Sunday 4th November 2012. All Saints’ Day.
Isaiah 25:6-9. Revelation 21:1-6a. Gospel: John 11:32-44.
Oh, you can’t get to heaven in a limousine, cos heaven aint got no gasoline.
Oh, you can’t get to heaven in dirty jeans cos heaven aint got no washing machines.
Oh, you can’t get to heaven with an old girl guide, because an old girl guide is much too wide.
Some verses of an old song: a very long song with plenty of dubious verses. Ask me after why you can’t get to heaven with a kleenex box!
Well today we are celebrating All Saints’ Day. It’s the day when we celebrate the lives of people who have been acknowledged by the church throughout history as being very holy and who are guaranteed a place in heaven.
Heaven! It must be quite a place, though none of us know firsthand of course. But the imagery used of heaven makes it sound really good. Our readings liken it to being at a sumptuous feast where everyone is having the good time that can come from a great party with excellent food and interesting company. It is a place where there is no crying and pain or mourning. Heaven is a place where God’s power and love have the last word over all the unhappy things we have to face in this life, as well as being a place where our sins and weaknesses are banished forever.
In the olden days and still at the Convent I was in and in more catholic churches many more Saints’ days are celebrated than we do here. There are loads! At the Convent there were often 2 or 3 a week to celebrate and what’s more they had different what we called classes depending on how important they were so people like the Apostles were more important than people like St Teresa or Maximillian Kolbe and the services were correspondingly fancy accordingly to the level of importance. Jesus and Mary feast days even had alleluias sprinkled liberally around. We would always hear a little bit about the saint and what they did that led to their beatification. Listening to their stories is inspirational.
And that is the other point of keeping All Saints’. Telling their stories gives us something to aspire to. It can focus us, make us want to try harder to follow God’s way, give us encouragement when our way is hard. That’s one of the reasons, incidentally, there are Patron saints. Saints who allegedly have a special concern for different things so understand where we are at in relation to that subject. St Francis and animals, for example or St Jude and lost causes, St Christopher and travel.
How do we get into heaven, well not by any other means than the grace of God and in some ways I think the saints must be horrified they are considered holy and that they are revered as they are, but the message of the Gospel is not only about salvation through the grace of God but also a call to be the best we can be, to use our lives here on earth as a precursor to our lives in heaven by loving God and others as best we can; a challenge to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. So the Saints can help us a lot in that task. We can be a bit stagnant, a bit dead in our lives like Lazarus in the tomb and Jesus calls us to come out and live life in him. And we are called to help each other. Jesus calls us out into new life but it is other people who move the tombstone and take off the grave clothes. We do that for each other, but again stories of the Saints can help us too.
We also do well to remember that things are not always what they seem. A year ago would you have described Jimmy Savile as a saint? Or that Richard Nixon was a decent guy before his fall from grace? When people find out I was a nun they usually attribute a greater holiness to me than is deserved. We can’t judge by appearances either for good or bad. People can look holy and be right terrors and people can come across as very bad but underneath can have a real heart for God and be very loving towards others.
It is easy to make saints sound better than they were. Sure they did great things and often overcame great personal suffering and obstacles but gosh so many of them must have been difficult people to be around and often they had ‘issues’ as we would say today. But maybe that should be cause for encouragement. Think, too, of Jesus‘ human lineage; full of affairs, foreigners and evil kings. His disciples included someone who wasn’t loyal, a thief and people who wanted the power and glory. The other day a neighbour, on discovering I was a Christian and Church goer said he had been thinking about church and, though he had never been, he imagined that the people who go must be very nice. I must admit I didn’t know what to say! But God chooses fallible people to follow him and to become citizens of heaven along with the saints. And many of us, if not all, have both skeletons in our cupboards as well as personal weakness and flaws. It is not about keeping people out of heaven; it is about including them and there is hope for all of us.
In this country we have an honours system whereby some people are rewarded for different things they have done in the field of sport for example or charitable work. (Jimmy Savile was one of them because he, too, was a mixture of good and bad). But when the honours lists come out I always find myself thinking about the people who are unsung heroes, who quietly get on with doing good and loving God and who are never recognised. Think about this church; the people who faithfully do jobs behind the scenes quietly and without the desire to be praised; the people without whom the church would fall apart. They are saints.
What is required is the grace of God which accepts us as we are, warts and all, along with a desire to become the best we can be. The saints can inspire us and so can those around us if we let them. Let’s see past peoples’ imperfections and the things that wind us up and look for the things in them that are signs of the life of God growing in them and be humble enough to aspire to what they have. One day we will rejoice with each other andwith the Saints as we all take our place in heaven.
Susie Walker.
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