Sermon for the Feast of All Saints – 30th October 2022

Rev. Canon  L W Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

 

I have a confession to make. I am absolutely hopeless in understanding how to use new technology. I feel like a dinosaur, which is prehistoric.

I draw my inspiration from Scripture, but even there I discover that Moses was ahead of his time, for he went up into the cloud, and long before I had an iPad, Moses had a tablet, more than one in fact.

Today we celebrate All Saints, on this All Saints Sunday. In the letter to the Hebrews we hear a lovely phrase –a great cloud of witnesses – like an ‘i-cloud’. Have you heard of it? Some of you think I am talking about technology again where the i-cloud is where every message everyone sends to anyone anywhere is stored for ever and a day as evidence, a witness, to what you have ever said in any message to any person, anywhere. The amazing thing is that this contemporary i-cloud doesn’t exist anywhere. You cannot see it, touch it, smell it, taste it, or hear it. It has no existential reality – it is simply there. The cloud of witnesses is simply there.

But you will have guessed that the ‘cloud of witnesses’ is not quite like the iCloud, but it has some similarities. The ‘cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews is a glorious vision by a follower of Christ who described something very beautiful. It is a place but no GPS would ever find it for you. This place is full of the evidence of Christian lives lived well, witnesses to a different kind of communication, the communication of love between God and humanity, humanity and God, and between human beings.

This is what the writer says, ‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.’

What a lovely image, so visual and pictorial. It is a description of the saints; that company of heaven, who with Archangels and angels and all the heavenly host have an existence in constant and pure worship of God the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sustainer, or as we know it better, Father Son, and Holy Spirit, the divine Trinity.

We are surrounded by saints, embracing us in their ceaseless round of prayer and praise, occasionally gazing at us, glancing at us, holding out a hand to us, seeking to embrace and involve us as we hear, see, taste, feel, smell our worship of God here in earth. We are invited to inhabit the cloud, to cuddle the witnesses, to be a full and complete community brought about through the cross and the empty tomb, through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ who is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Pioneer, in that he goes before in his risen life; perfecter, in that he completed everything in his death on the cross.

We are surrounded by saints. Greece is a land of saints. There is a saint , sometimes more than one, for every day of the year, and so many first names, male and female, are saints names.

Back in October 2019 The Ecumenical Patriarch was on Mount Athos to ‘canonize’ five new saints. One name in particular stood out for me. He is Saint Sophronios. On my visit to Mount Athos in May 2019 I stood only a short distance away from the cell – not much more than a cave in the rocks – where Sophronios spent much of his time in solitude and prayer. When he was canonized however, he was named as Sophronios of Essex, because he was instrumental in vitalizing an Orthodox Community in the East of England. It is not just Greece that has many saints, as any quick glance at the C of E calendar of the saints will verify.

On the occasion when Sophronios was made a saint along with four others, one commentator wrote,  ‘There is no doubt that the acclamation and proclamation of a new saint is a refreshing gesture of consolation for the church, an affectionate expression of solidarity in people’s daily affliction. But can a gift – whether an act of grace by God or an act of generosity by the church – ever be manipulated or misused? Is it possible that we perceive holiness as an objectifiable, calculable and demonstrable concept – such as perfection or sinless-ness, extreme self-discipline, or excessive piety, miracle-working or prophetic charisma, even popular recognition or widespread reputation?’ (Public Orthodoxy – Men, Monks and Making Saints, Revd. Dr. J Chryssavgis 2019)

Though many of us recognize the saintly qualities mentioned above – the goal of ordinary Christians to lead a Christ-like life, can so easily be discouraged by such proto-type saints.

The danger is that we think of a saintly cloud of witnesses in somewhere that is nowhere – distant, untouchable, elsewhere.

As we think about saints and reflect on the cloud of witnesses as Anglicans we remind ourselves that we are children of the Reformation. We do indeed follow catholic tradition in many ways as part of our continuous heritage, but always we ground ourselves in scripture first. There is a strong biblical tradition of humans being overshadowed by the cloud, or consumed in the cloud, or taken up in the cloud. It was a pillar of cloud in the day that led the people of Israel through the journeys of the Exodus. It was a cloud that completely covered Moses on the top of the mountain of the commandments. It was from the cloud that God set his seal of approval when Jesus was baptized; from a cloud that God transfigured Jesus on Mt. Tabor; into a cloud that Christ ascended 40 days after his resurrection. In all of these situations the cloud is a way of describing nothing less than the very presence of Almighty God himself, the Shekinah.

Bringing us down to earth with a bump, St. Paul knows where the saints are to found. For him they are not up the sky somewhere. Far from it! They are the ordinary Christian folk struggling to be followers of Jesus in Rome, in Ephesus, Corinth, Thessaly – even the Christian folk struggling to be followers of Jesus in St. Paul’s Athens or wherever your local church is. Yes, here too there is a cloud of witnesses, and here too the glory of God shines just as he has in every generation.

 

Dr. John Chryssavgis again, says ‘It is true, then, that the joy that surrounds the canonization of a new saint stimulates the spirit of enthusiasm [found] among the early martyrs. Precisely because – above any distinction in race or religion, and beyond any discrimination of gender or class – it revives in all of us ‘the vocation to be saints.” (Romans 1, 7)

So on this day when we reflect on the great cloud of witnesses we are ourselves drawn into the cloud, into the presence of God himself, where we join with the whole company of heaven as we sing ‘Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.’