All Saints

Hebrews 12.18-24; Matthew 5.1-12

November is the time in the Church's year specifically dedicated to Remembrance as we celebrate All Saints day today, All Souls tomorrow, Remembrance Sunday next week and then finally at the very end of the month we remember St. Andrew, the 'First Called' of the disciples.

But these celebrations and memorials aren't simply a remembrance of people who have passed on, they also give us the opportunity to thin more deeply about our own life, the Kingdom of God and what we ourselves might be passing on to eventually. With regard to these things I've always found the final prayers at the a burial of ashes quite challenging and evocative. The prayers are:

Heavenly Father,

we thank you for all those whom we love but see no longer.

As we remember N in this place,

hold before us our beginning and our ending,

the dust from which we come

and the death to which we move,

with a firm hope in your eternal love and purposes for us,

in Jesus Christ our Lord.

God of hope,

grant that we, with all who have believed in you,

may be united in the full knowledge of your love

and the unclouded vision of your glory;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

May the infinite and glorious Trinity,

the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

direct our life in good works,

and after our journey through this world

grant us eternal rest with all the saints.

Those words seem to take us through the whole sweep of our lives in a moment, place us firmly in the Kingdom and also within the providence of God. They take us beyond the horizon of our sight and of our understanding. And as such they demand of us, faith. So, I find those words at one both a comfort, as they place my life firmly in God, and also a challenge, asking me what I really believe, about myself, about life and about God. And I'm challenged to make sense out of life as the prayer tries to give me some sense of what life is.

And it's the same with our readings this morning, first from St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews and then in St. Matthew's gospel.

The reading from Hebrews places us in God's kingdom, through the saving work of Jesus Christ. It says that we aren't like Moses and the people of Israel who came to Mount Sinai and were forbidden to climb the mountain to get close to God. On that sort of thinking was based the whole idea of having to make sacrifices to God to get close to Him and to be able to communicate with Him. But the writer tells us that through Jesus we come to Mount Zion, to the gathering of all the faithful around God's throne perpetually in His presence. So by this we see ourselves as Christians given the hope, through Christ, and the assurance of our place with the saints.

But then comes the challenge in St. Matthew's gospel; because it tells us who these saints are - the poor in Spirit - those who depend upon God totally; those who mourn, and here that means those who mourn over their sins, those who are always conscious of their sinfulness and are genuinely repentant. The meek are those who, being dependent upon God have strength. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are those whose greatest desire is to see God's kingdom as first in their lives.

Do you see the challenge? Looked at in this way, Jesus is giving us a definition of what it means to have the character and the life of a saint. St. Paul said that we should work out our own salvation in fear and trembling and I'm sure it was this sort of thing that he had in mind. Jesus calls us to examine ourselves continually, day by day and to ask ourselves how far we meet this challenge in the whole of our life.

So you see in calling us to think about our loved ones who have passed away and the Saints the Church has us recall week by week, year by year, we are being asked to look at ourselves and ask ourselves if we have that sense of being in the Kingdom now; that sense of heading towards Mount Zion to be gathered around God's throne with all the saints, and probably most importantly a sense of doing the work of sainthood, which is a true and steady turning to God in repentance and faith.