All Saints’ Sunday -- Ecclesiasticus 44:1–10,13–14; Psalm 149; Revelation 7:2–4,9–17; Matthew 5:1–12
A sermon by The Very Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, November 1, 2009
Look around the church this morning ….How many haloes do you see?
Now I won’t ask you for an actual, audible answer, for we might be tempted to say, “Well, a halo is a mark of holiness, of sainthood (remember all those stained glass windows and works of art showing the Lord, the Apostles, and the major saints – the ones with a big “S” – with golden haloes around their heads?), so I would certainly say that so-and-so in the congregation has a halo, for they are especially holy people.”
By that criteria, some people in the church this morning might exhibit some marks of holiness, of sainthood, that are easily recognized. By the same token, others might not, for their holiness may not be so easily seen. And, it might be embarrassing for us to identify some as being especially holy, and not others.
In truth, all of us who are baptized bear the mark of sainthood….For we have been “Sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism,” and we are “Marked as Christ’s own forever.” (Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 308)
But what sort of a halo do we bear in this life? All of us, by virtue of coming into a personal relationship with Christ, the outward sign of which is baptism, are called to allow God to place a halo above our heads.
In answer to this question, we might back up for a moment to the image we mentioned a minute ago, that of the stained glass image of the Lord, the Apostles, and the major saints (again, those with a big “S” in front of their names). There, the haloes are made of gold, and as we all know, gold never tarnishes. (That’s one reason gold is so highly prized.) For the Lord Jesus Christ is the only one in this earthly life whose halo was made of gold. (The Apostles and other major saints now sport golden haloes in our artwork because their earthly courses are complete, and their holiness is now complete, as well.)
But these human disciples of the Lord sported halos that shone brightly at times, but were dull and dim at others. Consider the case of Saint Peter (notice, saint with a capital “S”): here is a saint whose halo shown brightly one moment, but was almost unnoticeable the next. At one moment, Peter’s atmosphere of holiness (which is one dictionary definition of a halo) was plain to see. One such moment was on the Day of Pentecost, when Peter delivered a powerful and moving sermon, a sermon so persuasive that thousands of his listeners were saved, and were added to the church’s membership. Wow! (See Acts 2: 14 – 36 for the text of Peter’s sermon, which stirs the heart, even today.) But, this is the same Peter who denied the Lord three times.
Aren’t we just like those early Disciples-become-Apostles? Isn’t our faith walk with the Lord just like theirs? Don’t we allow our holiness to shine at certain times in our lives with all the glimmer of gold, only to reveal at other times that, in fact, our haloes are actually made of brass, a metal that requires constant attention and polishing for it to resemble gold in some way?
That was surely the case with Peter. And, it is the case with us, too.
We’ve had a halo placed above our heads at the time of our baptism. “You are marked as Christ’s own forever,” we say. That means – when we make our solemn promises to God in the Baptismal Covenant (see the Book of Common Prayer, 1979, pages 304 – 5), we are promising to follow Christ, and to make the marks of holiness that were the marks of His life, present and discernable in our lives.
Consider the questions from the Baptismal Covenant:
Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers?
Answer: I will, with God’s help.
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
Answer: I will, with God’s help.
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
Answer: I will, with God’s help.
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Answer: I will, with God’s help.
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
Answer: I will, with God’s help.
All of these questions have one basic premise behind them: We are God’s holy people (read: saints), by virtue of our baptisms, and our new relationship with God that baptism signifies. Based on this premise, the questions cited above all ask us to:
- Seek God’s help in living a holy, saintly life,
- With God’s help, to maintain the brightness of our witness to others.
So, we recognize in the questions above that there’s a possibility that we will be just like Peter: We will allow our haloes to become tarnished, even to the point of dullness that almost makes the halo we bear invisible.
Life will do that to us….For the pressures of life can act like fingerprints on brass, each small little encounter with the business of being a human being adding its corrosive effects to the glow of God that otherwise would be plain to see.
The Baptismal Covenant commits us to seeking God’s help whenever the brightness of new life in Christ that is ours is tarnished. We need to ask God for some polish, so that our witness to Christ, our holiness, can resemble the golden haloes we will someday wear in heaven. We cannot polish our own tarnished natures, we need God’s polishing agents, which are Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit’s guidance, the faith community (that is, the Church), combined with an unwavering willingness to allow God to supply us with more polish, as we gather the stains that contact with the world will inevitably bring.
Now, today is All Saints’ Sunday. And on this day, it’s our practice to make a list of people we’ve known – living and departed – who are/were saints.
But, aside from the idea that these people we’ve listed were simply “really nice people”, what is/was it about their lives that marks/marked them as saints?
Put another way, in terms of the halo made of brass we’ve been using as a metaphor, do we see their sainthood, their holiness, most clearly in the ways that the tarnishing effects of being human were overcome with the brightness of God?
Oftentimes, I think, it’s the polishing and scrubbing that we allow God to do in our lives that makes the brightness of holiness most apparent. It’s in the victory over sin, over addictions, over seemingly impossible problems that we see God at work in someone’s life in marvelous ways.
Sometimes, the scrubbing is hard and deep. Sometimes, God has to bring large amounts of polishing compound to bear, and has to work at getting rid of the dullness and the dimness over a very long period of time, sometimes even for decades.
How has God been at work in the saints we remember today? How has He been at work within us?
Those two questions are worthy of our reflection in this coming week.
AMEN.
