Sunday Sermon 1st Nov 2020

 MATTHEW 5: 1:12 JOHN 3 REV 7 CCM

Today in the church we commemorate All Saints Day. In fact, our readings this morning seem to have little in common, from the sermon on the mount, to the letter of John, to the book of revelation, but what they do have in common is the assurance that God knows his own children. And that is all those believers who have gone before and we here this morning.

I wonder if you had any visitors last night, trick or treating. Local shops in town have had scary masks and witches hats in their windows for weeks. I had never heard of trick or treating when I was a child, but it is based on an ancient church tradition, that have nothing to do with witches.

In the middle ages, poor people in the community begged for soul cakes, and would promise to pray for departed souls if they received them. And if, for example, you knew that your uncle Fred had led a sinful life here on earth, you would give out soul cakes and pay these people to pray for the soul of uncle Fred, so that his soul would not stay in purgatory as he deserved, but would go straight to heaven. This is the root of our modern custom.

But for the church, All Hallows Eve, or Halloween is merely the eve of the Feast of All saints. And whilst the church celebrates many saints’ days, there are many more unknown saints, and many who have been forgotten or never specifically honoured, so today we celebrate and give thanks for their faith.

And we celebrate the communion of saints, the belief that all God’s people, those living and those in heaven are all connected in one tight-knit communion. We are all the family of God.

We normally think of saints as those people who lead exemplary lives. Mother Teresa. St. Augustine. St. Francis of Assisi, or Peter and Paul. We many think of Stephen, the first martyr, and other committed Christians whose faith in god did not spare them from the peril of history and demanded their lives.

We might not think that we belong with such people, but we are all saints by virtue of our baptism into Christ by the Holy Spirit.

The term saint in the NT is from the word “hagios ‘meaning sacred, pure or blameless. And when Paul writes his letters of encouragement to the communities of Phlippi and

Ephesus, he addresses the believers as saints. For Paul, anyone who is in Christ is a saint, including those of us who know how far we are from perfection.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, who was martyred in 1945 stated, “the Christian community, the Church of Christ has been torn from the clutches of the world. Of course it has to live in the world, but it is made into one body …the body is the “holy Christian church” and its’ members are “called to be saints” sanctified in Jesus Christ, chosen and set apart before the foundation of the world.

The object of the church’s calling in Jesus Christ is that we should be holy and without blemish.”

Realistically we know that none of us is ever going to be another Mother Theresa or Deitrich Bonhoffer. But everyone who helped out at the fete, who cleans the church, who gives food to the community kitchen, who gives money to the parish is a saint. Because they do what they do for the glory of God.

That is what makes us saints. It is because we know that we need God, that we love God and that every small thing we do is for God. That is what makes us saints; God’s enabling love rather than our piety. As someone once said, saints are not perfect, just committed.

In the words of our epistle this morning:

1. See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  

2  Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.  

3  And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

AMEN