Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God the Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!
All Saints’ Day. What is this day all about? What is a Saint? There’s generally a bit of confusion about this day as Lutherans. Didn’t Luther get rid of this whole idea at the time of the Reformation?! No, quite to the contrary. All Saints’ was quite integral to the Reformation. In fact, it was the core reason Luther nailed up the 95 Theses on October 31st - he knew that myriads of Christians would be coming to church on November 1st. Was there some kind of amazing potluck dinner that day that was bringing in throngs of people!? A rock and roll band and light show?! Wonderful children’s programs!? Actually, attending Church on All Saints’ was a requirement put in by Pope Innocent the 8th in 1484, one year before Martin Luther was born. So everyone had to attend, meaning that the majority of people would see Luther’s writings and that really got the Reformation ball rolling.
But the core of All Saints’ Day is remembering. Remember back in the day before smart phones and notes apps, how did you remember to do stuff? Or remember your grandkid’s birthdays or anniversaries and such? You wrote it down in the day timer or on the calendar, right? Maybe sticky notes stuck the wall beside the phone. Perhaps a string tied around your finger? This is the kind of stuff we did and still do to remember important people and dates in our lives. All Saints’ is much the same. We remember all the good that God permitted His people to do and this becomes a source of inspiration for us. It’s like looking at hockey cards of the legendary players like Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr. These players had incredible, MVP class talent. They inspired generations of young kids who wanted to play hockey and be the best. They were guys to look up to. We might even say heroes. We remember them for their greatness and all they accomplished. All Saints’ has this same idea to it. We remember the heroes of the Christian faith for their faithfulness and inspiring lives of virtue that our Lord permitted them to do.
So you have this idea of remembering the MVPs and such people are given specific days throughout the year to be remembered on. Like St. Mark the Gospel writer on April 25th or St. Mary Magdalene on July 22nd. But what about everybody else? What about the lesser-known Saints? There was plenty of other great hockey players who were inspiring too, right? Same with the Saints of the church. This day of All Saints’ was setup for this precise reason. Even way back to the very early days of the Christian church, in Antioch - the first place the disciples were called Christians (Acts 11:26) - they held a remembrance of all the holy martyrs on the first Sunday after Pentecost each year. These were the Saints who chose to die at the hands of persecutors rather than deny their faith in Christ. These kinds of practices continued throughout every generation of the church to this very day. There is always value in remembering how God worked in the lives of His faithful people.
Luther himself was brought up in this culture of remembrance. His family would read through stories of the lives of the Saints. He even said “next to the Holy Scripture there certainly is no more useful book for Christendom than that of the lives of the saints.” He named all of his kids after Christian saints of the past too, as have many Christians over the years. In a sermon in 1537 he preached “Thus I praise and laud the true saints, people graced and gifted with an understanding of Holy Scripture and with many fine, splendid endowments of the Holy Spirit, gifts which they also use for the improvement and encouragement of Christendom.” And so this three fold saintly tradition developed of thanking God for these people, strengthening our own faith by their examples and thirdly honoring them by imitation, first of their faith and then of their other great virtues.
Where the Church of Rome went wonky on the Saints was in appealing to them for merit. This idea came right along with the indulgences we spoke of last Sunday. There was this great big bucket of merit that Jesus and the Saints wracked up that the average poor miserable sinner Christian could tap into with cash or works and the like. This idea Luther quickly corrected. But because of this wrong teaching, the remembering of the Saints has kind of gone out the window, like pitching the baby out with the bath water. This key idea of remembering those who came before us in the faith has diminished in our practice and is completely gone in most protestant denominations. But it is important to remember the Saints for all those reasons I already mentioned. Their faith is inspiring. Their stories of trusting God in tough times encourage us and spur us on when we encounter the same things. It’s also a reminder of what the opening verses of Hebrews 12 tell us: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
This “cloud of witnesses” are none other than the Saints in Christ our Lord. Some are more well known than others, but they are all important, just like each and everyone of God’s Baptized people are. Redeemed, with robes washed white in the blood of Christ the Lamb of God, no matter how great or small. This idea comes through in the first verse of a hymn called We Sing for All the Unsung Saints. “We sing for all the unsung saints, That countless, nameless throng, Who kept the faith and passed it on With hope steadfast and strong.” (Lutheran Service Book 678). It highlights the importance of remembering for us in this matter. And, the concept dovetails right into our civic Remembrance Day on November 11th too. We remember and give thanks to God for our soldiers who fought for our country and freedom.
And there is another central act of remembering that is intrinsically tied to our faith. We do it every single Sunday. On the night our Lord Jesus was betrayed by Judas, what did He do? He took the bread and the wine and when He had given thanks He gave them to the disciples with a promise: this is my body, this is my blood broken and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Do this as often as you eat and drink it in … remembrance of Me. The idea here isn’t merely recollection and reminiscing like we do of the old days. It’s not merely a memorial of our Lord’s cross and passion but it is also a participation in it. As we eat our Lord’s body and drink His blood, we receive His sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins by faith.
I saw this funny bumper sticker once. It said “I found Jesus! He was in the bread and wine the whole time!” It’s a reminder that our Lord makes Himself present in the bread and wine. And where the Lord is present, there His people are with Him. The church militant - us, united together in Christ with the church triumphant - the Saints. Here it is that we see and remember that great cloud of witnesses that are united to Christ our Lord by faith whether on earth or in heaven. This is why we remember all those who have gone before us and all of those yet to come after us.
We remember Jesus’ sacrifice for us and how His grace has changed the world. The divine light of God’s kingdom has shined into our hearts too through our Baptism as God’s people. This same heavenly light we are called to shine into the world through faith and lives of virtue. God’s grace through us, just as in the lives of many Saints before us, changes and affects the world around us. These are the consequences of grace. And, we might even suffer persecution for Jesus, like the holy Martyrs. But we are assured that the reward waiting in Heaven is great! And, not only that, but we look forward to the amazing family reunion that awaits us too when we will be reunited once and for all with all who have trusted Jesus in this life. Such a glimpse we get of this even today as we gather around our Lord’s altar with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven! What a glorious heavenly celebration awaits us and all the Saints. Thanks be to God now and forever! Amen!
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