Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

It is the prayer of the day which sets the tone for this esteemed festival of All Saints:

Grant us grace to follow your blessed saints in lives of faith and commitment and to know the inexpressible joys you have prepared for those who love you.

This prayer, taken from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, establishes the true spirit of All Saints. Of course, the festival of All Saints occurs on November 1. We have moved the actual service for the congregation to the following Sunday.

All Saints Sunday helps us to maintain the ancient church’s remembrance of the blessed martyrs. It was the church’s belief that those, who died rather than abandon their faith, were blessed by God. They were not blessed because they had achieved something on their own. They were blessed because God had given them the strength to persevere under threat. Their deaths were a witness to the Christian hope.

That hope arises in the testimony of prophets and the psalms. Daniel’s dream is interpreted by one of the attendants:

“As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever.”

The psalmist sings,

Praise the LORD! Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise in the assembly of the faithful. . . . For the LORD takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with victory.

Israel struggles through her entire history with the question of vindication. Not the vindication of Israel but the vindication of God. For Israel had come to understand the national vocation as the promise made to Abraham. Through Abraham God would make a great nation and give to her the promised land so that all the nations will receive blessing.

Is this vindication to be by the sword as the psalm today suggests? Or is the vindication of God to be found in Jesus Christ? The author of Ephesians writes,

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.

You may hear this language as “pie in the sky bye and bye” kind of language. But that is not what it is. This is the language of those who believe in the model of Christ and in his self-giving, his outpouring of his self in obedience to God. This is the revelation of God which causes people to act courageously to suffer persecution and death rather than to persecute and to kill.
The model and sacrifice of Jesus Christ cannot form the basis of a suicide group that seeks to vindicate God by blowing up oneself and dozens of other human beings and shout that God is great.

The Christian cry is, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!” A martyr in the Christian church is one who is willing to die in order that God be vindicated in Jesus Christ. The Christian martyr was one who died trusting in the God of Jesus Christ. A martyr’s death usually resulted in an end to killing. It is no wonder that in the early church the martyrs were honored above all other Christians. It was in the year 609 that November 1 was set aside to honor the blessed martyrs. These are the saints which the church first had in mind.

In the Medieval Church the saints expanded beyond the martyrs to include a collection of patrons in heaven who doled out benefits to those on earth. Worshipers would pray to these holy ones or saints. The reformers were very critical of this practice of praying to the saints for benefits, when it was the church’s mission to bring the blessing of God to the whole world through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Protestant Churches ceased the patronage system of the saints and frowned on praying to saints. The Counter-reformation then actually encouraged the veneration and invocation of the saints as a true mark of Roman Catholic identity.

After 400 years it took the Second Vatican Council to reform Roman Catholic practice so that it was understood that the saints were a part of the one church whose head is Christ.

Rather than being viewed as highly placed patrons who can put in a good word for people with a remote deity, the saints are now seen as forerunners and companions in the total church. (Bradley Hanson)

Thus we have the prayer of the day:

Almighty God, whose people are knit together in one holy Church the body of Christ our Lord: Grant us grace to follow your blessed saints in lives of faith and commitment and to know the inexpressible joys you have prepared for those who love you.

Dear congregation, today we celebrate the lives of all saints. For all the baptized belong to the communion of saints whether on earth or in heaven. It is with this fellowship of the saints that we join our prayers in every time and every place and eat and drink the fellowship meal at the Lord’s table.

The Gospel of Luke reminds us of who is truly blessed in this world. It is those who are poor, hungry, weeping, and persecuted. For they have nothing with which to vindicate their lives. Their hope is in God. These poor ones are blessed not because they are poor, hungry, and weeping. They are not better than others. It is simply a matter that in their poverty they look exclusively to God.

I fear that we, who have so much, hear these beatitudes as a law. Be poor, be hungry, weep, and try to get persecuted. That would be an insane interpretation. These beatitudes simply remind us that our lives depend up on God who created us, redeemed us through the outpouring of his Son, and makes us holy by calling us also to serve. We are the saints if we find ourselves being used by God.

It is for this reason only that we can call saints those most dear to us who were baptized this year and entered the church on earth and who died and entered the church in heaven. We remember even these saints before we approach the Lord ‘s table and light a candle in their memory.

Dear brothers and sisters, our only hope is that God would bless us and use us to bring blessing to others through faithfulness to his Son who taught his disciples

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your heart and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen