Once a year Christians hold a business meeting and invite the dead to participate. All Saints Sunday is the day we extend the franchise to the deceased. “Tradition,” G. K. Chesterton explains, “means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” This day matters because it reminds those currently alive that we constitute an infinitely small slice of the communion of the saints.
The Thessalonian church worried about those who had died, and Paul didn’t tell them to stop. In fact, he reminded them that these old souls had outdistanced them in death and would beat them to the final finish line. Hopeful respect replaces hopeless grief for those who truly believe that death brings us closer to the throne.
For the ancient world history was mostly examples to be imitated. For the modern world, history was mostly mistakes to be overcome. For the postmodern world history is largely lost in the mists of individual isolation. For Christians, however, the past is, quite simply, the present: Barnabas and Bunyan, Lydia and Lottie Moon, Apollos and Annie Armstrong are not just our precursors but our partners as their example continues to inform our own faith.
We do not stratify certain saints as somehow more saved than others. Imperfections litter the lives of our beloved dead and we serve them best by rejecting their wrongs. But we should not over-correct by regarding the dead in Christ as irrelevant to the living. We must not confine ourselves to what Chesterton labels “the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” We carry a flame of faith entrusted to us by our spiritual forebears and our job is to hand it on, not to extinguish it in favor of whatever small blaze we can kindle in the airless confines of our own era.
In a day when the adjectives “contemporary” and “relevant” outshine words like “ancient” and “faithful,” we do well to make sure we listen well to the voices of our heritage. Those who have gone before us will come back to get us, and they can help us understand the Christ to whom they guide us.
Saints Alive!
Doug
Collect
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, You assure us of the security of the saints who have gone before. Grant that rather than mourn their death we may affirm our faith in their ongoing life by advancing on the path they have shown us, and live in the hope being reunited with them at the coming of Your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we pray, Amen.
Benediction
May you live through the grief of death
By faith in eternal life.
May you live through the grief of separation
By faith in the final reunion.
May you live through the grief of loneliness
By faith in the ultimate togetherness.
By the presence of the Father,
At the coming of the Son,
Through the power of the Holy Spirit,
Amen.
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