Revelation is all about: Not punishment and destruction, rather God bringing everlasting comfort to his people by destroying death for ever: The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away
By raising Lazarus, Jesus lifts the veil on his power over life and death. As terrible as our tragedies and losses can be, they aren’t the ultimate reality. When we studied the Book of Revelation, Some of you have reacted to this passage we have just heard: The sea will be no more. Most of us agreed that heavens wouldn’t really be heavens is there wasn’t the sea! But it’s not about the Ocean, it’s an image, a reference to Exodus and the crossing of the red sea to the promised land. Heavens is this place where there is no sea because we will have passed and we will be in the promised land.
But what about now? What does this mean for us today? Well, I guess that learning more about our destination help us live more according to our destination. If you knew you were to retire in Spain, you would start learning Spanish, wouldn’t you? But more deeply, Revelation teaches us about being in accord with our real nature of people of God, of children of God. The Book of Revelation shows us people brought back to their dignity. Their holiness is to live according to God’s calling, in peace with one another: “People from all languages, tribes, and nations” (Rev 5:9 and 7:9). We hear constantly that America has never been so divided. Can we act as Christians by not creating more divisions? We see how upset we all are around the coming elections. But elections shouldn’t be about revenge or shutting down the voice of others, or seeing others as the problem or as the enemies. The less we listen to one another, the more radicalized we become.Could we break the cycle and become the ones who listen, who strive to understand, who try to include rather than exclude? Could we be the ones who carry good news and a vision of hope for all people? Could we show an example of another way to live in this world, dictated by love and self sacrifice, rather than greed or self interest? Could we in our lives points out to another reality? That’s what Saints are for, it seems to me.