All Saints/All Souls – 2025
Luke 6:20-31
Marian Free
In the name of God without beginning or end, and in whose love we are united through love with all who have gone before us and with all who will come after. Amen.
I love this quote from Linda Hogan:
“Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” (Dwellings)
Hogan reminds us that we are the result of all those who have come before us, those to whom we are related by blood, those whose lives have impacted upon our families in the past and in the present and those whose roles in history have shaped who we have become. We are never alone, but part of a great tapestry of saints and sinners.
Coming as they do on the heels of each other, the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls make me aware of how intimately we are connected with those who have gone before us. Threads of love, community and tradition, even our DNA bind us to past generations and, long after we are gone will link us to those who come after.
Our introduction to confession today quotes from the Book of Hebrews (12:1): “We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” Our faith in the resurrection assures us that those who have preceded us are not gone forever but are in some way transformed, such that they live on. We experience their presence through the warmth of the love they shared with us, through the impact they had on our lives and on the lives of those around us, through the memories of their place in our lives, through their heroic acts or through their acts of faithful living.
Within our Christian tradition, we are joined to all the Biblical figures that make up our scriptures. We are inspired by their courage and heroism and shocked (yet strangely comforted) by their missteps and by their blatant failings. Figures like Sarah and Abraham, Moses and Deborah, Isaiah and Huldah, Elizabeth and Zechariah, Joseph and Mary are as real to us as if they were here present. Their stories have been told and retold in such a way that these and the many other people who populate our Bible are as vivid and vibrant in our imaginations as if they had never left us. When we need courage to step out in faith, we can look to Sarah who, without question, followed Abraham as he answered the call of a God whom he did not know. When faced with insurmountable odds, we can look to the boy David who knew that defeating the giant Goliath was not impossible.
We identify with the child Samuel who did not recognise the voice of God calling him in the night and we can wonder at the influence of Deborah – the only woman to be the judge of Israel. Mary’ surprise and timidity assure us that being in the presence of God is truly awesome and Peter’s impetuous ignorance reminds us that it’s OK to be truly human.
Though these characters lived centuries, even millennia ago, they seem to walk beside us as friends and guides, as people whose lives can inform our own, whose fears mirror our fears and whose courage spurs us on. They are so familiar that at times we find ourselves in conversation – “What would you have done Peter?” “Mary of Bethany, we’re you afraid of the backlash when you anointed Jesus’ feet?” “Paul, if only I had one fraction of your passion!”
“We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” The story doesn’t end with the final words of the Book of Revelation. Throughout the centuries there have been thousands whose light has shone a little brighter, whose courage has been more costly or whose teaching has been so wise that we have given them a special place in our hearts and our histories – Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa and so many more – speak to us through the ages, reminding us of the costs and the rewards of following Jesus and urging us to try just a little bit more, to be braver, to be kinder, to confront injustice and to alleviate the suffering of the poor.
In our faith communities too the presence of those who have preceded us lingers on in the stories we tell of the past, the traditions we maintain in the present and even in the buildings which they strove so hard to provide. The faithful prayers which sustained them and our community continue exert an influence on our present.
All Saints is not a feast that celebrates those long dead, but a festival that rejoices in the unbroken ties that bind us together, that recognises all those who continue to walk beside us and who unite with us in a great chain of witnesses. As we celebrate All Souls, we recall the ties of love and the bonds of memory that ensure that we are never separated from those who have gone before us.
This weekend as we celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints and All Souls Days we give thanks for all those whose lives and witness have contributed to our own lives and faith and to the life of the Church of which we are a part. In our turn we pray that we may allow ourselves to be woven into the fabric of the faith such that we too become part of this wonderful ongoing story of God’s relationship with God’s people – a story that has no beginning and no end.
Swallowsrest 