The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of All Saints’ Sunday
Proper 26
5 November 2017
Readings:
Joshua 3:7-17
Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Matthew 23:1-12
Does anyone remember what holiday we just celebrated this past Tuesday night? Right! Halloween! Does anyone know what the day after Halloween is called? This past Wednesday night and Thursday morning, we celebrated All Saints Day and All Souls Day. The original idea behind All Saints Day was that it be a day to remember all the saints who have gone before us. What that meant WAYYYY back in the 9th century (11 hundred years ago) was that ALL departed Christians who had died were to be included in our remembrance on this sacred Feast day. As time passed and we began to associate the saints only with those who have been heroic and famous examples of faith, the day of All Souls was instituted to remember all those again who were originally intended to be included in All Saints Day.
And so this Sunday, as the first Sunday following All Saints Day, we’ll remember in just a few minutes all those who have been saints in our own Calvary family—in the early church sense of departed loved ones who may not have been heroic in a global sense, but who have left a permanent mark on our hearts because they were heroes to us… they were our family.
The earliest celebrations of All Saints Day came into being as a way of honoring local non-Christian traditions that honored departed loved ones, giving it a spiritual significance from within a specifically Christian faith. Days like Samhain, which was the Celtic celebration of new year in Ireland and Scotland, and like Dia De Los Muertos in Mexico, held great significance for local populations. These and other similar ancient traditions all around the world hold some incredible similarities in their recognition of the boundary between the living and the dead being thin enough for the living and the dead to co-mingle on one night per year. For the Celtic Samhain, this happened on the first new moon following the harvest moon, and eventually became fixed on October 31st—All Hallow’s Even, abbreviated Hallow e’en which has become simply Halloween. This was a night when it was believed the boundary between the physical world and the spirit world was thin enough that spirits both good and bad, including the mischievous fairy folk, could walk amongst the living. The practice of leaving out food was in hope of appeasing wandering spirits as well as welcoming home and honoring the spirits of departed loved ones returning to the homestead; and the tradition of the jack o’ the lantern, which we carry on in our Halloween celebrations, was to scare off the bad spirits and keep them away. Dressing up as ghouls and ghosts was also a piece of those ancient customs that have come down to our present day celebrations, and as Audrey reminded me, so too are bonfires and bobbing for apples!
As we remember our departed family and loved ones this All Saints Sunday, we also have centuries worth of other Christians who have come before us that we remember.
In our readings for today, we hear stories of some of those ancient and departed families. From Abraham’s family, we hear of Joshua preparing to finally lead Abraham’s descendants into the land promised for, at that point, centuries, renewed through Moses and the promise to bring God’s people out of slavery and into a land of their own, and finally, after Moses’ death, which we heard about last week, crossing over the Jordan river into the land of freedom and God’s promised deliverance.
Our Psalmist captures some of the prayers of thanksgiving passed down from great-great grand parents to great grand parents to grand parents to parents to their children, who passed them along to their own children until the time of David when many of the Psalms were written in remembrance of the family struggles, victories, and God’s presence through it all.
Paul also writes in remembrance of a faith community that he helped to form, the work he went to in teaching them about God, both by his words and his actions, to help them find faith and draw them into relationship with God and one another, and he gives thanks for the relationships he formed with them as they became like family to him.
And Jesus reminds us not only of the importance of remembering those in our past who inspire us, but also of the importance of living the faith we’ve come to believe because of them. The Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading teach others about what their ancestors’ stories are supposed to mean in their lives, but they’ve forgotten that the examples and faith of the teachers who came before them is supposed to be lived out, not just talked about. So Jesus reminds them that the examples of faith we’re given teach us to love and serve each other with respect and dignity.
In just a moment, we’ll remember some of these same important lessons as we renew our baptismal promises to love and serve one another, to work for justice and equality, and to respect the dignity of every human person as a child of God.
Loving God, as we remember our family members and friends from this Calvary family, and as we remember the promises we made in our baptism to love and serve each other as you did, help us to also remember that we are the continuing story of faith in our own lives and world, and give us the strength and courage to live out our faith as examples of your care.
Amen