All Saints’ Day – Enduring Disappointment

All Saints Icon

All Saints’ Day 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Sirach 44:1-14, Revelation 7:9-17, Matthew 5:1-12

Today we observe the Feast of All Saints. It began in the fourth century as a catch all feast to remember all the martyrs of the Diocletian persecution.

By the ninth century in the British Isles, it had moved to November 1 and later Pope Gregory IV expanded this observance to the whole Western church. It is followed on November 2 with the Feast of All Souls, where we remember all the faithful departed, not just those who have left a name, and the day before All Saints or All Holies Eve is where we get Halloween when we remember and ward off the less appealing spirits. But what is a saint?

The word comes from the Latin “sanus” meaning only the Greek equivalent Haggios appears 229 times in the Greek New Testament, so a saint is a holy one or a set apart one, an exemplary model, an inspired teacher, a worker of miracles. They are often an ascetic who denies the world and more often than not, they are considered as possessed of a special relationship with God. The term saint is first of all used for named saints: Saint Mary, Saint John, Saint Brendan, the famous men mentioned in our reading from Sirach today. Saint can also be used to refer to all the faithful departed, the people who left no name, and yet their deeds live on both throughout Christian history and particularly in our lives, more broadly the term saint is used for all Christian people.

That certainly how Paul uses it. Now there’s a problem inherent in this definition and it has to do with the accretion over time of legends and stories and how that shaped how we view things. I think it part of God’s providence that October 31st is also Reformation Day.

That we say something about the reform of the church, right, before we go in into remembering all these holy people. Because it was a problem then and a problem now. The problem now takes on a certain psychological reality for us that has a huge theological impact, and that problem is this.

When we use stained glass language to describe the saints, when we talk about them in such exalted terms, well, it separates us from them. They become Christian superheroes rather than our older brothers and sisters. And so that number three of the definition Paul’s usage that all Christian people of our saints tends to get forgotten underneath all the trappings of tradition.

I want to take a hard left turn today and suggest my own definition of what a saint is. The saints of God were primarily saints of God in their disappointment, which means that All Saints Day would be a feast for remembering all those who have endured their disappointment in a profoundly Christian fashion.

I’m serious. Let me explain. Have you noticed that life is difficult?

It doesn’t take too many years of experience to learn this. My young son Isaiah, 18 months old, is already starting to say no, not just in the defiance sense, but in the existential sense. He wants something he can’t have and I don’t give it to him and he says no.

Life is difficult. There’s that lost job. The poor health. The failed relationship. The enemies we have, the general sense of cultural malaise and decline. There’s this overwhelming sense that things shouldn’t be like this. Fill in your blank for the this.

That it’s just too hard It’s a sense that’s almost universal. And it’s universal not just in 2024, but through all human life. And thus, for the saints of the church, too. Because no human life is free from disappointment.

Let’s consider the famous ones in a way you may have never thought of Saint Mary scorned as an unwed mother with a sword through her heart at Jesus’ passion. Saint Benedict and Martin Luther 1100 years apart, they both went to Rome, the political, cultural, and religious capital of their society only to find it morally and spiritually bankrupt, religious disillusionment. Julian of Norwich and Saint John Paul II, both endured severe, excruciating, long term illnesses, and Saint Teresa of Calcutta well, when her journals came out, we learned that even as she was serving the poor so courageously all those years, she suffered from depression and a sense of spiritual darkness.

Then there are those less well known. Hebrews 11 mentions them. I’m going to start reading at verse 33 It’s kind of interesting when you think of saints.

Through faith they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised, shut the mouth of lions, quenched raging fire escaped the edge of the sword gained strength in weakness, mighty in battle, they put foreign armies to flight, and women received back their dead raised to life. Les, I thought you were talking about disappointment. He doesn’t stop there.

Others were tortured, not accepting release. Others experienced mocking and flogging, even chains and imprisonment they were stoned,...