Part of Something Larger — by The Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

The readings for All Saints Sunday, on which this sermon is based, can be found here.

Today we are celebrating All Saints Sunday. We’re taking a bit of a break from our long “green season” after Pentecost; we’ve brought out the special festival white vestments and hangings, we’ve put up the candelabra, we’re singing the service; we’re all around treating today as a special day. All during Ordinary Time from Pentecost to Advent we read Gospels and stories that emphasize Jesus’ teachings, his ministry, his parables, his sayings, his miracles. Today, on this special Sunday in the midst of Ordinary Time, we back up, as it were, and look not just at a specific teaching of Jesus, but at a wider theme and a bigger picture. Today we stop to ponder the mysterious and astonishing Good News that we are all called to be saints, we are all called to be Holy Ones in the Name of Christ, we are all called by God and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit to do as Jesus does, and live as Jesus lives, and love as Jesus loves. Today is our day to celebrate, as our Collect says, that we have been “knit together in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of God’s Son Christ our Lord.”

And if there is one particular meaning that All Saints Sunday has for us in this November of 2010, I think it could be put into words something like this: it is the reminder that we are part of something larger than ourselves: the reminder that we live a life, and draw on a strength, and share an identity, and serve a purpose, that goes beyond what we can see and hear and feel and understand in our own immediate context, the reminder that our lives and our ministries and our services and our mission are taken up and made part of Christ’s own work for the working-out of God’s will in the world. We are part of something larger than ourselves — the Letter to the Hebrews calls it a great “cloud of witnesses”; the Apostles’ Creed calls it “the communion of saints” — we are part of something larger than ourselves, and that makes us able to do more in Christ than any of us could ever expect to do alone.

That’s certainly what Jesus is talking about in this Gospel lesson from Luke this morning. In some ways, these words of Jesus that describe the blessed life have become so familiar to us that we don’t always hear them in their depth, we don’t always hear them as a real challenge to do real things in our real lives. Listen again to what Jesus calls us to do: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” And Jesus’ teaching about the blessed life goes on, beyond the verses assigned for this day’s reading: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” And then Jesus sums it all up with a phrase that is almost frightening in its direct simplicity: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Be like God, Jesus says, in mercy and generosity and love.

There's just one problem with Jesus’ description of the blessed life: it is clearly impossible. Be like God? Most of us have a hard enough time acting human, let alone acting like God. Most of us have a hard enough time being genuinely loving, genuinely compassionate, genuinely generous, genuinely good, with those who love us, those who are like us, those who are closest to us — let alone loving and caring and doing good for those who are different, those who are antagonistic, those who actively wish us harm. If it were just up to us, this image of the blessed life that Jesus gives to us, this calling to saintliness that Jesus puts before us, would be clearly and totally and completely beyond our reach.

But the Good News is that it is not just up to us. The Good News is that we are part of something larger than ourselves; and, in that larger life we share in Christ, the call to the blessed life is not beyond our reach. Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” — and the deeper meaning there is not just that we have to act like God, but that God will act in us, so that God’s mercy informs and empowers our mercy, God’s justice informs and empowers our justice, God’s love informs and empowers our love. St Paul puts it this way in our Epistle lesson today: he prays that we may have “the eyes of our hearts enlightened, so that we may know what is the hope to which God has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.” For Paul, what makes us saints is not that we do glorious acts of witness or powerful works of service to impress God, but what makes us saints is that we believe in God’s saving love, and through our believing God is able to work in us, to manifest in us the glorious inheritance of the saints, to be powerful in us for justice and for peace. We are saints not because of what we do for God, but because of what God does in us. God takes us up into the larger life of Christ, God invites us to be part of something larger than ourselves, God fills us with the strength to love and do good and bless and pray and give in a way we could never do on our own.

And that invitation to be part of something larger than ourselves is extended to is in the most basic, ordinary, down-to-earth parts of our lives. In so many ways, I think, the culture all around us invites us to turn inward, to concentrate on ourselves, to put our own wants and desires and ambitions at the center of our concern and make all the rest of the world revolve around us. Our consumer-driven economy wants us to believe that all that matters about us is what we can acquire, the size of our bank accounts and the health of our investments — especially touchy in this time when we’re all trying to recover from recession; but the invitation to the communion of saints reminds us that we are part of something larger than ourselves, and our economic decisions are not just about what we get, but how we contribute to the work and wealth and well-being of a whole community of many people. Our national culture seems to get more polarized every year, encouraging us to think of our country as a series of entrenched ideologies, each hunkering down around its own base and lobbing slogans at each other from its preferred cable network; but the invitation to the communion of saints reminds us that we are part of something larger than ourselves, and as Christians we carry into public discourse our religious commitment to respect the dignity of every human being, and to treat those with whom we disagree as real persons with whom we want to build up the common good. Even in our church life, we can be tempted to focus inward, on our own congregation, our customs and traditions and well-established friendships that we share; but the invitation to the communion of saints reminds us that we are part of something larger than ourselves, and our mission as a congregation in Christ is to reach out beyond ourselves, to go out among people who aren’t part of us, people who aren’t just like us, people whose patterns of participation in church life are faithful and devout even if they aren’t like the patterns we are accustomed to — our mission is to go forth and share our faith practice, our mission is to invite others to come know community and compassion and well-being in Christ as we have come to know Christ here. To be a saint today means to be counter-cultural: in a culture that tells us to focus on ourselves, the call to saintliness is an invitation to be part of something larger than ourselves, to be participants in the larger mercy and love and blessing that come through us from God. That is what it can mean for us to be Christ’s saints today.

Today on this All Saints Sunday we celebrate that we are all called to be saints. Today let us pray that God will give us grace to go out and really be Christ’s saints, for the peace and well-being of the world Christ died and rose to save. Amen.