All Saints’ Sunday

November 1, 2007

 

In a restaurant on Thursday, a group of men were reflecting on Halloween. I happened to overhear one of them say something to the effect, “Halloween ain’t nothin’ but wicked. I don’t know how Christian folk can have anything to do with Halloween. Halloween ain’t nothin’ but wicked.”

 

I had been reflecting on Halloween too on All Saints’ Day, but I had been reflecting on my experience here at church. We made jack-o-lanterns out of pumpkins, carving crosses into them instead of faces. Some of the crosses were quite intricate and beautiful. We set them on the steps underneath the rood screen and the candles in them flickered as we read from our scriptures accounts of “The Witch of Endor” and “The Valley of Dry Bones.”

 

In my view, as distinct from the view of the man in the restaurant, Halloween like anything else in or outside the Church is only wicked if we make it wicked. There is nothing wrong with humor, the fun we have looking at ourselves: our absurdity unveiled for all to see. Such humor, I believe, has a place in the Christian faith; it keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously; it keeps us humble. There is a lot, however, wrong with laughter at the expense of other people—laughter intended to hurt; that sort of laughter is wicked whether on Halloween or any other day of the year; it does not belong in the Church.

 

So here we are on All Saints’ Sunday, a holiday so important that in the Church’s wisdom it is not limited to November 1, but observed in many places also on the Sunday after. Even if we miss out on all the Saints’ observances throughout the year, here is one harder to pass by. The problem for many of us, though, is that we think of saints standing on pedestals unattainable by us ordinary people. We hear of rigid processes for determining who legitimately gets to be called a saint and we think, “Who among us could live up to those standards? Who can be that kind of a Christian?” We feel lax and inferior.

 

I’m from a state that has sometimes felt that way in relation to our neighbors to the north and south. North Carolinians have sometimes described our state as “a valley of humility between two mountains of conceit.” We always said that lovingly, of course, but history books do often seem to present Virginia and South Carolina as having once been more powerful and influential than North Carolina. This is certainly true in accounts of the establishment of the Episcopal Church. But perhaps being a valley of humility is a good thing. Too much power and influence and extraordinariness can be corrupting.

 

All Saints’ Day, in the wisdom of the Church, is sandwiched between what might be called two valleys of humility: Halloween and All Soul’s Day, the Feast of all the Faithful Departed. It brings the commemoration of saints down to the level of the ordinary, in much the same way Jesus brings the Beatitudes down to the ordinary in today’s Gospel account. Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes is given on a mountain; Luke’s version is given on a plain—on the level of the people. Luke’s version exalts the humbled, “Blessed are you who are poor,” and humbles the exalted, “But woe to you who are rich.” You think you know the definition of a saint? Then think again.

 

Sam Portaro, former Episcopal chaplain to the University of Chicago, speaks of Halloween, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day as a “triduum,” the same word used to refer to the last three days of Holy Week. I find his use of the term appropriate, because in a way, the two sets of Holy Days are the same. They both have to do with death, a topic otherwise out of fashion in our culture, despite our inevitable mortality. Good Friday, a day we are overcome by death, is a prerequisite to the resurrection. Halloween, a day for finding humor in the face of death, is a prerequisite to feasting with the saints.

 

Maybe the Church’s preoccupation with death is also the reason the Church seems out of fashion these days. If you come to church, you’re going to hear about death. It’s kind of at the core of our story: Jesus died on the cross. Or we hear stories such as Moses’ ordeal of leading the Israelites through the desert to get to the Promised Land; he endures decades of hardships, he listens to people constantly complain, but he presses on. And just when they’re about to get there, the land in sight, he dies.

 

The Church doesn’t confine the topic of death to scriptures, though. We also tell the stories of saints whose lives continued where the scriptures left off. We hear about people who embraced the Christian faith, were model Christians, and they died. Some of them lived to an old age, but others weren’t so lucky. Peter was crucified upside down; Perpetua was mauled to death by fierce wild beasts; Martin Luther King was shot to death trying to make society look more like the kingdom of heaven.

 

No wonder the media would rather focus on Britney Spears and Perez Hilton than on the church. People are attracted to glamour and absurdity: fresh new pictures, fresh new stories. The church, people perceive, tells the same story over and over. The media only finds us exciting when we’re pointing fingers at one another, or embroiled in scandals, or getting caught in states of hypocrisy: all of which we are capable of doing. We don’t make as many headlines when we are striving to be saintly: living and dying with the confidence of faith, loving others, being loved by others as God loves us.

 

But the All Saints’ triduum is the Church’s way of saying there’s more to us than meets the eye of outsiders looking in. It’s our way of saying, if you think we’re boring people, come listen to our stories. You might just be surprised.

 

Listen to the story of Jacob who extorts the birthright from his older brother before conspiring with his mother to deceive his father, and all for the sake of getting a blessing not rightfully his. Jacob is one of the great patriarchs of God’s chosen people, one of the people we call a saint.

 

Or listen to the story of King David, who after committing adultery with a woman, has the woman’s husband killed, gets her pregnant, and tries to cover the whole thing up with a façade of self-righteousness before being caught in the midst of his lies. David was regarded as the great king of all time over Israel, one of Jesus’ forebears, another person we call a saint.

 

Or listen to the story of an uneducated fisherman named Peter who starts following a strange itinerant preacher although he can rarely seem to articulate why. When he finally begins to understand who this preacher might be he claims he will never deny him but when push comes to shove he does deny him: three times. Peter became the rock on whom the church was built, the first bishop, a saint.

 

Or listen to the words of Paul, or at least of someone writing in Paul’s name, from one of our readings today. “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.” This [is] from a person who spent a lot of time and energy in the first part of his life making a mockery of Christians, persecuting them, and making them miserable, only to become their ambassador, a world evangelist, one of the great saints of the church.

 

“Jesus looked up at his disciples and said, ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you,… for surely your reward is great in heaven.” There is humor in those statements. There is humor in the thought of calling such fragile, mortal people saints. They are persons raised from a valley, strange people, the type who hang out in graveyards dressed in outrageous costumes, laughing in the face of death. But they are not the “wicked folk.”

 

[But] “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.” Contrary to the standards of the world, saints don’t have a rightful place stationed on top of a mountain while everyone else meanders below. Saints are saints because they are willing to come down from the mountains into the valleys, walking the ways of the cross as ordinary, imperfect people ironically exalted in the eyes of God: people like Jacob, David, Peter, Paul, and you and me.

 

The All Saints’ triduum comes to us in the northern hemisphere as leaves on the trees are withering and falling to the ground, daylight hours are getting shorter, and the coldness and barrenness of winter are just beyond the bend, and even the church year is about to end. And suddenly there’s this burst of excitement at just the right time, giving us the chance to laugh at ourselves and our absurdity as followers of Christ, daring to defy the standards of the world, daring to call ourselves saints.

 

Amen.