Vicar’s sermon: All Saints’ Sunday 2024

A week away and I have found myself in the company of any number of saints. Some of them have been particularly unpleasant: Eamon Duffy’s latest book is full of them – odd bods who spend years sat on top if towers in order to mortify the flesh; most of them misogynist – viewing anything associated with women as being somehow tainted: it’s a wonder the church survived! Others were sometimes viciously argumentative – which, even allowing for the distance of time, cultural differences and ‘different strokes’ doesn’t come over as particularly edifying. Much more fun was a skim through Frank Cottrell Boyce’s book Millions: a children’s book that won the Carnegie medal in 2004. Frank is a Liverpudlian Catholic who manages to introduce any number of saints into his lovely story of two brothers (Damian -aged 8, and Antony, aged 10) attempting to spend the fortune they have found in their back garden in just ten days (don’t ask). Antony is more worldly wise: he wants to invest, to go into real estate – apparently there isn’t a patron saint of estate agents (I wonder why!) – he has an eye for property but no bank account and struggles to look over 18. Damian has struggled since the boys’ mother died but has found comfort in learning about saints from totallysaints.com and, as Saint Clare tells him ‘Saints are everywhere. They’re like television. You just need an aerial.’
And so this 21st century children’s story unfolds with any number of saints getting a mention. Some, just in passing, like The Rose of Lima (1586-1617) who lived out her life at the bottom of her parents’ garden, or the patron saint of skating (Lidwina) – ‘a virgin martyr who was injured in a skating accident and spent the rest of her life in bed eating nothing but Holy Communion wafers for 7 years’. Yet other saints appear in the story – or at least they appear to Damian. St Clare is lovely and understands about Damian’s mum; St Peter is stressed out – wouldn’t you be if you had to vet everyone at the pearly gates but were also expected to be the patron saint of locksmiths? St Joseph is moved by Damian’s performance (as Joseph) in the school Nativity ‘That was terrific. You really put me back in there. Look…tears’. Between them all they help the boys find a way through the moral dilemmas associated with their lucky find.
It seems strange but how strange is it? How many saints are here, in this place. St George flies his flag on top of the church. St John the Baptist welcomes you in the church porch window. As you look up the nave you can see 11 of the apostles in the East window – it’s always worth trying to remember their names. Matthias isn’t there…too late to the party. On your left in the chancel St Mary Magdalene kneels before Jesus. Off by the font we have St Hilda, St Oswald and St Aidan. On your right Peter is in the Dugard window, Paul and James are in the south transept’s east window.
There are more: St Margaret has a chapel named after her. St Cuthbert’s cross is in the memorial to the South African war. The war memorial doors give us St Andrew’s cross and we are, of course, sat in St Mary’s church. As you came into church you’ll have caught a glimpse of a few more in the window above the porch. They’re hidden – that’s rather symbolic isn’t it- separated from us for now by a curtain. Behind that curtain we have St Ninian, St Helen, St Margaret of Scotland (again) and St Catherine (who, as we learned at the study the other week, probably didn’t exist but hey, it’s a good story).
The Church of England hasn’t always viewed saints well. Part of the problem has been that, like just about everybody else in the world, we don’t like to talk about death: where are they, what are they doing? For the Reformers of the 16th century it was all cut and dried: you died, you fell asleep in the Lord and, at the last trumpet (the end of all time) you would wake with everyone else to enjoy His presence for ever. This is good biblical stuff.
And yet…and yet…does time have any meaning once we have trod the verge of Jordan and crossed into eternity, once we have died? How are we meant to read passages in the New Testament that speak of our being surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses…or Jesus’ words ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’ – there’s no waiting for the last trumpet here, no snoozing peacefully like Rip Van Winkle till ‘Time’s end’. No. There is a church militant – us lot (as Fr John would say) and the church triumphant. Those who have gone before us who we bundle up with angels and archangels in that lovely phrase in the communion prayer as ‘all the company of heaven’ who proclaim God’s great and glorious name.
But what are they doing…all these saints? Perhaps its best to start with ‘what have they done?’ They have left us an example of faithfulness to Christ in a particular time and a particular place. None of them are perfect. Some, as I mentioned earlier, are hard work if not downright unpleasant. But something in their life struck a chord with their contemporaries, something in their teaching, their praying, their serving and their suffering offers us an example of holiness in ordinary. All of them were ordinary human beings, someone’s son or daughter, who embodied the faith they professed.
And maybe that’s part of what they still do. They act as a reminder that faith is to be lived out day by day not just thought or prayed about. That ‘physicality’, real life down to earthiness of holiness here amongst us is what draws tens of thousands to Durham Cathedral or to Lisieux or to St Iago. A desire to be near to someone who embodied the Christian life.
Do they do anything else? Some traditions would encourage particular prayers to particular saints. Saint Christopher used to hang from the rear view mirror in the front of any number of cars: patron saint of safe journeys I suppose…but he got bumped off the list along with St Catherine. I like the patron saints of lost causes – St Simon and St Jude (their day was last week) but I’m not sure I’d ever pray to them. That said, I wouldn’t spend too much effort trying to stop you from doing so. Personally, I just like to think that no matter how few of us there might be in church on any one day there’s always a few more…in fact, more than a few, cheering us on.
Some of them haven’t been awarded a certificate of holiness: the Reformation put paid to that but they get a mention in our church calendar, they’re not forgotten. We sometimes pray or sing words they wrote, we enjoy the changes in society they brought about, we’re beneficiaries of the arguments they won and the battles they fought so we bless them as they have blessed us.
To end, here’s a lovely quote from this week’s Church Times. ‘There are just two things you need to know about the saints. There are lots of them…and they’re all on our side.’