For all the saints who from their labors rest, who Thee by faith before the world confessed; Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest. Alleluia, Alleluia! Amen.
This morning we are in the thinnest of the thin spaces of the year, this day where we remember our saints and the blessings they have left in the world for us and with us. Not just the famous saints, the ones whose feast days we celebrate every year – like Joan of Arc and St. Paul and Julian of Norwich – Mother Theresa and St. Francis and Martin Luther King, Jr. – Mr. Rogers and Dolly Parton and Jimmy Carter… ok, maybe some of those are saints who should have feast days we celebrate once a year, and don’t – yet!… but again, this is a day when we remember not just the famous saints, but also, and especially, the saints known to us, or the saints known to no one.
My saints include my great uncle, a farmer who on Sunday mornings wore a suit and tie to church and kept the map of all the cemetery plots, a man of quiet faith who on Sunday afternoons let my sister and me help feed orphaned sheep and drive the tractor around, including, once, over the cattle guard and into the front yard – my great aunt was not happy with him. She and her sister, my grandmother, were also saints – strong, loving and opinionated women whose strength, love and opinionatedness my sister, mother, niece and I all carry with us, with gratitude. My great-grandfather, who I never met, is one of my saints – my father remembered him sitting with him when he was a little boy, in the farmhouse where he grew up, reading Bible stories to him, sitting next to him. My nephew carries his name.
We all have saints we carry with us – grandparents, great aunts and uncles, kindergarten teachers and music teachers and Sunday School teachers, doctors, next-door neighbors, best friends, counselors, mentors, maybe even a priest here and there – people who have shaped and inspired and loved us in this temporary time we have together on this side of heaven. Not necessarily saints who have done dramatic, world-changing things that will end up in the history books, but saints who do quiet, world-changing things that end up in our hearts and souls and memories – and in the heart and soul and memory of the Church. They are the ones whom the Beatitudes, that we listened to today, name as blessed – the meek, the mourning, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. The kind, the faithful, the imperfect, the beloved.
And part of the beauty of this feast day is that we remember all these saints as a congregation together. We come to pray and sing and break bread together just as our saints have for years in the walls of this church and others, on this holy ground in the midst of our city. What a beautiful thing, that we share stories and liturgy and prayer and contemplation and laughter and the Eucharist – thanksgiving – just as they did, holding memories of them, just as they held memories of their saints, and also praying, still, with them in this thin space, being church together with the saints who have gone before, and with the saints right here in the pews with us.
We in the Episcopal Church often talk about our church as being a sacramental church. We place special emphasis on seven sacraments – the two that Jesus gave us – the Eucharist and baptism – matrimony, ordination, confirmation, reconciliation of a penitent or confession, and anointing of the sick. We define sacrament, and you may have heard this phrase in the past, as an “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”[1] In a sense, our saints are sacramental, outward and visible signs, in the way that they embody the grace and love of God in their lives, and in ours. In loving God and loving our neighbor, we are saints to each other – we are sacraments to each other.
Today at our 10:30 service we celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist, as we do every Sunday, and also one more sacrament, which we celebrate a few times each year – baptism. We will welcome a new saint into the body of Christ, and into the community of Trinity – this place we come to with everything we are, our gifts of time, talent and treasure; our lives, complicated and challenging and wonderful and miraculous.
And today we also celebrate our Ingathering of the gifts we bring to God and the Church each year, our gifts of time, talent and treasure – and they are also sacramental – outward and visible signs of God’s grace and our gratitude, our gifts given in recognition of the constant gifts we receive as individuals, families, as the Church and as the body of Christ together in the world.
So we’ve made some space during this time for prayer and for remembering, so I invite you in these next few minutes to think of your saints – someone who has loved you, who has strengthened your faith – come up and light a candle in memory and thanksgiving for your saints, and come up also to prayerfully offer our gifts to God, in thanksgiving. You may want to share with others some of your stories, or you may wish to hold them in silence.
I invite you into this space of remembering, candle lighting, and giving.
Let us pray.
God of all saints, you are the source of all that is good, and you gather us together in the family of your Church to be channels of your love and peace. We give thanks for your never-ending blessings; we give thanks for the saints of our lives, the gifts they have given to us and the gifts we in turn leave to the saints to come, so that your light will shine in every darkness, and your healing will reach every corner of the earth. In the name of your Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
