All Saint's Day (Nov. 1) is a day to honor the saints, mainly those who don't otherwise have a feast day. All Soul's Day (Nov. 2) remembers all who have died in Christ who are not considered saints. (In Mexico, these 2 days are the
Dias de Los Muertos; the first day for returning spirits of children; the second for returning spirits of adults.) Protestants don't necessarily observe the day, but for those who do the "saints" mean the clouds of witness who we believe surround us in time and across time, as well as across space. According to most accounts the Irish holy day Samhain was one of the "thin places" on the calendar, when the dearly departed were yet close at hand, not as ghouls and ghost and goblins, but as family. That’s the supposed connection between All Hallows Even and Samhain, anyway. Nowadays the idea is to honor the saints, in the Roman Catholic tradition; or to honor the clouds of witness, in many Protestant traditions.
The German Protestant church observed the Tötenfest, the remembrance of the dead, the faithful who had died in Christ in the past year. They marked that occassion not on a calendar date, but on the last Sunday of Pentecost, the liturgical season that begins roughly 50 days after Easter Sunday, and runs until the Sunday before Advent. Don't get your calendars out, the last Sunday is easy to calculate. Advent begins four Sundays before December 25th, so the last Sunday of Pentecost is a week before the first Sunday of Advent. Because days on the Gregorian calendar move about, while Christmas has a settled date, and Hallowe'en, too, the last Sunday of Pentecost and first Sunday of Advent change their dates every year. This year the last Sunday of Pentecost is November 22nd. I'll mark the Totenfest that day again this year.
It's all about death and resurrection. Although those terms might not mean what you think they mean. You're thinking it's about death, so it's gloomy. But it's about hope and a redeemed creation. It's one of the few times a year on the church lectionary you can be guaranteed a reading from the Revelation (Apocalypse, or "revealing") to John. Which despite it's reputation and use by some to predict eternal punishment for others, is actually bout both of those topics (hope and redemption for all of creation).
The following prayer is from the (German) Evangelical Book of Worship. I'm not certain precisely when they used it in the church year, but I find it useful for Tötenfest, or, in this case, for All Saint's Day.
Almighty and everlasting God, before whom stand the spirits of the living and the dead; Light of lights, Fountain of wisdom and goodness, who livest in all pure and humble and gracious souls.
For all who witnessed a good confession for thy glory and the welfare of the world; for patriarchs, prophets, and apostles; for the wise of every land and nation, and all teachers of mankind,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.
For the martyrs of our holy faith, the faithful witnesses of Christ of whome the world was not worthy, and for all who have resisted falsehood and wrong unto suffering or death,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.
For all who have labored and suffered for freedom, good government, just laws, and they sanctity of the home; and for all who have given their lives for their country,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.
For all who have sought to bless men by their service and life, and to lighten the dark places of the earth,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.
For those who have been tender and true and brave in all times and places, and for all who have been one with thee in the communion of Christ's spirit and in the strength of his love,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.
For the dear friends and kindred, ministering in the spiritual world, whose faces we see no more, but whose love is with us for ever,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.
For the teachers and companions of our childhood and yough, and for the members of our household of faith who worship thee in heaven,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.
For the grace which was given to all these, and for the trust and hope in which they lived and died,
WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.
And that we may hold them in continual remembrance, that the sanctity of their wisdom and goodness may rest upon our earthly days, and that we may prepare ourselves to follow them in their upward way,
WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.
That we may ever think of them as with thee, and be sure that where they are, there we may be also,
WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.
That we mave haev a hope beyond this world for all they children, even for wanderers who must be sought and brought home; that we may be comforted and sustained by the promise of a time when none shall be a stranger and an exile from thy kingdom and household;
WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.
In the communion of the Holy Spirit, with the faithful and the saints in heaven, with the redeemed in all ages, with our beloved who dwell in thy presence and peace, we, who still serve and suffer on earth, unite in ascribing:
THANKSGIVING, GLORY, HONOR, AND POWER UNTO THEE, O LORD OUR GOD.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE, WORLD WITHOUT END. AMEN.
The Revised Common Lectionary provides these scripture readings for All Saints 2024.
