All Saints’ Sunday Year A

Eucharist – 2.xi.2008
(Revelation 7.9-17; 1 John 3.1-3; Matthew 5.1-12)

Professor Richard Dawkins was a well-respected scientist until he was

given the task of promoting the understanding of science to the general
public - and now he seems to spend most of his time attacking notions of
religion and God that no one actually believes in. It‟s old news now, but
his latest venture has led him to back an advertising campaign carried on
the side of London buses - thirty of them now carry the rather vacuous
and definitely patronising message: “There‟s probably no God. Now stop
worrying and enjoy your life.” Dawkins has put £5,500 of his own money
into this campaign - his generosity appears to fall short of attempting to
extend the campaign to our own Number 45 and 46, and I‟m sure we
prefer the red kite on them anyway. But who knows? He might find a few
coppers to do something with the V1 or V2 circular bus up to Consett!

I think it would be wasted money though. By allowing that first sentence,

“There‟s probably no God,” Dawkins betrays his own atheism. Hasn‟t he
got more confidence in what he doesn‟t believe? But it‟s the patronising
non sequitur which I particularly dislike: “Now stop worrying and enjoy
your life.” No doubt there are people who make religion into a sort of
guilt trip, but that‟s not what the Christian faith properly understood is
wanting you to buy into. But what is certain is that there are plenty of
people who do worry, and who don‟t enjoy life. And the fact is that they
really do have things to worry about. Giving up believing in God - or
thinking that you probably should give up believing in God because a
slogan on the side of a bus says he probably doesn‟t exist - … that‟s not

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going to stop you from worrying, and it‟s certainly not going to take away
the source of your worries when your problems are all too real.

Christians need to take the idea of advertising their faith seriously - but
they should carry the adverts by the way they live, rather than put them
on the side of buses. Christians are not in the business of running away
from reality. When we say that God made this world, we recognise that
he calls us to live in it with all its problems - as well as to affirm the
goodness of his creation. When we say that God in Christ has redeemed
the world, we‟re saying that its evils are a reality which won‟t just go
away. And we‟re not saying that only God can put things right as if by
magic… At the heart of the Christian Gospel there stands a Cross and on
it we see God‟s own Son. The one who shares the fullness of divine being
also shares our humanity. In him we see how God‟s love comes into this
world. In him we see the full horror of what people are capable of doing
to each other - and they do it to him. In his humanity God feels our
human pain and capacity for destruction. And through Christ‟s
Resurrection we see that there is the hope of life made new - and that love
will conquer all that destroys. But none of this by magic... Our God is all
too human - or rather is human just like us. And he comes into our human
history not as a problem solver, but as one who invites us not only to have
faith in him, but also to join him in his task.

And that‟s what today‟s Feast of All Saints is about. To use the language
of the Book of Revelation, the saints are the unnumbered, largely
anonymous throng who worship around God‟s throne, continually
praising him. But the truth behind the idea of the saints in heaven is our
collective vocation now to be God‟s holy people. We fulfil that vocation
not by being po-faced and austere ascetics, but by living out our humanity

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in the consciousness of God‟s purpose for us. That‟s why the Feast of All
Saints goes hand-in-hand with the Commemoration of All Souls, which
we observe tomorrow. All Souls Day is not a day to be morbid as we
remember loved ones who have dies. It‟s a day to value them. To
remember the fullness of their lives, to recognise what their living has
brought into our living, and to affirm their lives as God-given. We pray
for them because they are as much God‟s children now as they were in
the time of their mortal lives. So I hope people will come back tomorrow
as we pray for them at the Eucharist. And as we do that we recognise the
truth behind today‟s Feast - that we are called to be saints, God’s holy
people… And that is why we have souls, whatever it is that God has
given us that tells of his divine purpose working through that which
makes us human.

