Rev: 7: 9-end, Matt: 5: 1-12
First may I say what a joy it is to be here this morning, and how grateful I am, we are, for the kind invitation of Fr Mark and Peter, your director of music, to share in your music and worship for Toussants, All Saints. It’s a particular kindness to have been asked to give the sermon as well: I’m aware that having an unknown preacher at the front is no small thing and a real act of trust and confidence, for which thanks. Time will tell whether your confidence was misplaced… We are here as part of our Parish’s celebration of the legacy of Sir Francis Bacon, the once-famous lawyer, politician, and writer who really got things started in terms of empirical thought and the scientific revolution and who died 400 years ago. He now is buried in the little parish church of St Michael, St Albans, but when he was more active he was, from 1576-79 part of the English embassy to the French Court. Well that is all the excuse we needed to add a Paris leg to our celebrations so, voila, here we are.
Anyway, far more importantly today is La Toussaint, the Feast of All Saints, and it is time to think about them.
Yesterday morning, as soon as we came off the Eurostar, I wanted to see a museum before getting on with choir tour stuff so I trotted to the Musee de Cluny, the former monastery that has gone through several owners since its foundation in the 12th Century but now houses the National Museum of the Middle Ages. I’m sure you all know far better than me this amazing survival of medieval Paris right in the Latin Quarter, and stuffed, top to bottom with the art and artifacts of the middle ages. There are capitals and cloisters, tapestries and reliquaries, altar pieces and icons. There is even Pope John the XII’s knitted liturgical stocking, the sort of thing no prelate today would have the courage (or the legs) to wear.
But most wonderful of all, for me at least, was to see the statues that used to cover the front of many churches in Paris; a weathered, battered, collection of saints, carrying both the trophies of their first martyrdoms, and the scars of later their later ignominies. Many can be identified by their surviving insignia. There is the Blessed Virgin Mary, bearing an infant Jesus on her lap. There is St Paul, the hilt of a sword still clasped in his hand. But there are plenty of others who are not individually identified, grouped together, amorphously labelled ‘saints inconnus’, unknown saints.
Unknown saints. We could be forgiven for thinking that this is what All Saints is about. There are the many saints we do know. They appear in scripture, or have a special day. They might even be the patrons of things. St Denis, who carried his severed head after his execution for miles while it continued preaching is the patron saint of France, and those suffering from headaches. St Jude, whom we celebrated just this week, one of the disciples of Jesus is the patron saint of lost causes, so by extension, Bristol Rovers.
But there are many more saints we don’t know.
Those whose statues have been worn away by the passing of time, or been destroyed. Those who never had a statue in their honour in the first place because they lived long ago, or far away or because no-one noticed them much at all.
We might think that All Saints is for this second group, the also-rans, who don’t get any recognition for their saintliness. They are the unremembered, unremarked, unreliqueried, and so as a consolation are given this special day called All Saints to make up for it. A joint party, not quite as good as your own, but something at least.
But this would be to misunderstand All Saints. This view of things is why we need the reading from Revelation that we heard this morning.
Revelation is a strange book; mysterious, shocking, and glorious all at the same time. It is the Advent book, a vision of the ending of the world as it is and the beginning of heaven and earth as they will be. From its Alpha to its Omega, its beginning to its end, it disorientates us and surrounds us with the mystery of the last things. But one thing it makes very clear is that, whatever else is going on, the saints are there. St John’s vision of heaven is strange, but it is not empty, and the saints we meet there are not unknown.
‘Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from? I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that knows’.
Revelation asks us to change our point of view. We might forget who some of the saints are, the ones that lived long ago or far away or went unnoticed in their holiness by those around them. But God does not. There is no such thing as a ‘saint inconnu’, an unknown saint in heaven, because God is the one that knows.
‘for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe every tear from their eyes’.
In the middle of the violence of a world being unmade and remade, with angels blasting trumpets and holding back the winds trying to blow reality away, we get this beautifully intimate image. If you have ever sailed you might know what it feels like when your boat comes out of the sea and enters the breakwater into a harbour. Suddenly everything becomes still and calm. That’s what happens here, when God wipes the tears from the eyes of the saints who are numbered and known, the whole of heaven holding its breath while the saints stand before God lost in wonder, love, and praise.
The other thing we notice is that the saints are not a closed group. They are a great multitude that no-one could count, from every nation, all tribes and people and languages. They are not exclusive or unattainable, they are like us, they speak French and English and plenty of other things as well, and they are waiting for us to join them
We are all called to be saints. We are all called to reflect the glory of God in our own lives. That’s what saints do, that’s what we are made for. It is what Jesus reminds us we can be good at too.
There is no interview to pass or special uniform to wear, no application form. Just to be known and loved by God, and in the ordinary, sometimes difficult business of living, allow his light to shine through us. All Saints reminds us of two things, then. First that there are no unknown saints in heaven. And second that, rather amazingly, we are invited to become one of them.
All Saints of God, pray for us, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen.
Illustration: Wassily Kandinsky, All Saints Day I, 1911, Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany.