In the Episcopal Church,
the denomination I grew up in and was formed by,
we have thought that setting aside a special day to celebrate
ALL the Saints
was so important that, if All Saints Day, November 1,
didn’t come on a Sunday
then we would move that celebration to the following Sunday
and bump the regularly scheduled programming.
All the Saints were important,
not just the ones that had their own special feast day,
like Saints Peter, Paul and Mary.
And then, just because we recognized
that we really had no way of knowing just who was a bona fide Saint
- we left that up to God’s judgment, not ours –
we then designated the next day, November 2, as All Souls Day,
when we could remember and honor all who had died
for all beings are held in the everlasting arms of the Creator.
Nothing is lost in that Eternal Now
in the Mind of the Maker
that envelopes all the past, present and future.
So let me tell you my recent All Saints story.
I just got home from a trip to Nepal.
I was there with my sister because of her business partner Kirk
for the Stephen R. Novak Foundation.
He had moved to Kathmandu
where the foundation helped fund various significant
education, health and job creation projects.
Nepal is a small country
and despite being famous for Mt. Everest and all the trekking,
out of 195 nations in the world Nepal ranks
just 28 up from the bottom in terms of economic well being.
And there are so many places right now
that are in crying need of attention
for poverty, climate crises, war and the like
that Nepal doesn’t get that much notice.
So the Foundation is one way to make an important difference
in a country where a little help can go a long way.
Well, Kirk died.
His good friends there were people he and my sister
had worked with for years.
But we needed to come and attend to his affairs,
and to celebrate his life with his friends
and scatter his ashes.
For that we went to Pharping, a village outside of Kathmandu,
famous for its many Tibetan Buddhist monasteries
and the place where all the prayer flags are flown
on behalf of those who have died.
We climbed up the steep hillside where thousands upon thousands
of prayer flags were streaming out in all directions.
All the way up to the top all these prayer flags
in memory of those who have died
were stretched out high up between the trees
where the wind could blow through them
spreading the prayers written on each flag out into the air
for the benefit of all living beings.
For me going there became something like celebrating
All Saints Day and All Souls Day (el Día de los Muertos)
all at once.
There is a holy presence and peacefulness about this place.
Life and death,
grief and remembrance,
legacy and hope for the future,
all speaking from those flags representing
“a great multitude that no one could count”
to quote what was recorded in the reading
from the Book of the Revelation.
As Kirk’s ashes were thrown to the wind
prayers were said from both the Buddhist tradition
and from the Committal in the BCP Burial Office.
“Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord;
And let light perpetual shine upon him.
May his soul, and the souls of all the departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace.”
As we remember the faithful departed,
so too this is a time to be reminded
of the common theme of our mortality.
All the Saints, especially the capital letter Saints, we may note,
often met their deaths as martyrs,
and all of the Saints we commemorate are dead.
Now Saints are different from heroes.
With Saints it’s not all happy endings and success stories.
This is a reminder that to follow Jesus faithfully
is not just a one time altar call,
or even being fairly regular in church attendance
and keeping your nose clean.
Be assured that simply by being initiated into the household of God
by baptism
we are now susceptible to this refining process in our lives
of being formed into saints/holy beings/
beings whose life will be a living witness
that we have been touched by God
and we have been changed.
It goes with the territory,
part of the deal when we decide to follow Jesus.
Jesus is a spiritual master
who can and will be mightily present with us
as Resurrection Spirit, Holy Spirit,
doing the spiritual work within us
that we need and crave
and are helpless to accomplish for ourselves.
I have learned from experience over the years
that if I don’t attend to what needs attention in my life
- spiritually, emotionally, behaviorally, relationally -
life is going to hit me up side the head - over and over again,
as much as it takes,
until I get the lesson,
until I awaken to my need for God’s incomparable grace, unconditional mercy and healing love,
and I start cooperating with,
instead of frustrating, this process of refinement.
You see, I have the belief that we are all saints,
and I don’t mean goody-two-shoes kinds of people
who are always sweet and smiley and self-effacing.
We are people upon whom Jesus has put a claim
and now there’s no use resisting.
You want life to work better for you? Here’s my advice:
Stop resisting and pay more attention to Jesus.
Remember he was the guy
who told Peter, Andrew, James and John
to push their boats out into the deep
after they had been fishing all night and not catching anything.
Do you know that story?
And now when he tells them to cast their nets this time
all the fish in the lake seem to make a bee line for the boat,
coming at the call of Jesus,
and they had more fish than the nets could hold.
But then we humans aren’t half so cooperative as the fish
so that it often takes a lot more to get us to realize
that the One we call a Savior actually can save us,
sometimes even save us from ourselves.
We would be Saints.
The potential is there.
We can be so much more than we are right now.
That is always the case.
God sees in us all the unrealized potential that is there
God sees us as great Saints,
ones who have gifts and ministries
that can bring living water to thirsty people,
that can unbind people,
that can loose them from all the various ways
in which lives can get bound up in death.
When we open the door just a crack to him,
Jesus puts a claim on us as his own.
He wants to disciple us,
so that we can be of some good use for sake of the rest of a world
that is struggling in darkness.
We would be Saints.
We don’t have time to do an in depth study of the Beatitudes here,
the reading from Matthew’s Gospel,
from the opening words of the Sermon on the Mount,
although that would be good to do,
because there is SO much packed into these words.
But I will say a couple of things.
Notice in these Beatitudes that Jesus did not say
blessed are those who have kept the Ten Commandments.
He did not say blessed are those who came to church every Sunday.
Or those who did many good deeds,
or were generous in their charitable giving,
or who preached great sermons,
or who wrote books full of inspiring words.
He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,”
those who are not full of themselves,
who are not ego-invested in everything they say and do.
Blessed are those who mourn,
who grieve, like those who have lost a loved one,
those who see what there is to mourn about.
Blessed are the meek,
that is, those who are gentle, kind,
humane, considerate and unassuming,
those who are so totally absorbed in the Divine Presence
that there is no room for violence in them.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for justice and holiness and the righteousness of God,
which is that state of wholeness and integrity;
blessed are those who realize
that they have been starving for these things
and haven’t been getting enough of them every day.
These Beatitudes all describe those who have deficiencies,
who are not complete within themselves,
who need something more than
the standards of the way the world looks at
success and strength and being top dog.
These Beatitudes describe the essential attitude
of those who are being blessed.
The key to being included in the Reign of God,
the Kingdom of Heaven
is to know your own need and be open to having that need met,
not through your own efforts solely,
but through the mercy of God.
All who are poor in spirit,
who mourn,
who are meek,
who hunger and thirst for righteousness
are given the Kingdom of God,
are comforted,
inherit the earth,
have their hunger and thirst satisfied.
Knowing your own poverty,
you then have the humility to accept
what is freely offered to you by God.
Recognizing and suffering your own grief,
not being in denial about the grief,
opens you to being able to recognize and respond to
God’s most incredible expression of love,
for which there is no greater comfort.
The attitude of meekness is the attitude of a servant,
one who takes the lower position in society,
who lets others go first.
You know, the sign that a servant is doing a good job
is in not being noticed.
The eye is drawn to the quality of the work done, not the doer.
The process of blessedness offered by Jesus
comes in this listening to his voice,
because when we listen to this voice
we move from
where we are in our own ego-centered self identification
to the realization of where he is,
to the realization of a new self-identity, identity in Christ,
just like being branches on the Vine.
So being blessed by God is a matter of grace,
not as a result of any great heroic effort on our part.
It is God who does the blessing within us.
That means that all of us can be Saints.
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