If you were in Collins Hall for Fall Festival last Sunday, you’ll know that I took my creativity in a very niche direction and dressed up as a version of my husband Paul. Specifically, a marathon runner. The smaller children were quite confused when I jogged up to them offering “nutrition for their long run,” but most were enthusiastic to receive packets of Sour Patch Kids nonetheless.
Paul, on the other hand, donned his most stately expression and walked around the Christ Church Boo Bash as theologian, philosopher, and bishop: Saint Augustine of Hippo (complete with a tiny bishop’s miter for our cat).
We Protestants are comparably light on our treatment of saints. Many, like Saint Augustine, Saint Theresa, or Saint Paul have made their way into our United Methodist lexicon, but the saints that we are most interested in tend not to be these larger than life examples who accomplished great feats of faith (inspiring and relevant as their lives may be).
There is certainly something to be said for looking to these giants of devotion to know that we are not the first to tread life’s winsome and woolly path, but deep meaning is also found in that which Saint Paul speaks: the communion of saints. The whole people of God.
This communion of holy people (not perfect, not miracle workers, but still holy) gathers us into sacred connection with each another. We are spiritually bound, all of us saints, whether canonized or not. When the bar is not ‘undisputed miracles’ but instead the love of God in Christ, a whole lot of us become a whole lot more sacred.
This includes Saint Gertrude (unofficial patron saint of cats) and your great aunt Gertrude, who may or may not have had a cat or two of her own. It includes Saint Francis (patron saint of animals and the environment), and Frank Hodapp, a beloved member of our congregation and choir who died just last week. The communion of saints includes Saint Drogo (patron saint of coffee), and every person who serves at coffee hour.
The hobbit appearing Anglican poet, Malcolm Guite, pens an ode to these saints of everyday stature in the poem, A Last Beatitude:
And blessèd are the ones we overlook;
The faithful servers on the coffee rota,
The ones who hold no candle, bell or book
But keep the books and tally up the quota,
The gentle souls who come to ‘do the flowers’,
The quiet ones who organise the fete,
Church sitters who give up their weekday hours,
Doorkeepers who may open heaven’s gate.
God knows the depths that often go unspoken
Amongst the shy, the quiet, and the kind,
Or the slow healing of a heart long broken
Placing each flower so for a year’s mind.
Invisible on earth, without a voice,
In heaven their angels glory and rejoice.
In Guite’s poetic British English, we hear familiar roles: coffee hour volunteers, money counters, potluck preparers, flower guild, concert ambassadors, front office volunteers, among others. All whose lives have been made up of those small moments - like drops of water in the ocean - that add up to a great big wave of inclusion, justice, and community.
On this All Saints Sunday, we remember them all: the brave and the meek, the well lauded and the overlooked, the most kind and the most brusque.
We remember those who tended us, linger with us, who have gone ahead of us, and who journey still with us. This remembrance is tender, joyful, and grievous. Above all, it is holy.
As those who remain together, we remember and take heart in every saint who has come before us, saying their names out loud, lighting candles in their honor, and participating in the table of grace where all these saints gather.
Some saints, even the officially canonized ones, are odd at best (St. Neot reportedly practiced daily devotions while up to his chin in a well… thereby becoming the patron saint of fish).
All saints, even the ones that had a knack for making our lives harder, join the great cloud of witnesses that lend us our strength in troubling times, for they have seen and lived through trouble of their own.
So this Sunday, we’ll sing a song of the saints of God, knowing that we mean to be one too.
In love and remembrance,
Pastor Karyn