Called into Communion

Trinity Episcopal Church – All Saints 2019 (Year C)

Sunday, November 3^rd AD 2019

Today we celebrate the Ancient Feast of All Saints:

A day when the Church commemorates all of the Saints who have gone before us as well as our continued fellowship with them. Not as one might associate with a ghost, or the restless dead (for Halloween has passed), but a fellowship that exists between living souls, all co-existing in perfect unity before our God.

Now how can one say that we exist in a living fellowship with those who appear to be dead?

The ghosties and Ghoulies of Halloween have already been banished, snow has begun to cover the ground, and we’re all ready for Christmas.

(Brace yourselves, the season of retail holiday-themed music has begun.)

But even so, this (rather premature) desire for the coziness, warmth, friendship, and love of the holiday season speaks to who we are as human beings.

We were built for community and intercommunion with each other.

We’re hard wired for connection – both extroverts and introverts.

We need fellowship. We need each other. We need Love.

That’s what makes us human – creatures made in the Image of God.

God exists in Trinity – an Eternal Community of Three in One:

The Loving Parent eternally gifting the Holy Spirit (God’s own life) to the Child - and the Eternally begotten Child of God in turn offering all that was given, freely (because that’s the Expression of Who God is – and that’s who Christ is).

So as God exists in Trinity, we who are made in the Image of God are also built for community; that interplay of giving and receiving of blessing and being blessed.

Parent to child – lover to beloved – friend to friend – community to community.

The Mystery of the Incarnation is that God entered into our system of human relationships as a human.

That means that in Jesus, the Eternal Christ knew and was known, loved and was loved. He laughed, he joked, he sang, he went to parties with his friend. At the wedding of Cana he was pressured into doing something he didn’t want to do by his mom, and I’m sure many of us have been there.

That feeling we get around the holiday season – that thanksgiving/Christmas desire for warmth, for companionship, for love…

          … Jesus knew that desire – he knew that feeling.

And we confess that he took that humanity with him into the very heart of God.

In the traditional language we say:

                   “He ascended to the right hand of God”

That is to say:

Jesus brought his humanity – his loves and relationships – into back into that place of his Eternal Christhood.

Where it is said he “prepares a place for us” as fellow heirs of the Kingdom of God - each of us, daughters and sons - children of God.

To break this down:

Think about when a kid goes off to school and starts making friends, sometimes that friend group will converge on one particular household and the mother of an only child might suddenly be feeding 8-10 of her “other” sons and daughters during school breaks

The child’s relationships – the child’s loves and fellowships - are brought into the House (the dynamic of the family) and sometimes they become (for all intents and purposes) family.

I know I’ve been to many Christmases and Thanksgivings completely surrounded by family to whom I had no blood or legal relationship.

In Christ, that very human way of relating to each other (of linking up so that we are more than just ourselves) is brought into the Life of God.

That Eternal Family Dynamic of Eternal Love and Eternal Gifting

          The Divine Dance of the Trinity.

We get the call to come to Thanksgiving, as friends - as brothers and sisters of the only Son of God.

And even if we can’t join them for thanksgiving this year…

          … we know that we still have a place at their table and in their hearts.

Such is the fellowship that exists within the Communion of saints - both between those who are alive to our eyes and those whom we no longer see.

We’re not talking about life and death here in the sense that we normally understand those words, for Christ has said that our God is not a God of the dead, but a God of the Living…

God exists beyond time and is (at ALL times) drawing creation into the Divine Love and Relationship that exists within God. That is why we celebrate the saints who have existed across time and throughout the world.

Though we live in different places and different times we are all being drawn into that one relationship with God.

          That One Eternal Thanksgiving Feast.

Drawn from around the world - from ever family and language and people and tongue - drawn from every time, from every age – participating together as one body. One mystical fellowship divine.

Although in our own age it would appear that our elder siblings in the faith have died, those who have been united Christ have become bound to the expression of Who-God-Is – they are linked to the Image of God forever, and that Image can never truly die.

As Christ conquered the grave, so too will those who bear the Image of Christ in their own parts the world and in their own age; for we share together in Christ’s Spirit, and it is the Spirit of God’s Eternal Life…

A Saint is someone who is so bound to Christ that they begin to resemble Christ in the world - in their own time, and in their own place.

Hagiographies (or biographies of the saints) are often full of miracles and signs which show that the saint is filled with the Spirit of Christ and able (by the power of God) to work healings miracles as Christ did.

It’s almost as if they are being depicted as continuations of the Incarnation… as if the Spirit of Christ is continuing the work that was begun by Jesus of Nazareth in and through these various people…

And in fact… that’s exactly what’s happening.

These saints are seen as participating in Christ in such a way that to see them is to see Christ - to see God at work in and through human nature.

The saints themselves are not the Eternal Christ (the Eternally Begotten Child of God) who was Incarnate as the person Jesus, but they do participate in his life (in the Incarnation of God’s Word)

Adopted brothers and sisters of the Only Son.

And they are so bound to Christ in Love that his work or reconciling and healing the world becomes their work as well - so to see the saints of God is to see the Glory of Christ at work in the world.

Though the saints of the past act as our exemplars (our role-models) – those who have blazed the trail before us - our calling in this life is the exact same as theirs… only it’s here in our time – our place.

Here and now we are participants in that one mystical fellowship which binds heaven and earth.

We, with all the saints, are fellow citizens of the Kingdom of God.

In today’s second reading, our brother, the apostle Saint Paul writes this in his letter to the Church in Ephesus:

“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 what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

The Saints of God are the pouring forth of Christ’s presence in the world (the breaking forth of the Image of God in all Times in and in all Places).

Both collectively (as we all continue to move together) and individually (as each person comes to know Christ and know the workings of the Holy Spirit in themselves).

Each of us called to be saints (“Holy” / Set Apart for a purpose), bears witness to the Image of God in the world and in human relationship.

But we’re not in this alone. We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses that (if we were to see it as it truly is), we would be awe-struck and never feel isolated from the Body of Christ again.

We are one Body – stretching out across time and space – each of us laying our gifts at the altar and witnessing to the sacrificial (gift giving) Love of Christ in our own communities and among our own people.

The saints were praying for people like us before we even came along - and, as they continued in the work of Christ, God shaped the world through their prayers.

In the nearer presence of God we believe that they continue to pray for us, even now, as we all continue to pray for each other.

But now the light of God breaks forth in our time and in our place.

We who are Called to be Saints (the living Body of Christ) must join in that ancient procession to the altar of God, offering the world (our lives, our loves, our relationships) as Christ offered it - that the whole world might be sanctified by the power of the Holy Spirit moving in and through our lives and our relationships as each of us carries the light of Christ in our own place and our own time...

Living out, by the power of the Holy Spirit, our own calls to be saints.