A church chock full of saints: where are on earth do we hang all the haloes? (Sunday, Nov 1 -- All Saints' Day)

Scripture reading: Phil. 4:1-9

With our reading today, we come towards an ending – the ending of the letter Paul wrote to his friends in Philippi, the ending maybe of any further communication between him and them, maybe even the near-to-ending of Paul’s life.   And when you get to that point … of seeing the end of things, what is there to say? 

So then, my friends, how dear you are to me and how I miss you! How happy you make me, and how proud I am of you!—this, dear friends, is how you should stand firm in your life in the Lord.

Euodia and Syntyche, please, I beg you, try to agree as sisters in the Lord. And you too, my faithful partner, I want you to help these women; for they have worked hard with me to spread the gospel, together with Clement and all my other fellow workers, whose names are in God's book of the living.

May you always be joyful in your union with the Lord. I say it again: rejoice!  Show a gentle attitude toward everyone. The Lord is near. Don't worry about anything, but in all your prayers ask God for what you need, always asking with a thankful heart. And God's peace, which is far beyond human understanding, will keep your hearts and minds safe in union with Christ Jesus.

In conclusion, my friends, fill your minds with things that are good and that deserve praise: things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and honourable. Put into practice what you learned and received from me, both from my words and from my actions. And the God who gives us peace will be with you.

Meditation

“May you always be joyful in your union with the Lord. I say it again: rejoice!”  In the New Revised Standard Version – a more literal translation, it reads, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

And I think I remember reading this week – maybe the one thing that stuck with me of the reading I did about this passage – that the way Paul writes it, the command or encouragement to rejoice is in the plural voice, or number or whatever the grammatical term is.  Like Paul just assumes – or at least wants his friends to know that rejoicing in the Lord is a collective and corporate thing.  That it’s shared, or it’s not really at all.  That there’s  no idea or experience here of a private, rejoicing moment with God but that it’s something we experience together, maybe primarily because we’re together and doing something together with and in God, and that unless we’re together in something of God, there really isn’t the kind of joy he has in mind and in experience here.

Thinking about this make me realize how often and how easily we – or maybe just I – think of sainthood as an individual thing.  For instance, we all can list off individual saints – St Francis, St Christopher, St Jude, Ste Mother Teresa, St So-and-So and Ste Such-and-Such.  And we see them and think of them as individuals who have achieved or been led into a special kind of holiness, a particular intimacy with God, and unique connection with the Divine.  They’ve earned – or maybe crafted through their good works – a halo that now sits over their heads marking them off from others less holy.  They have in “in” or a special place with God.  And they can be of help to us if we call to them – either to put in a good word for us with God, or bestow some special favour on us themselves, or at least by their example help us remember the good way to go and the right thing to do in our particular situation.

 This individualized image of sainthood helps explain the power of relics – the little bits of bone and skull and hair and what-not of different saints, that churches are happy to have in their possession.  The left-over bits of the saints still somehow hold and emit something of their saintly power, so touching them, seeing them, even just being near to them is enough to gain some blessing in a time of need – some part of God’s power and good will fractured through them – a vision, a healing, a blessing of some kind.

The Vatican, for instance, I read this week has in its museum twenty-two splinters of the True Cross (how could a piece of the cross not be a treasure of great power?), a thorn from the Crown of Thorns (also a deep, deep connection with the living love of God poured out for us all), a splinter from the table at The Last Supper (wouldn’t it be a miracle to have a splinter from that table somehow integrated into our communion table?),  … and then also the skull of St. Theodore, a tooth from St. Anthony, and pieces of bone from all of the Apostles (bits and pieces and fragments of holiness still bearing the throbbing power of God).

And in how many churches around the world are there fragments of bone from different apostles and saints, pieces of cloth from their garments, fragments of chalices, strands of hair, scraps of prayer books, and who knows what other fragments of God-filled life that still throb in our time with the desire of God to heal and strengthen tired and troubled souls?  And remind us the way we should go ourselves, what we should commit ourselves to, and the kind if life we should aspire to lead?

I wonder, though, if we had a reliquary here at Fifty – a museum or a grab bag of relics of the saints of this place and of this congregation over its history, what might be included in it?  What might be in there to heal and guide and direct us in our life today, especially as we try to figure out how to be in a new normal.

Let’s begin by ruling out fingers and strands of hair and skulls.  But if we were to place, or later to find relics of sainthood, signs and testaments of faithful and holy living in this place, what might they be?

How about these, just as a small sample?

