St Richard, Haywards Heath All Saints’ Day 1st November 2023

We will see him as he is, and all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. 

1 John 3.2-3

We shall see him says St John. The Christian hope set forth on the Feast of All Saints is no less than this.

We shall see him and this is a call to purify ourselves, just as he is pure.

Three thoughts spring out of the scriptures set for this evening. In the first reading we are reminded that heaven is something corporate, something we shall see. In the second reading we are reminded that heaven is the vision of God no less and that is exciting. The third Gospel reading is a call to purify ourselves, just as he is pure for the Saints are those who have been poor in spirit, pure in heart and so on.

We shall see him

The vision of God is too wonderful for me alone. This is the understanding we receive from the first reading from Revelation chapter 7 which speaks of a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.

Some forms of Christianity are good at throwing a line to unbelievers and drawing them in. They go on to promote their spiritual development as a one to one hotline to Jesus. Today’s Feast presents the drawing power of Jesus not as a line but as a net. The communion of saints is a net that by example and prayer draws us together around the throne of God to worship him day and night within his temple. 

We shall see him

Our second reading from St John’s First Letter complements the first that reminded us heaven is something corporate. It reminds us that to be a Christian is to live God centred in hope of the heavenly vision of God.  Let it speak for itself: what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this; when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

This is the one true and only blessed life Saint Augustine writes to Proba that we should contemplate the delightfulness of the Lord for ever, immortal and incorruptible in body and spirit…Whoever has this will have all that he wishes…There indeed is the spring of life, which we must now thirst for in prayer, so long as we live. To believe in heaven is to yearn for reunion with those we love but see no longer. It is a reunion of mortals after death with all the saints. Yet it is only so because God who made all and sees all for the sake of the sins of us all sent his Son to live and die and open up the kingdom of heaven to all believers. It is Christ’s resurrection that holds mortals beyond death. What other hope is there?

We will see him as he is, and all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. 

The last scripture we heard this morning was the Beatitudes reading from the Sermon on the Mount. It is a reminder that the beatific vision comes to those who live the beatitudes – those words beatific and beatitudes link to the Latin root beatus which means blessed or holy one. 

The holy ones, saints, blessed ones are those who are poor in spirit, meek, merciful, pure in heart, and peacemakers who mourn for the lost and bear persecution for righteousness sake. All of the qualities Our Lord lists are in his own person, so to be a beatus, a saint, is to be Christ-like. 

Today is All Saints Day and the focus is on heaven. Tomorrow is All Souls Day and the focus there will be on the purification from sin we need to get to heaven in this world and the next. It says of heaven in the second to last chapter of the Bible that no unclean thing will enter there (Revelation 21.27). That is why we pray for those who have died with unrepented sin that they will be cleansed and fitted for the vision of God.

All Saints Feast is a call to purify ourselves, just as he is pure. We won’t have eyes to see God without purification. This is a painful truth. 

May this Feast of All Saints bring us comfort and discomfort.

We shall see him as he is – what a comforting thought!

And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. How discomforting! 

There is work ahead for us all!

 

All Saints Festival at St Bartholomew, Brighton 3.11.19

Christianity is about contemplation, communion and change.

As a cyclist I give energy to my bike hub which is transferred through a set of spokes to get the wheels moving.

Today’s Festival of All Saints is a challenge to get more on the move for God through deeper recognition of the hub of prayer and spokes of fellowship in moving us forward on the road to glory.

A few thoughts under these three headings: contemplation, communion and change.

First, contemplation which is as much at the heart of reality and Christianity as it is at the heart of All Saints Feast. St John describes the ultimate purpose of our lives as purification so as to be capable of seeing God in the population of heaven. ‘Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.’ (1 John 3:2-3)

At the hub of reality is God whose Son, as God and man, draws human beings into God’s own self-contemplation, the Father of the Son in the Holy Spirit, catching us into God’s own life so as to be energised. On earth contemplation of God is sporadic, by you and me, people of faith, in the midst of the uncoordinated chaos of life. In heaven saints purified from self-regard gaze in coordination upon the perfect goodness, truth and beauty of God. Through them, through the hub of their contemplation and intercession, God’s power flows into the world. 

