It is November at last, and now we are in the countdown to Election Day. All across the country, voting machines are being checked and rechecked; candidates are making final appeals, and citizens are urged to turn out and vote in the mid-term elections.
These are critical elections and Tuesday’s outcomes could have a profound impact upon our nation. We must all be wise and faithful as we exercise the privilege of electing our government in this country. Say a prayer for our elections and the participants. Then say another prayer for all those who have no voice or vote in countries around the world.
During this recent campaign season, the pollsters have been very busy, testing the opinions of the American public. Everyday we see new assessments of the voters’ opinions. Who is going to win? How close will it be? What do the polls say? Which candidates will gain the favor and trust of the American people? What do the polls say? These are the questions of the day.
But here in the church, on the first Sunday of November, our gaze turns in a different direction. On All Saints Sunday, we look back at the heroes of the church, those who have gone before us in the Christian faith. And if there is one thing that we can say about the saints it is this: the saints ignored the polls.
The saints did not court popularity. They did not conduct public opinion surveys. The saints not only ignored the polls, they often pursued courses of action that upset everyone around them. The saints are the men and women who follow the gospel with such single-mindedness that they are not popular, at least not in their lifetime. This is not because they don’t want friends. It is because they are driven by faith more than their own comfort. The saints are those who insist on doing the right thing even when the rest of us have too much to loose. The saints are our heroes.
Every civilization is defined in part by the stories it tells about itself, and the same is true in the Church. We tell the stories of the saints to remind us of our best selves, to inspire us with possibilities for following Christ. In the Episcopal Church, we do not pray to the saints. We do not believe that they have any divine power. We believe that they are human beings who experience the same fears and doubts and inertia that we all know, yet they press on in faith. This makes their stories even more compelling for us. We honor these heroes even as they raise the bar for us.
Over the course of two thousand years, saints have come in many shapes and sizes, all sorts and conditions of men and women. Some like Saint Paul risked their lives to tell the stories of Jesus. They were persecuted and put to death because they preached Christ’s redemption and empowerment in an oppressive culture.
Other saints lived their lives faithfully through prayer. Julian of Norwich never traveled far from home but this famous medieval mystic devoted her life to praying for the world. Her inspired writings are still popular and are the earliest existing English texts written by a woman.
Many saints served God with great courage through their intellects. Did you know that the early protestant reformers in Europe were put to death for translating the scriptures into local languages? They wanted to give the common folk access to God’s word, something they had never had before. Of course, knowledge is power, and the translators threatened the religious and royal establishments.
Our English Bible came into being through the work of William Tyndale. He was pursued by both the crown and the church for his efforts and was finally burned at the stake in 1536. Tyndale’s final words as he burned were, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Please remember this saint the next time you read your Bible.
There have also been saints who led the way in ministering to the needs of the world, such as the 12th century Hungarian queen, Elizabeth. She tended the sick and opened up the palace granary to the poor. Elizabeth was sent into exile for her generosity and died in poverty herself at the age of 24. Her story and her witness are remembered centuries later and hospitals still bear her name.
In our time, we list American civil rights leaders among the saints. We remember Jonathan Daniels, a seminarian at the Episcopal Divinity School here in Cambridge. He was murdered in 1965 while serving as a volunteer in a voter registration drive in Mississippi. We also revere the memory and leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We number these modern witnesses among the saints and are inspired by their stories as we continue to struggle with racism.
The calendar of saints in our church is still a work in progress. In fact, there are plenty of openings. The religious editor Robert Ellsberg has written, “...there is a path to holiness that lies within our individual circumstances, that engages our own talents and temperaments, that contends with our own strengths and weaknesses, that responds to the needs of our own neighbors and our particular moment in history. The feast of All Saints strengthens and encourages us to create that path by walking it.”
Ellsberg is right: the feast of All Saints is not just for history lessons. The Church’s heroes of the past offer operating instructions to those of us who would follow Christ today. Here is how it works.
You may not be called upon to translate the Bible into another language this week, but you could very well be led to reach out with compassion to someone who does not understand English. And most of us do not have Julian’s call to the monastic life with its strict regimen of prayer. But don’t worry: God listens for our prayers as we move through the day, even in rush hour traffic; maybe especially in rush hour traffic.
We continue to relate to the lives of the saints, across the barriers of time and culture for a very obvious reason: God’s Kingdom is not here yet. Poverty and suffering and injustice still prevail in our world. The saints’ work goes unfinished. And so even if you do not have keys to open the palace granary, you can open your heart to feed the hungry. And you may not imagine yourself as one who could start a movement, but you sure can work against racism in your own community.
Or perhaps you are shy about speaking publicly of your faith in Jesus Christ. That is just fine, because Christ prefers action. He asks us to love God and our neighbor as ourselves, and that takes many forms. It was St. Francis himself who said, “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”
The saints are all different, but they all make following Christ the priority of their life. One of the best clues we have for following Christ is in the command he gives in today’s gospel story of Lazarus.
Here comes Lazarus out that dank tomb with his eyes squinting in the daylight. He is tripping in his fetid burial clothes. Jesus looks at him and orders the people, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Unbind him, turn him loose before he falls, help him stay on his feet and come back to life. “Unbind him and let him go.”
Christ’s ministry was always about unbinding people, whether it was from death, or fear, or hatred, or envy, or despair. Everywhere Jesus went, the bonds of human suffering and self destruction came unraveled and there was new life.
This is the Jesus we follow. This is the One who ignored the polls and offered life and freedom to his people. This same Jesus continues to look at the suffering in our world and says to us, “Unbind them and let them go.” Christ’s words ring today as our marching orders. Our heroes, the saints, heard those words and responded, each in their own way, in their own day.
The late Joseph Campbell taught us about the power of ancient stories and heroes throughout human history. We recognize our saints in his heroes. In The Power of Myth, Campbell says,
“...the heroes of all times have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find [God], and where we thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”
Today our heroes, our saints, are indeed with all the world. We honor them, we are strengthened by their examples, and we give thanks to God for them.
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, alleluia!
AMEN | 
