ALL SAINTS

            We’ve just mentioned some well-known saints, and I dare say most of us could add a lot more.

            But actually the Festival of All Saints’ is mainly about the saints we have never heard of. What I mean is this.

            On the one hand, we have what I would call the “capital S” saints, the officially recognised saints who have their feast days in the church calendar. These are the famous saints, the Christians whose holiness has been recognised by the church as a whole, whether because they have given their lives as martyrs, or because they were great teachers or evangelists or whatever.

But today is the festival for all the other saints, what I would call the “small s” saints, the ones no one (or hardly anyone) has heard of, the anonymous saints, the obscure saints, the ones who are known only to God. And we can be sure there are far more of these “small s” saints than the few “capital S” saints that the Church has officially recognised.

We tend to think that to be a saint is something very special, some kind of higher calling way beyond the reach of us ordinary Christians. We forget that, actually, most of the “small s” saints are very ordinary Christians, people like us, people who just did their best to be faithful servants of Jesus Christ in whatever situation God had placed them in.

Sainthood is in fact for everyone. All Christians are called to become saints, and indeed that’s why in the New Testament, the word “saints” simply means the whole community of Christians, all the faithful members of the church.

This season of the year is also the time when the Church remembers everyone who has died. Strictly speaking this comes tomorrow, which is called All Souls' Day, but in France, as you know, everyone goes to the cemeteries at Toussaint to tend the family graves and to remember their loved ones. It’s a good tradition, and one which we don’t really have in England.

One reason why it's a good tradition is because we are so inclined in modern society to try and forget about death, to shut it  out of our consciousness.

We do all we possibly can to preserve life (which is obviously not a bad thing); but at the same time we try to kid ourselves that we can avoid the ageing process, or at least we pretend it isn't happening.

So when someone is dying, there tends to be a conspiracy of silence. We go along with the fiction that they will get better, and so we make it difficult for people to talk openly about their death and what it means.

We see death as an enemy, or a defeat. And in a way it is, of course, but someone like St Francis could even see death as a kind of a friend. Remember the beautiful words in his great hymn to creation. Having praised God for all that is full of life and energy, he goes on to say:

And thou, most kind and gentle death,

Waiting to hush our latest breath...

Thou leadest home the child of God,

And Christ our Lord the way hath trod.

            Earlier generations looked death more clearly in the face than we do. People prepared for it, both materially and spiritually, and hoped to make what was called “a good death”. In a word, death was seen as a natural part of life.

            Because for Christians death is not the end. This life is not all  there is to existence.

            A healthy Christian attitude to death is, I think, actually a rather ambivalent one. Death is not, ultimately, a disaster; but on the other hand it is not to be minimised either. I can't say I like very much that very popular text of Henry Scott-Holland that is so often read at funerals, the one which says:

            Death is nothing at all,

            I have only slipped away into the next room...

            No, death is traumatic, both for the one who dies and for the ones who remain behind. Remember how in today's Gospel reading, Jesus was really upset at the death of Lazarus (“deeply disturbed”). He burst into tears; and this even though, as St John tells us, Jesus knew he was going to bring Lazarus back to life. So, even though Christians believe death is not the end, and that we do indeed move on to “a better place”, we are still intensely sorrowful, devastated even, at the death of someone we love.

            Death is perhaps best thought of as a kind of second birth. Just like leaving the safe environment of our mother's womb, so too death is a traumatic journey into an unknown and unimaginable new world. Looked at from this side, it's scary, of course it is; but actually it's the only way through to a new existence free from the constraints and limitations of life on earth. 

            To put it another way, death sets us free to join in the party with all the saints. And what a party! We shall find of course the big name, capital S saints, the celebrity saints, but also all the countless small s saints:

–      the little lady down the street who never made much of her life (we would say) because she devoted herself to caring for her elderly relatives;

–      the person who always got on your nerves, but actually the problem was much more yours than theirs;

–      the criminal with nothing much to be proud of, rather the reverse, but who finally saw that there was a better way.

–      and so on, and so on; you could multiply the examples ad infinitum...

            Moreover, we will find those who confessed the faith – those we would call the “committed Christians”; but also (as the Roman Catholic liturgy beautifully phrases it) “those whose faith is known to God alone”.

            In short, we shall find the most gloriously varied, fascinating, surprising and eternally stimulating group of people you could ever imagine. We shall find, in fact, all the saints.

Reverend John Murray, Strasbourg Anglican Chaplaincy

All Saints' Day, 1 November 2009