Isaiah 25:6-9
25:6
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
25:7
And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.
25:8
Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.
25:9
It will be said on that day, "See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation."
Psalm 24
24:1
The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it,
24:2
for he has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.
24:3
Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place?
24:4
Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false and do not swear deceitfully.
24:5
They will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from the God of their salvation.
24:6
Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah
24:7
Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!
24:8
Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle.
24:9
Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!
24:10
Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah
Revelation 21:1-6a
21:1
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
21:2
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
21:3
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God;
21:4
he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."
21:5
And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true."
21:6
Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End..
John 11:32-44
11:32
When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
11:33
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.
11:34
He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."
11:35
Jesus began to weep
11:36
So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"
11:37
But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"
11:38
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.
11:39
Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days."
11:40
Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"
11:41
So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me.
11:42
I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me."
11:43
When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus come out!"
11:44
The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him and let him go."
If you skipped all those readings, I don't blame you. I won't belabor them here. I just want to point out the thematic reason for them, the thread that runs through them: death and resurrection, and how even the dead are alive to God.
None of which are simple concepts, although we oversimplify them constantly, imagining either a painless passage from death to "after life," or maybe we complicate it with a Final Judgement and the separation of the sheep and the goats. But these verses are not abstract speculations on unknown things. They are far more concrete than that.
I said I wouldn’t belabor them, but let me run through them quickly.
Isaiah promises a vision of renewal and redemption that will follow the Babylonian Exile. It will be a time when Israel is so faithful to God (which doesn't mean observing the "right" rituals in worship or daily life, but following the "law of God," in Micah’s famous tripartite version: do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God. There's a whole set of lessons in that verse alone, but that's for another day). It's an apocalyptic vision, by which I mean not death and destruction and the end of all things, but the final revelation showing the truth of all things. And what is this apocalypse? It is when death is swallowed up forever, and every tear is dried. The true end, as in purpose but also conclusion, of history.
Doesn't seem very solidly concrete; but the Psalm is a song of the saints, of "Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false and do not swear deceitfully/They will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from the God of their salvation./Such is the company of those who seek him.” Not so very different from Isaiah’s vision.
And the revelation to John, in the original Greek the "apocalypse" of John, where it is declared that 'Death will be no more," and because of that "mourning and crying will be no more." It's one of the passages I've used most often at a graveside service, to try to comfort the mourning. Notice it's not a Platonic statement about an immortal soul slipping off its mortal coil. It's about resurrection, a return to life, a reversal at the end of history.
Finally, the story of Lazarus., which is also a story of reversal. This is an interesting story in John, because it's one of the semeia, the signs, Jesus performs. In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), the "miracles" are "dunamis," or acts of power. In John, they are signs; and any modern semiologist (if they're still around) will tell you the distinctive character of a sign is that it points to something beyond itself, like a stop sign points to the power of government to punish you if you don't obey the sign. So the resurrection of Lazarus is a sign; but it's also one of the most concrete passages in John, where Jesus literally talks for three chapters in the upper room on the night before his crucifixion. Jesus talks a lot in John. So much so the person often disappears behind the abstractions. Except for washing his disciples feet, there's no time in the narrative of his last night to eat or drink or to give the cryptic message about the meal. But in the story of Lazarus Jesus doesn't talk, he merely acts. And he overcomes death, he reverses death in favor of life, a real death of a truly dead person (Nikos Kazantzakis uses this story in his novel The Last Temptation of Christ, and notes that Lazarus sits in his sisters' house still stinking of the grave. Verisismilitude, indeed.)
Death and resurrection; concrete and visionary; real and metaphorical.
For all the saints. From all the saints.
The semeia here is rather remarkable in John, because John's is not an inclusive gospel; it is almost a gnostic gospel. Those who know, know; those who do not, are Nicodemus; imagining that they know, but understanding nothing. Never mind; they are saved in the end. In the end, Nicodemus is one of those who recovers the body after the crucifixion. Or maybe that is John's joke again, since the body was never Jesus in the first place; since it only appeared to be Jesus. But John is brutally direct here: like God speaks Creation into existence, Jesus speaks Lazarus back into life. We are meant to see this clearly, not through a glass darkly. Lazarus was dead. Lazarus is alive. Wiping the tears from the eyes, at least, of his sisters; and, I suppose, from the eyes of Jesus, too. Jesus is so abstract and talkative in John's gospel he practically disappears behind the verbiage. Here, he cries; like a real person; like a caring human being.