Words crack in talking of such things. Because of the incarnation the heavenly hub of contemplation draws mortals into God’s praise and service through, with and in Jesus Christ. Heaven is the depth of earth seen by faith so that our prayer is always  allied to the powerful hub of contemplation we celebrate on All Saints Feast. It’s power is captured by Paul in his second letter to Corinth: ‘All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.’ (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Contemplation leads to change, to transformation, from the image into the likeness of God, ‘from one degree of glory to another’. Today we are reminded of the thousands beyond this world who possess such likeness and glory and the unclouded vision of God.

They are, to enter our second consideration, in communion with us, spokes carrying an overflow of energy from that hub of the contemplation of God to get the world moving heavenwards. ‘You have knit together your elect’ All Saints Collect says, ‘in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord’.

Just as the power and direction of a bicycle flows to the wheels through spokes so the power and direction of the Holy Spirit energises the world through the communion of saints in heaven and on earth. ‘Therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven we proclaim God’s great and glorious name’. Our contemplation, like that of the saints above, is never on our own. Paul asks in Ephesians that we may ‘have power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth… of … the fullness of God’ (Ephesians 3:18-19). In other words we only see God fully together with others. 

‘A heaven of souls without Christ would not be heaven’ Austin Farrer writes. ‘Could we not say the same about a heaven of Christ without souls? Christ is not only God in man, he is God in mankind; God in one man isolated from all others would not even be God in man, for a man in isolation is not a human possibility’. 

All Saints Festival is a feast of humanity put into its right mind. Against the individualism of the age the Church presents this unvarying challenge: in the last resort there are but two options, to have God in communion with the saints or to have nothing but yourself. 

It’s a troubling thought, isn’t it, that we will need to shelve judgmental thinking to take our place with the Saints. That great Christian thinker Thomas Merton puts this reality of heavenly communion in a hopeful way writing: ‘The saints are glad to be saints, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else’.

Contemplation, communion then thirdly change. If the hub of Christianity is contemplation, its spokes are the communion of saints. Through the corporate prayer of saints in heaven and on earth the power and direction of Christ’s Spirit moves wheels - in us, around us, energising, changing the cosmos. 

All Saints Feast is a day of obligation for attendance at the Eucharist because it is in worship we best learn from and find transformation from engaging with the adoration of heaven. As we look to the Lord in this action of taking, blessing, breaking and sharing our lives are taken, blessed and transformed. 

The eucharist like a bicycle draws power and direction from the hub of Christ’s contemplation of the Father. This energy of adoration is conveyed by the spokes of a fellowship meal. It’s consequence is the transformation not just of worshippers offering ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies’. What we are about at All Saints Mass, or at any Mass, is changing the world, looking as written in Revelation 11:15b for ‘the kingdom of the world [to] become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ’.

This morning as we contemplate God in communion with the saints we are changed - and so is the world weighing on each of our hearts. In pleading  this memorial sacrifice of Christ’s death and resurrection we are lifted into the heavenly hub of adoration, in communion with the Church in paradise and on earth, to effect the consecration of all that is to God’s praise and service.

I end with the last paragraph of a sermon on heaven by Austin Farrer: ‘There light spills evermore from the fountain of light; it fills the creatures of God with God as much as they will contain, and yet enlarges their heart and vision to contain the more. There it is all one to serve and to pray, for God invisible is visibly portrayed in the action he inspires. There the flame of deity burns in the candle of mankind, Jesus Christ; and all the saints, united with him, extend his person, diversify his operation, and catch the running fire. That is the Church, the Israel of God, of which we only exist by being the colonies and outposts, far removed and fitfully aware; yet able by faith to annihilate both time and distance, and offer with them the only pleasing sacrifice to God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; to him ascribing, as is most justly due, all might, dominion, majesty and power, henceforth and for ever. Amen.’