This week we celebrate the feast of All Saints. This is a special feast in two ways. First, it is sufficiently important that it outranks Sunday. Most feast-days if they fall on a Sunday get pushed aside. The general principle is that Sunday celebrates the death and resurrection of Jesus and only the most important commemorations take precedence over a “standard” Sunday. But perhaps more significant for us is that while most feasts celebrate a significant figure in the history of the church (a saint, or maybe two or more together), and a few celebrate specific aspects of Jesus like his baptism or his body and blood (i.e. the Eucharist, Corpus Christi), this feast celebrates everyone in the church – us included. This is OUR feast-day.
Yes, you are a saint, even if you’ve never considered yourself to be one. Paul starts all his letters with something like: “Greetings to all the saints in Rome (or Ephesus; or Thessaloniki; or wherever)”. The idea of special people being saints came later. Those are the ones that the church has recognized because they do indeed stand out in some way, but they are certainly not the only ones.
So this is a big one. And we have readings to suit. In fact we have readings that may be almost too much to digest, at least in one sitting. We start with the Book of Revelation. That definitely works on the grand scale – it will very much be to the taste of people that enjoy Grand Opera, or grand movies (maybe in the style of Spartacus, or Star Wars, or even Dr Zhivago). And this is in no way to criticize those – they treat of big themes with a big scale and can be uplifting in the way that only grand art can achieve. The Sermon on the Mount, which we hear in our gospel reading, is not quite on the same operatic scale but is still one of the most expansive and dramatic accounts we hear of the teaching of Jesus. And then we have John’s description of the children of God. This seems quite restrained by comparison, but is still a grand vision of what God has done for us.
So there is more than enough to reflect on in these readings. But, for whatever reason, I found myself drawn to one of John’s statements which could almost get lost among such rich fare: “Beloved, we are God’s children now.”
When we think about Saints we typically think about people in the past. After all those are the people who have been declared saints, recognized for their holiness. In the Book of Revelation the perspective is rather more on those that will be saints – the vision is a way of helping those who are undergoing persecution recognize that there is something great ahead of them. The Sermon on the Mount also has something of that future-looking flavor since it contrasts the situation in which people find themselves “now” with how things “will be”.
John comes from a different perspective. He tells us not to focus on what will be: “what we shall be has not yet been revealed”. He tells us we are already children of God, we are already saints. And this of course is consistent with everything Jesus says, and the rest of scripture as well. Jesus tells us about a relationship we already have with God, not about something that is going to happen to us in the future. Yes, our “reward will be great in heaven” – but the blessing is now. All the children of God are blessed, they are holy now, they don’t become saints at some point in the future, perhaps when they die. As Jesus says in his debate with Sadducees about life after death – the Father “is not the God of the dead but of the living.” – He isn’t waiting to bless us, to call us His children, to make us saints – we already are.
Let us remember, on our feast-day, “we are God’s children now“.