Solemnity of All Saints, Year B

Mary Holmen

 John 11:32-44

As I read the story of the raising of Lazarus again this week, my mind went back 25 years, to a time when our daughter Catherine was trying to make sense out of both ends of the life span – of both birth and death. That was the year she was three years old.

At that time we were living in the community of Selkirk. For a town of 10 or 11,000, Selkirk has a lot of seniors. There are three nursing homes, a number of seniors’ residences, a very active seniors’ centre, and a lot of older people living independently in their own homes.

For a town of that size, John, who was rector of Christ Church, conducted a lot of funerals. The year Catherine was three, John buried 35 people. Some were what he called “front row members” – active parishioners. Others were residents of the town, because at that time, if you didn’t belong to any church you called the Anglicans (they were first alphabetically in the phone book). So at a very young age, Catherine became quite familiar with the idea of funerals, funeral homes, burials, and so on.

It was not very surprising, then, that Catherine began to wonder about what happens when people die. It came out first in her prayers at bed-time. Every night we would pray for Grandma and Grandpa Whytehead, my parents, and for Grandma Holmen, John’s mother. And she would ask, “But what about Grandpa Holmen?” Now, John’s father died in 1972, before John and I ever met. We explained to Catherine that Grandpa Holmen got very sick and couldn’t get better, so he died. She wanted to know where he was now, and we told her that Grandpa Holmen was with God. That explanation seemed to satisfy her, although there were of course a lot more questions: When do people die? Am I going to die? Are you going to die? And the one guaranteed to make me feel positively ancient: Are you old now? Basically, though, she seemed quite comfortable with the idea that when you die, you go to be with God.

That was also the year that I was pregnant with Martha. So of course, Catherine began to take an interest in things that happened before she was born. John and I would be talking about something that had happened in the past, and Catherine would want to know, “Was I there?” “No, you weren’t born yet.” “Was I still in your belly?” “No, it was before that.” “Well, where was I?” She simply could not imagine a time when she did not exist. Don’t ever think that just because two parents are both ordained, they have all the answers. We were really starting to run out when we hit on an explanation – she was with God, waiting to be born. Well, that made sense to her. Before you were born and after you died, you were with God.

It was interesting to see what happened with Catherine’s thinking a year later. With another year of living came a greater awareness of the permanence of death, to the point that she began to say things like, “But I don’t want to be with God; I want to stay with you.” The awareness that this life will end naturally produces anxiety in all of us. Still, the basic reality remained for our kids as they were growing up: before birth and after death, we are with God.

Why all this talk about death on a day when we are celebrating baptism? It seems kind of gloomy. The truth is that baptism is not just about life and new life. It is about death too. It is about dying to one way of life, to an old way of being, and becoming new, being born into a new way of being in the world. It is how we participate and share in the death and resurrection of Jesus. What we’re about to do here is a symbolic drowning, to enact ritually this passage from death to life.

The celebration of All Saints reminds us that we exist in a time frame that is larger than our life on this planet. Today we celebrate and give thanks for all those faithful people who have gone before us. And we celebrate and give thanks for our membership in a community which extends forward and backward in time and space, a community we call the Communion of Saints. 

We are used to thinking of saints as religious or spiritual superheroes. All Saints Day does have its origins in the commemoration of martyrs in the early persecutions of the church, people whose names were unrecorded and who could not be remembered on the exact day of their martyrdom. Saints are people who are extraordinarily close to God, who live in intimate union with the Holy, whose lives are outstanding examples of faithfulness and who witness to God’s infinite, intimate love and goodness. But we know there is another dimension to sainthood. The root meaning is “holy people”, and so the author of the letter to the Ephesians can write in that way “to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1:1). Even the Christians in Corinth, whom Paul has to scold for the worst possible moral failings, are nevertheless addressed as those “who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints”. On this celebration of All Saints, we are all saints. We are All Saints.

1. Today we celebrate and proclaim three things:We celebrate and proclaim our membership in the Communion of Saints, which is ours by baptism. This is why All Saints Day or the Sunday after it is marked as an occasion especially appropriate for baptism. In a few minutes, we will bring into this community, this communion, another new member. We will witness the vows made by her parents and sponsors. We will solemnly promise to support and uphold her in her new life in Christ. And we will all renew the covenant that was made at our baptism. We will reaffirm our commitment to live as God’s holy people in the world, offering ourselves as witnesses, servants, and stewards. As we bring Finley Kate into the story of God’s loving purposes for this world, we will reconnect ourselves with that story that roots us in our past and propels us with hope into our future
2. We celebrate and proclaim that, as saints, we are a liberated people, freed by our baptism from the chains of the fear of death. Not from death, mind you, but from its fear. Mary says to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Can you hear the reproach in her words? “Where were you when I needed you?” But there is also trust – if you had been here, you could have made a difference. And Lazarus comes out of his grave and Jesus says, “Unbind him, and let him go
3. We celebrate and proclaim the unique kind of time in which we as Christians live. For each of us, the end of time comes at the moment of our death, yet as a Communion of Saints, we also look for a final consummation, when there shall be an end to death, and to mourning and crying and pain, when the old order finally passes away. As Christians we live in an eternal time frame, on the hinge, as it were, between past and future. Past and future meet in the present, and in this present moment the church already sings the songs of triumph in the midst of incompleteness. In this present moment we already have a taste of what it will be like when God fully dwells with God’s people.

We talk about being with God, without fully knowing what that means. Yet there is never a time when we are not with God, and God with us. When the new heaven and the new earth are complete, I think we will find them rather familiar, for we will have received hints along the way.

Today, as every day, we lay claim to that inheritance of which Paul speaks – “the inheritance of God’s people in the realm of light” (Colossians 1:12). We include this small part of the church in the worldwide Communion of Saints – past, present, and future. Today on this observance of All Saints, we dedicate ourselves again to fulfilling God’s purpose for us and for this world, that through us, God may indeed be present with all those whom we encounter, and that through our worship, work, and witness, the new heaven and the new earth may begin to be built.