It’s Complicated – November 1, 2023

Today’s Readings: All Saints':
AM: Psalm 111, 112; 2 Esdras 2:42-47; Hebrews 11:32-12:2
PM: Psalm 148, 150; Wisdom 5:1-5,14-16; Revelation 21:1-4,22-22:5

Think of someone you really admire. What is it you honor the most about that person? Now, pause for a moment - do you know them well? Can you think of something about that person that makes them more human and imperfect? A quirk, fault, or annoyance? I love it when I get to know someone and see the complicated layers that make them the wonderful child of God who they are.

Today is All Saints’ Day, when we praise God for those who have helped hone, shape, and defend the ways we gather as Church to honor the resurrected Jesus. Those numbered in the saints include those “whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten. Their posterity will continue for ever, and their glory will not be blotted out. Their bodies were buried in peace, and their name lives to all generations.” Ecclesiasticus 44:13-14

Perhaps you have heard a litany (really thorough, long prayer) of saints on this day. At Church of St. Stephen and the Incarnation in Washington, D.C., I have read that at the principal Eucharist celebrating All Saints’ Day, a lovely litany is prayed, calling all the saints, many across time by name, to “stand here beside us.” You may pray or peruse this fascinating prayer yourself.

I am struck by the call to draw near to the saints of our faith and ask that they stand here beside us in this moment in time. By being in the presence of others of profound faith – like the poets of celestial vision, including John Milton and William Blake, and others named in the litany above – we might grow to know them more deeply. We could learn from them, and they could even be moved by us. We could pray for one another, knit together in the deep love embodied by Jesus.

And then, something beautiful happens. We see the humanity of those near us. They become more complicated. They are not simply the wonderful composer, preacher, advocate. They are messy. And irritable. And funny. And real. In “The Sacred Journey,” Frederick Buechner commended to his readers these words:

“On All Saints' Day, it is not just the saints of the church that we should remember in our prayers, but all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives who, one way or another, have been our particular fathers and mothers and saints, and whom we loved without knowing we loved them and by whom we were helped to whatever little we may have, or ever hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own.

We might even believe that we have some miniscule amount of sainthood, too, as foolish and broken as we may be. How does that shape how we see those around us who we might undervalue or misunderstand?

May you be inspired as you contemplate the saints who have come before us and those who will follow us.

Katherine+