Sermon for the Feast of All Saints – 29th October 2023

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

The Sermon on the Mount – we imagine Jesus atop a small mountain somewhere beside the Sea of Galilee. He looks out over those who have gathered to hear his words, most of them sitting below him on the slopes of the mount. He preaches as if he were high above everyone else, like a preacher in a lofty pulpit.

This may be picture that requires correction. A visit to the site beside the sea indicates that this even was not so much a pulpit experience, but rather a theatre experience. Jesus treats his location like it was a Greek or Roman theatre – a sort of Galilean Epidavros. He sits below them, like the protagonist of a Greek play, with his audience ranged in front of him spreading upwards. Like any good classical theatre, we know the effect of how a single voice carries to the very back row, to the ‘one and sixpence’ cheap seats furthest from the action. Whether front row or back row, no one is cheated of the performance. This we can imagine being the setting for Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount.

Alternatively, each of these sayings of Jesus could be part of a collection – a collection of sayings gathered together by the gospel writer from across the rich teaching material of our Lord and hung together like a string of pearls – each a pearl of great price. Also plausible, but I prefer to imagine Jesus at the centre stage of a dramatic event.

The Sermon on the Mount – also known as The Beatitudes, a name derived from the Latin word beatus, which is the Latin Vulgate translation of the Greek New Testament word μακάριος – the introductory word to each of the stanzas of the teaching.

Some contemporary translations have preferred to translate this word as ‘happy’ – ‘Happy are the meek’ etc etc. Indeed we should be happy if we are blessed – in sense of being inwardly glad – ‘I was glad when they said unto me, we will go into the house of the Lord (Psalm 122) from Psalm 122, made familiar to us not so long ago as it was sung to Hubert Parry’s tremendous musical setting as Charles III entered Westminster Abbey for his coronation.

But the word ‘happy’ just doesn’t quite cut the mustard. The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece is referred to as Makariotatos, from this word makarios, and rendered into English as ‘Your Beatitude’. I don’t think I would dare to have an audience with him at the Archbishopric Residence and greet his as ‘Your Happiness’.

The Sermon on the Mount – delivered by our Lord seated before his audience introducing to them the characteristics, the imprint, or the trade mark, of the people of the Kingdom – the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the hungry, the thirsty, the pure of heart, and so on.

This is a central text to our understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God, the nature of Christ himself, and the blueprint for the faithful. Thus it is the blueprint for the Church, and THE source of information about the Way of Holiness.

The Sermon on the Mount – so often deployed in the Church’s lectionary to be read as the gospel at this time when we reflect on the Saints, and the place of Remembrance of Saints, the Departed, the Fallen.

To become an epomynous canonical saint of the Church, one first has to pass through a stage of scrutiny that brings us into contact again with that Latin word beatus. Beatification is a sort of limbo – a period when the Church is considering someone to be canonized, but first recognizes in that individual someone who, in one way or another, was in pursuit of holiness.

This is not how St. Paul would have seen things – he calls all the members of the little churches scattered around the Mediterranean ‘saints’, so folks just like us – baptized and active and church life. If you like ‘saints like us’ are the opposite end of the spectrum to the great canonized saints of the church. And yet – and yet – everyone one of them was in one way or another just like us. Like us, each was in pursuit of holiness. The Sermon on the Mount is there as our manual – the step-by-step guide to the pursuit of holiness, βήμα–βήμα.

There can be no great Saints of the Church if there are no ordinary people like you and me who are genuinely seeking ways to know what it is to be makarios – beatus – happily blessed. It is the pursuit of holiness that characterizes all the canonical saints, and it is the pursuit of holiness that connects us here on earth to them. They have shared the same hunger and thirst as us for being closer to God, and being more faithful to the Sermon on the Mount teaching of Our Lord. Being a saint is not a destination, but rather sharing in the joys and trials of pursuing holiness:

Frail yet strong in the Lord; weak yet full of hope; failures yet touched by grace; desperate yet blessed by God’s love.

At this All Saints-tide, as we remember with thanksgiving saints and faithful departed, so on this occasion we also give thanks for the life of Fr. Ted Wetherall – almost forty days to the day of his passing. In him we first give thanks for his sharing in our common humanity, for it is from us as earthen vessels that Christ, in a divine action of alchemy, transforms frail humanity into the precious treasury of the Household of Faith. Fr. Ted was no saint – in the sense that saints must be perfect and not like us, for he truly was like us – yet he is a saint of God – baptized, active in Christ’s Church, pursuing the way of holiness, and seeking for the Kingdom of God – the Sermon on the Mount.

As well as being grateful for him as a person, we give thanks for his life and ministry as a holy priest of God. ‘I was glad when he said unto me we will go into the House of the Lord’ – a Priest to the Temple – set apart from within the life of the Christ’s Church to serve his Church. Fr. Ted was a parish priest in the same place in the East of England for 38 years, before coming to Greece and starting a second phase of his ministry. In that 38 years in one place he will have married, baptized, buried people of the same family; he will have rejoiced with them in times of sadness and in times of joy; he will have been both the glue of the community, but at times, being a human priest, he would have had fallings out, disagreements. Yet at the heart of all of this – he was in pursuit of holiness. If you want to read more about Ted I have written his Obituary that is still on the Diocesan website.

What a rich feast we have had set before us today by Christ. The Sermon on the Mount, the Beatidues; the remembrance of All Saints; the clear message that the saints are from us, and with us, and from within us not despite our humanity, but in fact, because of our humanity. The great Saint from Lyon, in France, Irenaeus, was so right when he said ‘the glory of God is man fully alive’.

And so we step on, now without Fr. Ted in our midst, on the way of holiness, and the pursuit of the divine relationship that God promised us in his Son Jesus Christ when he became flesh, like us, and dwelt among us, as brother, friend, encourager, and Saviour. In your pursuit of holiness be a peacemaker – because we need you, and you will be blessed