•  A hammer – not exactly the one used by Wes McEneny – that one I am not worthy to touch, but this replica, a sign of all the uncounted, unpaid hours and all the energy and creativity that he and others like him have given to maintaining this place of worship and faith 
•  A sewing kit – old and tattered, left over from a member of the Fifty Quilt Club, that every year sews hundreds of quilts they give away to any charity and helping organization in the area they can find, to bring warmth and comfort to newborns, refugee families, cancer patients, families in need … 
•  A spaghetti spoon – speaking to us of the father and now the son who for years have stood twice a year at a stove in the corner of our church kitchen for hours at a time to cook spaghetti for hundreds who gather for a community meal, and to share good humour, encouragement and even good advice with all who come near their holy station to chat with them 
•  A PAR card, that more and more of our members use to make monthly contributions to our General Fund to help the congregation meet our expenses, even when they can’t be here in person to give their offering in person in the offering plate 
•  A rolling pin, the one used by St. Kathy year after year as she leads in the annual making of the pies, not only doing her own part but also organizing the efforts and the particular gifts of dozens of volunteers, to achieve what needs to be done, and nurturing everyone’s spirit in the process 
• a paring knife, used hours at a time day after day by one of dozens of faithful volunteers in the heat and humidity of mid-August to peel enough peaches to help make upwards of 1600 peach pies to sell at the Festival
• a bag of crayons and a clipboard of colouring sheets prepared by a volunteer Sunday school leader, to help children in our community to know God’s love -- the one used on one Sunday that suddenly it clicked in some child's mind and heart just much God loves them -- something you can never predict or plan or manipulate, but which you know will happen at some time when you just keep doing your job as a leader over and over and over again
• a cell phone filled that can be filled with and used for so much pointless stuff, but which in this case is filled with names and numbers of people in need, that our pastoral care co-ordinator and so many of our members use to reach out to people who are ill or alone, to let them know they are not forgotten
• measuring cups used in the baking of cookies, bread, cakes and pies to help nourish hungry bodies and refresh tired souls
• a plastic bag used to carry an overflowing casserole of God’s loving provision for a family recently bereaved and in need of comfort 
• a box of masks for us to wear not so much for our own sake, but for others – to assure them that we care for them, that we know the danger we can be, and that we shall do all we can not to expose them to a virus we may be carrying unknown
• car keys, that help us start up and use our cars to drive a neighbour, deliver a gift, make a visit, or perform some other act of holy kindness for someone else’s well-being
• a prayer list of names of people in need, belonging to one of the persons in our prayer circle, opened and prayed out daily to bring others into the court of God’s care and into the heart of our own caring.

And from this, what do we learn? 

Maybe that we become saints, as Paul suggests, together.  As we do our part in the larger effort that we take on as a congregation.  As we offer our particular gift or contribution – whatever is ours to give or to do, no matter how slight it may seem, to the larger task we take on as a community of faith seeking to do some part of God’s will, as a body of Christ taking on some part of his life and work in the world today.

 It’s as we do this together, that sainthood emerges.  That gifts abound.  That a pattern is established that will help inform and form the lives of others.  And the joy – the joy of being part of something bigger than ourselves – emerges and is felt.

And isn’t that the challenge and the way ahead for us as a congregation?  Especially as Christmas nears.

My goodness, what a season that usually is for us!  Joining together in preparing and putting on the Wesley dinner.  Gathering items for the Wesley Holiday Store.  Collecting and donating mitts and scarves and knitted hats.  Collecting items for the Christmas hamper for a family here in our own community.  And ending the season by opening the doors and inviting the community in for a carol-filled, candle-lit Christmas Eve service to help them find their way with us and with God to Christmas Day.

None of which we can do this year, the way we have in the past.

But that isn’t the end of sainthood.  Isn’t the end of joining our efforts and our separate gifts in some greater-than-ourselves work of God.  No more than not being able to see Paul any more was the end of the Philippians’ life and sanctity as a church.  No more than Paul’s imprisonment and possible soon-execution were the end of his ministry to his churches.

It just means we now work together – each of us contributing what we can – to the work of God as it will be done this year.  Maybe even finding and beginning a new way that will be one of the patterns of sainthood – one of the patterns of shared, co-operative ministry and mission and doing-of-God’s-work in this place – something that Fifty will be known for in the future, represented by who knows what kind of relics in the reliquary grab bag 10 or 20 or 50 years down the road.

So happy All Saints’ Day.

Together, we are the saints.

And only together, as we work together – as we put our heads and hearts and hands and faith and vision and ideas (no matter what) together, to be God’s people doing God’s work in the name of Christ as it can and as it needs to be done today.