All Saints Sunday Garsington and Horspath

All Saints morning 2024

 

 

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints; as well as singing some great hymns and hearing much loved bible texts we think with thanksgiving of those before us, those ahead of us and those with us.  This is a day for celebration, reflection and to glimpse the hope which calls us forth to fullness of life.

 

This morning through the word, song, prayer, and Eucharist, we place ourselves within the Christian story as we recall and celebrate that this life is not all there is. We are not merely a happenstance, a coming together of molecules in a certain time and place but people of ultimate loved and created by God, not just now but for eternity. Each one of us is unique, each one loved beyond measure. 

 

The gospel reading chosen for All Saints Day is the raising of Lazarus from John. It happens to be one of my favourite NT passages; I think because it is one of the most intimate in the bible and it presents us with a fascinating glimpse into Jesus’ public and private life.  

 

Mary, Martha and Lazarus were friends of Jesus, who was preparing for his final journey to Jerusalem, when he receives word that his friend Lazarus is ill, by the time Jesus arrives Lazarus is dead, highlighted by Martha’s remark about the stench.  Jesus arrives and we are met with what is, in the King James Version, the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept,” or as translated in the New Revised Standard Version, “Jesus began to weep.” Jesus is greatly moved and touched by human tragedy and the death of his friend is very real to him.   

 

In raising Lazarus Jesus demonstrates God’s power over life and death, yet he reacts as we all do to the loss and desolation of a life cut short by death.  Jesus is distressed, weeping, and very human.    Yet for all he is like us he is not the same for he will raise Lazarus back into mortal life.  Raising Lazarus is not a parlour trick for attention it is for Jesus a costly act of love; it is an act of hope through which God’s purposes are revealed. 

 

All Saints Day reminds us that God is still speaking to us today, calling us out from our tombs of despair, denial, and death to new life, right now, right here. (“Can These Bones Live? - Aldersgate”) How can we pull back the "stuff and stench" of death and release the new life that God has granted, the new life that lies just beneath the surface of what may appear bleak and beyond hope?   As it was with Lazarus sometimes when we are on the edge of despair, when life seems at its worst and darkest, this moment can be the moment that God touches our lives – so often through someone else.  

 

 

Who are the saints? I would like to suggest that they are not only the well-known saints, the A listers, important though they are.  For me the definition is broader, yes it includes saints like John the Baptist, like Paul, like Mary our patron. But it also includes a wider community, a great cloud of witnesses. 

 

I love the story of a child in a school assembly responding to the question ‘who the Saints’ are.  The eager child thinking of stained-glass windows put their hand up and said, ‘saints are people who the light shines through’. An A+ answer if ever there was Saints are people whom the light and love of God shines through to illuminate our own Christian journeys.  Like us they may be ordinary folk who through God’s loving spirit have achieved extraordinary things.

 

Perhaps being a saint implies a certain ‘withness and witness’. It means being there with and weeping alongside us for and with a world in pain. Being a saint has at times meant being misunderstood for taking a stand for justice and against short-term self-interest. It has meant calling us out for our continuing abuse of creation. Being a saint has often meant inconspicuously caring for the least and the lost.  In short living out God’s bias to the poor.

 

 

 Throughout history many of the saints of God have heard God speaking to them and perhaps like Lazarus in the tomb hearing God’s voice calling them forth, calling them to get up, and be unbound and follow God’s call.  They were women, men and children just like us.  This All Saints let us give thanks to God for those people who have revealed to us the Christian faith and let us pray for them.  

 

November can be the most depressing of months; it can be cold, dark and damp; Christmas is still a long way away.  All Saints is there right at the beginning at the beginning to listen for a voice calling us forth, to be hope filled.  "God loves us and has a purpose for all of us Be assured that our own lives are important and significant; they matter, and they are of ultimate and eternal worth to God.