(Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Ps. 149; Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31)
In our church calendar, the final three days of Holy Week are Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday (when we celebrate the Great Vigil of Easter.) In church-speak we refer to those three days as one unit which we call the Triduum (“Triduum is Latin for “three days’.) We do that because those three days are all part of one continuous story, from the Last Supper through Jesus’ death on the cross, It’s a time that we always encourage you, every year, to participate in the services we hold on those days, to walk that path that leads to Easter Day: because each day has a different spiritual dimension to it, and it’s a unique opportunity to grow in the knowledge and love of God, in living through that one story, to prepare for the Resurrection.
Today we celebrate All Saints’ Day (which was actually this past Friday.) All Saints is one of the seven principal feasts of the church year, and there are some in the church who consider it to be the second day of a fall Triduum: All Hallows Eve (Halloween), which is almost entirely a secular holiday, but does have a particular spiritual reality in Christian faith; All Saints’ Day, which celebrates all the Christian saints, known and unknown; and All Souls’ Day, which even most Christians don’t know exists, but commemorates all the faithful departed (as we call them) – all who have walked this Christian way, as you and I are doing, not just those who have been canonized.
This fall Triduum, in the words of the Christian writer Cynthia Bourgeault, is a kind of mirror-image of the one in Holy Week: both “deal with that passage from death to life that is at the heart of the Christian…path….” In the spring, at Eastertime, there’s new life, that’s all around us, and we focus on the life that springs forth out of death. In fall, we’re surrounded by the cycle of life coming to an end, and we behold our mortality, and remember those who have passed beyond this life, into eternal life. We do this because it’s all part of the truth that we proclaim, as people of faith.
And today we proclaim it in beholding the saints; and in the spirit of this day, I brought along a little show-and-tell.
In 1985 I acted in a production of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, CT. The play was directed by a woman named Zoe Caldwell, who was one of the great stage actresses of the second half of the 20thcentury. Her opening night gift to the actors was a piece of parchment – each of us got one – at the head of which was written, in fine calligraphy, “The Great Chain of Acting”. Beneath that are 18 names, in 18 degrees of separation, that establish a direct line from William Shakespeare to every one who was in that production: 1598 – William Shakespeare worked with Christopher Beeston; 1637 – Christopher Beeston worked with Michael Moone; on down to 1982 – Dame Judith Anderson worked with Zoe Caldwell; 1985 – Zoe Caldwell worked with Jack Gilpin, The Taming of the Shrew, Stratford, Connecticut, May 18, 1985.
All these old names were the stars of their day: these are the saints of the English-speaking theater, up until all of us on that last line. The point Zoe Caldwell was making in this opening-night gift was that all of us who chose this particular line of work have, in some measure or other, a particular seed of the spirit, which was passed along to us by those in whom that seed had flowered before; and which we have, to nurture and grow in our own way; and in the process, pass along to others. It was to remind us of the common purpose – the common mission – joined in by all of us, all the people on that list, we who were doing the play, and everyone who ever set foot on a professional stage, down through the years. We on that last line are names that won’t be remembered the way the others are; but we’re nonetheless part of the same, much bigger, picture.
You see where I’m going with this, on All Saints’ Day. We here in the household of faith are part of an infinitely bigger picture. It’s a picture which is expressed, in majestic language, in today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: the big picture of what we Christians sometimes refer to as God’s plan of salvation; and how, along with all the saints, each one of us fits into it (because we do.) In the verse that immediately precedes the passage we just heard, we hear the thumbnail version of this big picture: that God “has made known to us the mystery of his will…that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” So that’s God’s ultimate plan: to gather up all things – the sacred and the profane, what’s whole and what’s broken – and heal it all; and there will be one kingdom of God.
And we – you and I – have a part in this process: three times, in this passage, we hear the word “inheritance”. In the first verse (v. 11): “In Christ we have…obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purposes of him who accomplishes all things….” So it’s not just that God, in Christ, has done something for us, and we just sit back, fat and happy: God, in Christ, has given us something, that is now ours, to live by, to use: that’s what an inheritance is for. Then in v. 13: “…you…were marked with the seal of the…Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people…..” So the inheritance we have from God in Christ is pointed to our redemption – our return to the wholeness in which God created us. In Christ we have been given something that fuels us forward in that process.
And then verses 17-18: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints….” You hear the process, the movement, in all of that: always moving forward, in faith. In faith, because it’s so hard to believe, that we could be part of all that; so impossible. We’re too small; too insignificant.
Well, today is the day on which we remember those who – just like us – were also too small, and too insignificant; but – trusting the power of God – didn’t let that stop them, and put one foot in front of the other, in whatever they were each called to do; and through the power of God, were able, one way or another, to make the kingdom of God a present reality: a foretaste, and a promise, of the time when God will “gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
This “gathering up” is the vision of the book of Revelation: that in God’s good time, all will be made well: there will be nothing but peace, there will be nothing but justice, there will be nothing but joy; God will dry every tear, the lion will lie down with the lamb, throughout the Bible there are images of that great gittin’-up morning. And somehow – impossibly – somehow, as we are in Christ, God asks, and empowers, each one of us to have something to do with that, every day, no matter how insignificant it might seem: some way to witness to the eternal and all-powerful love of God: to plant the tiniest seed of it, that’s all it needs, to take root, and grow, and flourish.
What a call! What a gift! What a blessing!
This is what we behold, in the saints that we honor on this day: saints who were just folk like you and me, like it says in the hymn, that’s no lie. This is our inheritance, in this great chain, that goes back 2000 years. Hallelujah. Thanks be to God.