Do we believe this? The clinical psychologist and self-help guru, Dorothy

Rowe seems to have a rather deeper understanding of the workings of
religious belief than Richard Dawkins - and that makes her critique of
religion all the more challenging. She argues that “No religion accepts us
as the person we know ourselves to be. Rather we are told that we are
inadequate, unsatisfactory and helpless. We fear that this is so…” And so
we buy into religion as a fantasy which makes us superior to others who
do not share our views. In other words, the Church wants you to feel
guilty and depressed so that you buy the religious product - and then you
can go around feeling special and feeding your pride. I‟m afraid that there
are Christians who come perilously close to this sort of religious
expression.

But that‟s not what Christian faith is about. The Anglican priest and
philosopher, Giles Fraser, recently wrote about the need to recover the

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term “Humanism.” These days it tends to be monopolised by people who
want to deny the existence of God. They claim they want to put God out
of the picture so that people can recognise that fulfilling their human
potential is up to them alone. “You‟re on your own, and you can do it,”
they‟re saying. But as Fraser points out, the origins of humanism are
within Christianity, in affirming that the human needs a value if it is to be
valued. All too often what calls itself “humanism” is in reality
materialism - and human beings become just “stuff” to be moulded as we
see fit, or as someone else tells us is fit. So who can say what is or isn‟t to
be worried about? Who is going to determine what makes life happy,
bearable or worth living? And before long we are on the path to doubting
the value of some sorts of life: easy abortion becomes a way out of worry,
and hundreds of thousands of lives are destroyed to make other lives
simpler; euthanasia becomes not only a possibility but in the long term a
possible “duty,” not only to relieve the suffering of the individual but to
absolve others of their responsibilities to them. This is the sort of
humanism that denies that humanity is God-given, and that to be human
is to give back to God.

What does Jesus say? His first recorded words of teaching are those
which we call the Beatitudes - today‟s Gospel reading:

3 „Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
…
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
…
7 Blessed are the merciful,
…

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 8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.

These are not words to preach about and explain. They are words to
meditate upon, to pray and be silent. We don‟t need to argue over the
qualities of people who live like this - or whether they really will receive
their reward. We only need to look to those places where these qualities
are denied… in the Eastern Congo, Aghanistan, Iraq - wherever life is
held cheap, where people fail to see God‟s image in each other.

I don‟t think the Beatitudes are exhaustive. Having a Feast of All Saints,
the vast majority of whom are unknown to us by name, is a reminder to
us that you don‟t need the Pope to canonise you to make you a saint, nor
do you need to get your name onto the page of a Church of England
Prayer Book. Sanctity is humanity when it acts in accord with God‟s
purpose. There are litanies of the saints, whose names can be reeled off
ad nauseam. But still more real, there are the people each of us probably
knows who give up every day of their lives to looking after a loved one.
It‟s a particular privilege I have to see how much so many people do for
each other - often it makes me feel quite inadequate, and I come away
wondering how they can go on doing so much… where they find the
strength. But I come away the better for it as well, because what I see is
love in action. And where love is, there God is (and vice versa).

In the Book of Revelation, St. John the Divine paints his vision of the
saints in heaven, gathered “before the throne of God, and (they) worship
him day and night within his temple.” But it‟s not only in heaven. Heaven
begins here among people of all ages, nations and races. Even in this

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church where the 80-plus year old sits in a pew occupied for a lifetime,
and the toddlers run around in the children‟s corner. Each has their place.
And in our prayers we offer up the life of this world: prayers for Western
Europeans, comfortable in material things, despite all the financial
uncertainties of the day; prayers for African children, threatened by
starvation, disease, war and the loss of homes; prayers for those who live
in the midst of violence and war, and those who perpetrate it. All of this
is to be taken into God‟s kingdom:

„Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?‟
… Then he said to me, „These are they who have come out of the
great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in
the blood of the Lamb.‟

They have “come out of the ordeal.” Through this life God will lead those
who wish to be his people. The promise is:

„… the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd,

and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.‟