In parts of Central America and the Caribbean, the feasts of All Saints and All Souls are celebrated in the cemetery. Families gather to clean and decorate the graves of their loved ones. Tombs are whitewashed or done in pink, aqua, blue, yellow. Greenery, flowers, ribbons or festive wreaths decorate graves. Family members spend the days in the cemetery praying, visiting, eating and celebrating their saints. The air is festive, not somber. Smiles are often more evident than tears.
When we think of saints today, we probably think first of those recognized through the ages as holy people, martyrs, apostles, disciples of Christ, like St. Stephen. Maybe we think of someone from our own past. To grow in holiness we need guides and mentors whose influence continues through us in obvious and often hidden ways. To celebrate those saints who have shown us how to follow Christ is surely appropriate. How do they teach us?
The Beatitudes and Woes from Luke gives us a clue. These verses are not what they might seem: they are neither prescriptions nor entrance requirements for Christians but characteristics of God’s heavenly reign right here on earth. The beatitudes are not about what to do but rather about how to be ourselves, called as Christ’s disciples.
Beatitudes are about being blessed, about sharing God’s life, reflecting God’s image and likeness. They are about being whole human beings. The saints show us how to achieve this integration. They show us how to be poor, poor in things, but with a generous heart, putting our total trust in God, recognizing our blessedness in what God has done for us – and giving back in love and thanksgiving. The saints show us how to be hungry: hungry for justice, hungry for peace, hungry for compassion. The saints show us the holiness of tears, tears shed in grief, in disappointment, in loneliness, in pain. Living with those tears and learning to laugh again. And the saints show us how to love our enemies, to be good to and pray for those who mistreat us, those who don’t share our values, those whose lifestyles we do not respect. (Those who won’t vote the way we will vote on Tuesday.)
And those saints lived not only in ages past. Those saints are among us today. Those saints are those among us who will teach the four children we baptize today how to be Christians. Can you identify those saints? Look around – they are sitting in front of you and next to you and beside you.
When I was a little girl my family belonged to the Richmond Hill Baptist Church in Queens, New York. That was a wonderful church and I loved it. We had a lot of very special things in the Baptist Church. We had exciting Bible stories and we had great old Baptist hymns, and we even had a bowling alley – right in the basement of the church. I thought that bowling alley was rally great!
But I’ll tell you want we did not have in the Baptist Church. We did not have saints. No – no saints. And my father a Reformation Lutheran of the first order, thought no saints was just the way it should be. “Saints,’’said John Rapp, “were a Roman invention” and they had no place in his church.
Apparently my father had not read his Bible as thoroughly as he should have because if he’d read his Bible he would have known that saints is the most common word used for followers of Christ in the New Testament.
So it was myAunt Ida, my Godmother, who by the way was an Episcopalian, who first taught me about saints. When I was about eight years old Aunt Ida gave me a bookmark embroidered with a little poem I still remember to this day. Here’s what the bookmark said:
Why were the saints, saints? Because they were cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful, patient when it was difficult to be patient; and because they pushed on when thy wanted to stand still, and kept silent when they wanted to talk, and were agreeable when they wanted to be disagreeable. That was all. It was quite simple and always will be.”
Aunt Ida taught me that we can all be saints. It was quite simple and always will be. And so to help you remember, too, our parish administrator Conchita Ramos helped me make bookmarks for you, too. You can get one from the ushers as you leave church today.
We can honor the saints by decorating a grave or by lighting a candle. We can recall or share a memory of someone who inspired us. We can appreciate a saint among us who makes a difference. We can be grateful for the example of a recognized saint from the past. But perhaps the best way we can honor our saints is to be like them, fully human, recommitting ourselves daily to living our baptismal covenant. Standing in community and promising we will:
· continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers;
· persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, we will repent and return to the Lord;
· we will proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ;
· we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, and love our neighbors as ourselves.
· and, we will strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being
That, not perfection, is the definition of a saint. Perfection belongs only to God. The hymn we will sing at the close of this celebration, “I sing a song of the saints of God” provides this understanding. The words sing of people in ordinary circumstances who hear God’s call and who respond by allowing God to set them apart for a holy task. That holy task is daily living. With God’s help all of us at St. Stephen’s can live our baptismal ministry and join the “great cloud of witnesses” whose saintly lives are remembered in this celebration. “There’s not any reason, no not the least, why I shouldn’t be one, too.”