All Saints A Matt 5:1-12

Today is All Saints Day. It is a day set aside by the church for us to think about the saints. Not just the big ones like Saint Peter or Saint Paul or Saint Stephen but all of them. So what's a saint?

In some traditions a saint is one who acts on our behalf toward God, intercedes for us and provides us with someone less daunting to share our woes with. Certainly 500 years ago that was a very common way to think of the faithful departed. But we don't really need saints for this because we believe that any mediating that needs to be done on our behalf has already been done by Christ.

Another way to think about what saints do is to consider them great examples of faith. I was at the East Greenbush Library book sale on Friday and I came across a book called 365 Saints. It was a devotional with a page for everyday of the year and each day told you about the saint or shared with you a writing by them or about them and then ended with a prayer. Many times the prayers had to do with how a saint was martyred. How they died in the faith and it asked you to reflect on how you can grow in whatever faith area that involved. This is not a problem. It is great to have role models for your faith and the Catholic church has set aside some very remarkable people to fill this role. But this also isn't exactly the best way to think about saints.

For us the greatest example that a saint can provide is not how great their faith was but how great the faith was that God had in them. That God has in us all.

This is part of the reason that when we talk about saints in this church we don't just talk about folks who have been canonized by Rome but instead we talk about all baptized believing Christians who now enjoy communion with God. We consider all Christians who have died in the faith saints. Our New Testament text calls them those who have been through the great ordeal.

Those who have come through death and now stand washed clean in the presence of the Lord. But death isn't the only great ordeal, they all, any human person who lives, have been through a great many ordeals here on earth through which God and their faith carried them and all of those ordeals, along with all the people they knew and all the lives they touched are part of their identity now as saints.

This year, as a parish we have celebrated the lives of several saints who lived among us and finally finished their great ordeal. Between them we had a range of ages, a range of experience. Many of them were great examples of people who lived with faith but they all provide us with examples of God's faith for us, and in us, even in the midst of great trials.

Looking back over the year I was surprised to remember how many people who passed away this year had lost children when they were young adults. At least one in a tragic accident, several others to sickness and disease. They would have been the first to tell you that that is one of the very worst ordeals that a person can come through but they also seemed keenly aware that God was with them even in the midst of it. That when it was hardest to have faith they were bolstered up by the faith that God had in them, the faith that God provided them with.

Then, we had a funeral at Trinity for one young man whose life had barely started. Who was just into his adulthood and died suddenly, heartbreakingly in an accident. Having maybe just started to come through the throes of youthful rebellion but in the midst of quiet family pain and a huge church funeral there were witnesses to God's faithfulness even in that tragedy.

We had a funeral for sweet Dorthy ______ who came through the great ordeal of slowing losing grasp on reality, a painful and terrifying thing but God remained faithful to her even in those days when having faith by herself became difficult, if not impossible, she was wrapped in the promise of faith from God.

We had a funeral for a St. Stephen's member who died suddenly and without pain after
a full life of 97 years, he was a blessed example of another kind of faithfulness. His great ordeal was simply living long enough to lose so many others, to nurse a sick wife until she finally passed. To live beyond even having many friends or family to attend his funeral but God ever faithful, never left him.

How do I know that God never left and remained ever-faithful to Walter, or Dorthy, Chris or Ed, Julia or so many more? In part, I know because it was evident in who they were and how they are remembered, that is one of the great gifts of the saints, showing us how God has been faithful in lives even after they have ended. But I also know because I know that we were sent the great gift of Christ among us. Who died to win for us a place with God and who rose again as the greatest sign of God's faithfulness to us even in death. We were baptized in his name, sealed with the cross and marked with Christ forever, which is the church's way of saying with words what God is promising with God's whole self, that we are ever-beloved, ever-blessed and ever promised the gift of faith which leads to everlasting union with our God.

We get the beatitudes as the gospel text for this day, a list from Jesus' lips of who all is blessed, when, why and how. One of the Blessings it mentions is this:

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

We who mourn, who throughout our lives have, and will, mourn the deaths of so many are blessed not only because the pain will lessen as time goes on and our hearts will heal. But, we are blessed because in the memory of each saint we learn about the love and faithfulness of God and because on this day especially we are promised that with all the saints who have gone before, those we knew and loved and those multitudes we never knew we will at the last stand washed clean of all great ordeals in presence and union with our God.

We will have time in a short while to remember those who have departed this year and those who died longer ago but that our hearts still ache for. As you do, remember not only who
they were to you but who they are to God. Beloved Children and now blessed saints and give thanks for their lives, the good and bad, the easy and the impossible knowing that God was with them all along, leading them in faith when they were weak and using them as examples of faith when they were strong and that God offers that same promise of faithfulness to all of us and provides us with the saints when we need reassurance and proof. Thanks be to God. Amen.