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November 2, 2003; All Saints' Sunday, Year B
    The Rev. Harold "Skip" Comer, Rector

In a week that has had Psyco, Alien Resurrection, Jason in the Halloween sequels, vampires, and all other sorts of frightening movies it was delightful to see our children dressed up as saints this morning.  Some of them are very familiar to us like Mary and Joseph, Peter the disciple, and Matthew and Luke the gospel writers.  Others like George, Anne, and Helen are somewhat less familiar.

Today is All Saints’ Sunday, or the Sunday after All Saints’ Day which occurs on November 1st.  All Saints’ Day is one of the seven principle feast days of the church year and because this day is so important the rubrics, or directions, in The Book of Common Prayer allow for it to also be observed on the Sunday following November 1st.  This morning I am going to talk about the origin of All Saints’ Day and what it means for us.

All Saints’ Day has its’ origin in what we call Halloween.  As Christianity spread into Britain and Ireland during the second and third centuries it encountered the pagan religion of the Celts.  One of their festivals was Samhain, which was the Celtic New Year and Festival of the Dead, and was held on November 1st of each year.  The Celts believed that the dead returned to their homes on the evening before Samhain, which became know as All Hollows’ Eve.  On this evening elaborate preparations were made for the visit of departed family members.

The Druids (Celtic priest) and sorcers warned the people that evil fairies would also be about on this night, so the people developed the custom of disguising themselves by wearing masks, and carving scary faces on hollowed out turnips to ward off the evil fairies.  Ceremonies that involved sacrifices of crops and animals were also developed in an attempt to appease the Lord of the Dead on October 31.

As the Celts were converted to Christianity, their pagan religious beliefs and practices were generally condemned.  But when it came to Samhain, the Church in Great Britain Christianized it from being a festival to the Lord of the Dead to a day of celebration for early Christian martyrs.  October 31st became the Eve of Hallowmas during which, in the evening, services and parties were held which celebrated the lives of saints and martyrs.

About this same time the Church of Rome began recognizing more martyrs and other faithful people who had died by giving them own day on which to be commemorated.  This practice of giving a saint or martyr their own day for commemoration is still practiced by the Roman Catholic Church and Episcopal Church today.  If  you look in the front of our Book of Common Prayer you will find over one hundred and fifty saints and martyrs who have a special day of commemoration during the church year.

It was in the ninth century that Pope Gregory IV pronounced that November 1st was to be the festival of All Saints.  This day was meant to be a celebration of all of those Christians who had led exemplary lives or done praiseworthy deeds and did not have their own day of special recognition.  So it is on this day that we celebrate the Saints.

Now what is really confusing is that the church has taken on the role of identifying or pronouncing who the Saints are.  But in reality that role really belongs to God.  In John’s vision[1] that we heard this morning there are 144,000 saints in heaven from the twelve tribes of Israel.  In this passage we are lead to believe that non-Christians, that is Jews who did not accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior have received salvation.  A bit confusing for Christianity who proclaims that salvation is only through Jesus Christ.  The number is even more confusing, because it is not to be taken literally, the number is meant to indicate that a vast number of Jews have ascended to the presence of God.

Who are the saints, the ones in John’s vision that are robed in white.  “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”[2]  In other words they are those who have believed and accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.   Through God’s grace in Jesus Christ, a vast multitude has and will receive salvation or eternal life.

All Saints’ Day does not just remember the past – those Christians who lead exemplary lives and died for what they believed in – it also looks at the present and the future.  It looks at us, inviting us to participate in the hope to which God has called us in Jesus Christ.  This is the message that Saint Paul gave to the Christians in the first century when he wrote, “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.”[3]  To be, or become, a saint is not just for someone else, it is our calling.  Having all of those people, heroes and heroines of the Christian faith on our Church calendar to look up to are great, but as St. Paul reminds us, we are called to be saints also.  We do not have to wait until we die for someone else to determine if we are a saint.  By allowing God to fill us with his Holy Spirit, and following Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we begin our sainthood journey right here and now.  There is no vote by the Church to determine our saintly status,  that has already been bestowed on us by God at our baptism when we were sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.

It is for this reason, sainthood, that you and I were born and baptized.  It was never intended that we should come back from the dead on Halloween to visit or haunt our family and friends.  Our inheritance is to be among the saints in God’s eternal kingdom, who surround his throne and worship his Son, Jesus Christ.

Praise be to God who calls us his sons and daughters, and gives us the gift of new life in Jesus Christ.

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