By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector
This morning we observe one of the main feasts of the Church Year, All Saints Day. The actual day was November 1, which was last Monday. In the days when Christianity was new, there was a practice of placing Christian holidays on or close to Pagan holidays in the hope that they would come to eclipse them - which they did. For example Christmas was placed on the Roman feast of Saturnalia - a day in honor of Saturn, the Roman god of the harvest. It was a time of merriment in which masters and slaves reversed roles for the 3-5 days of its duration. (It's an interesting day to celebrate the Christian God who became human.) Needless to say the strategy worked and while people know Christmas, we have long forgotten Saturnalia.
A case can be made for a similar happening with All Saints Day and the Celtic feast of Samhain. That pre-Christian feast celebrated the harvest and observed the thin line between the living and the dead. When the crops were harvested and the plants which bore them left to die, the cycle of life was celebrated and a feast enjoyed. Gourds were carved to ward off evil spirits and costumes fashioned to mock them. When the Christian Church arrived on the British Isles this feast with its costumes came to celebrate the saints of the Christian year and costumes that mocked death and celebrated Jesus' triumph over death and the victory over demons and the powers of darkness.
However, I think a reverse has happened in the case of All Saints Day. The secular fascination with Hallowe'en has eclipsed the day it was supposed to celebrate. All Hallow's Eve, of the Eve of All Saints has taken on a life of its own, and the holiday it is supposed to herald has been largely forgotten.
Ghosts and Ghouls and all types of monsters, princesses and hobos, boxes of pop corn and cell phone costumes, super heroes and the like, have supplanted the men and women known as saints in the calendar of Christian memory. So it's our task to remember the main feast day of All Saints. We are all saints and over time have come to recognize specific people as examples "of godly living" as the collect says it. Part of what we recognize as "saintly" is the courage of faith convictions to do extraordinary things for the good of others. They carry the message of God's love to different configurations of people over the centuries that the church has existed. They have seen Christ in all persons and served them.
The Episcopal Church inherited the list of saints from the Roman Church, though our relationship to them is slightly different. We honor them for the lives they led and we name our churches after some of them - even the ones that, alas, like Blessed George, are not necessarily historically factual. While we may doubt the historicity of a medieval soldier named George slaying a dragon, we hold to the spiritual truth of men and women who battle amazing odds successfully in living out their faith and accomplishing true miracles in those lives. And some of then are most definitely named George.
Whereas our Roman friends still require stringent background checks and miracles before they dub the name "Saint" on an individual, the Episcopal Church has created a book of saints that includes the actual, the hopefully actual, and even the doubtfully actual saints of old with contemporary saints whose lives model faith and fortitude in larger than life ways.
One such saint is Martin Luther King. Dr. King is responsible for many miracles and is beyond doubt an example of virtuous and godly living.
Some of the youth from this parish gave up a day off from school this past Thursday to go to the New Jersey Food Bank. We got a tour of that very impressive facility which feeds and clothes thousands of people each year. It began in 1975 when a woman named Kathleen DiChiara collected dented cans from supermarkets and gave them out to people in need in the Newark area from the back of her car. Today the project is huge and gathers food from many venues including churches like ours who have food bins and bring them to be distributed.
There is a banner at the Food Bank over the hallway leading into the main storage facility with a quote from Dr. King. It reads: Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?"
Service is the sign of hope in our world that connects what we believe and what we do about it. Giving service in any fashion to those in need is ministry and proclaiming through action that God loves all people, and that they are blessed. Not blessed in that their circumstances are dire, but blessed in that they are not forgotten by God and they are loved.
The Gospel lesson connected with All Saints Day is the Beatitudes. The list of those who are blessed is among the most beautiful passages in all of the scriptures and they are words of hope for those who seem to be forgotten by the world.
Blessed are the poor, blessed are those who are hungry now, blessed are those who weep, blessed are you when people hate you on account of the Son of Man... We sometimes mistake the word "blessed" with the world "lucky". But that's not what it means at all. It means "consecrated, sacred, holy." Set aside for a particular purpose. And more often that not the purpose is to manifest the love of God, through their actions or in calling forth an action in others.
The service that we do for those in any need, if it comes from our faith conviction that God is reflected in all people and our work honors that, then we are living into our faith. Through our prayers, through our actions, through our contributions, through the welcome we extend to the visitor.
Saints dedicated their lives to service in God's name. They still do. It's so very important that we create service venues for our youth and engage in it ourselves. It takes us out of ourselves in a good way. I guarantee that if you're sad or angry about something, the antidote is service to another person, no matter how seemingly small.
We continue our stewardship campaign today and hope to gather pledges next week for the work and ministry here at St. George's. We are a vital and vibrant presence in Maplewood, in the Diocese of Newark and in the country and beyond. Our service and faith commitment has reached out to people in the Indian Ocean region affected by the 2004 Tsunami, the people in Haiti, South Africa, Mississippi, to name a few. Our voice has been heard in Trenton and Washington. People who have been hurt by religious institutions, families of origin or current families or battered by life's circumstances have found healing here in prayer, music, study and food. Later this morning we'll bless a tricycle given in the memory of Gabriel Batiste who would have been 5 years old last week. When death or loss hits us, we process the healing through giving in a variety of ways. The joy this tricycle will give a child at the Turning Point Community Services Family Shelter, helps his parents Miguel and Suzette and grandmother Yolanda in their healing over his untimely death.
We are saints in a long tradition or those committed to God through Jesus who are inspired to reach beyond ourselves, and in the process become ourselves in a way that is deeper and more fulfilling than we can imagine. By George, there are dragons out there, and by God we'll take them on. Amen.
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