God wept.
Rather like the saints, a few centuries later. Saints are people, flesh and blood, body and bone. They are no ideals and plaster and just metaphors. Metaphors are powerful, ideas are powerful, but they are not real, and plaster especially is just a man-made product. Saints are human. Saints are real. Saints are made by their faith; and by God. And the blessings of God announced in these four passages, are real; and concrete.
So say the saints: The blessings are here. The blessings are now, and they are real. The blessings are pronounced, right now, and being pronnced, they become real. They take affect here; for you. Now.
The language of this day all sounds like language of what will come, will happen, will be seen one day; but not now. We hear those words, or read those words, and we think: "Yes. Yes!" And we want them to be true now; but we know they are not true. We know they cannot yet be true.
But the saints admonish us. The saints tell us, remind us, wave their hands before our blind eyes, shout into our deaf ears: "The time is now! The blessing is now! The great ordeal is over and the throne of the Lamb is in front of you right now! The shepherd guides you now! The springs of water wash your feet right now! God is wiping your tears away now, now, even now! Oh, won't you open your eyes and see?! Won't you open your ears and listen?!" And then they weep for us, the saints; the clouds of witness who surround us and know what we know and know what we refuse to know. They surround us and weep and try once again to get our attention, to make us listen, to make us see, to get us just to notice.
Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!
Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!
Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah
Lift up your heads, and open the gates of your mind and soul; then you would see, then hear, then you would know! Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. The lives of the servants of the Lord are redeemed! And they are redeemed right now! That is what the saints tell us, and they know! They know, because they are human. They know because they are just like us. They know, because they are saints. And they surround us; and they are here, now.
Samhain is what the Irish once called this time. It was their new year, and the ancestors came back to see them for a celebration. It was when time itself was a "thin place," and the spirits could communicate with the living, and the veil between the two worlds was thin enough to allow communication. For them, the spirits were as real as flesh and blood family members, and their return was a blessing. As I get older and lose more family members to time, I see more and more what a blessing that would be. For us, perhaps even the saints don't seem quite real. The saints seem like the blessed ones, and their blessings seem to have come long after they could enjoy them in this life. But they know what we forget: that the blessings are for life, not for death. Blessings that only come as rewards in the end, are no blessings at all. Blessings that are not for this life, are only cruel promises. The saints know that God is the God of the living, not the dead; and that in God’s sight, all are alive. Which is why this time of year is still a time of celebration, not of mourning. Which is why the great ordeal has passed, and the lamb is with us now. And why the ones who seem so little, and have so little, and struggle to be merciful and make peace and keep pure hearts, are blessed right now, and not later, not as a reward for being stubborn or persistent or for simply hanging on. The struggle has passed. Blessed are we; right now. That is what the saints know.
The saints are flesh and blood and bone, as Jesus was; and they know what our struggles are, as Jesus did, and they know what our hope is; and that is what sets them apart from us. But not for long; never for long; and they don’t want to be set apart, they want to be with us, they want us to be with them. They are here, now, in this “thin time” they are as near as our next breath, and they know: the blessings on the merciful, and the mourning, and the pure in heart; on the peacemakers and the meek and the ones who are so hungry and thirsty for righteousness they are sure they can just taste, and if only they could be satisfied! They know, the saints, the wise and humble and loving saints, that we are with them, right now; and that we are blessed. Right now. And they want us to know it, too. For all the saints. God willing, we’ll see that we’re ones, too.
Because that’s what it means, to be children of God. The saints look just like you. Have hands, and hearts, and eyes, and ears, and mouths, shaped just like yours. And that is your blessing, now, and evermore. Because you are merciful. Because you are meek. Because, whether you know it or not, your heart is pure. Because you will never stop being hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Because you know it is there, that it will come, that it will be done. Because you know, the great ordeal is no ordeal at all. Because you know, that you want everyone else to know this; and to know they are blessed.
For all the saints. And you are one, too.
Amen.
