All Saints’ Day, 2025
DANIEL 7:1-3, 15-18; PSALM 149; EPHESIANS 1:11-23; LUKE 6:20-31
we, who .. set our hope on Christ
One of the many things I appreciate about being an Anglican is the breadth of our traditions. And this is true once again on All Saints Sunday. Because we come to this feast with a breadth of notions about what it is to be a saint. I’ll mention three today.
The first is the tradition of naming some people saints from outside the canon of Scripture, where particularly exemplary Christian lives are recognized by a worshipping Christian community, and then commemorated. What I like about this is that we end up with people named as saints from all sorts of different cultures, and from very different historical eras. It brings a diversity to forms of Christian sanctity that we might not even name as such if we were only to look to ourselves.
Anglicans have a fondness for the one of the greatest of theologians, St. Augustine, a North African who lived a life of revelry and debauchery before being called by God in a garden to follow Jesus. Anglicans have a fondness for St. Francis of Assisi, an Italian who radically challenged the church of his time on questions of poverty especially, wandering around preaching, living much of his life as a beggar.
Anglicans love the Christians who built monasteries in Ireland, and Anglo-Saxon England, like St. Columba, St. Aidan, St. Ninian, and St. Hilda, saints who did us culture a great favour by preserving classical learning, and converting whole pagan cultures.
We remember modern martyrs, too, like the Martyrs of Uganda, Anglicans and Catholics killed in the late-nineteenth century for refusing to renounce their faith. I appreciate too the absolute weirdness of some of the saints, like Symeon Stylites who dispensed wisdom from atop a pillar in 5th century Syria for nearly 40 years.
This sort of diversity in holiness and Christian virtue is hard to imagine from our own narrow perspectives on sanctity and holiness. And I figure that’s a good thing—because it can help us look at others, sometimes very very near to us, with a certain kind of humility and opens the possibility of imagining that someone living what looks like a very different Christian life from us may well be very, very, holy in ways we might never have imagined, without the breadth of ways that God calls upon us to love him.
Anglicans though did take a detour away from this sort of approach to sainthood around the time of the Reformation, in a second notion of sainthood I’d like to speak to today. And we began to limit our notion of who was, and who might not be a saint according to Scripture. And what happened was that the Anglican calendar was pared down largely to the saints we find in the Bible.
And this has an interesting impact on what makes a person a saint—and it’s not always overwhelming holiness. Because if we were to look at the disciples, who even after following Jesus most certainly did not suddenly become perfect people, it means we have examples of Christian holiness that includes deep faults and flaws, failure to follow Jesus even, of falling away from faith and being drawn back into faith, from affirming Jesus to denying Jesus and back to affirming Jesus. Christian holiness, amongst saints like St. Peter, begins to have a greater emphasis on God’s irrevocable call, and less so on miracles or perfection.
Which brings us to what we celebrate today, in a third notion of sainthood. Because it’s not just miracle workers and the faultless who are saints, nor is it just the imperfect followers of Jesus in the Bible who are saints. We are reminded today that it is each of us—in sanctity and in weakness—that are called to the Communion of Saints by God, and in baptism.
Now Chizzy is, by all accounts, absolutely adorable. And today, we welcome Chizzy into the communion of saints in a special way as we baptize her. And she comes to us with a childlike innocence that we are meant to emulate. But we don’t baptize her, we don’t welcome her into the communion of saints because she is perfect—we welcome her into the communion of saints in baptism because to be a saint is simply to be called by God into God’s chosen community of deeply imperfect people, a people who know that if we are called to be holy, it is because God is holy, and that we are made holy first and foremost by the holiness of God.
Which is a relief.
Because it is clear to me, and anyone else who is paying attention, that the church, here today and across the whole of the world, is made up of people—people who struggle with faith, people who sometimes resist the change that comes with being called by God, sometimes resisting the holiness of God and its impact on our lives, sometimes resisting forms of holiness that are new to us or alien to us.
But this still does not, and cannot stop us, from gathering today, and from worshipping this God who transforms us by grace, and who welcomes us not according to our deeds, but according to what God has accomplished for us on the cross and in the resurrection—and this is what we invite even little Chizzy into: our Lord’s death, and our Lord’s life, into the wholeness of grace, a grace offered to us in what God accomplishes for us in Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit: that is, we welcome her into the communion of saints.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.