November 7, 2021

All Saints’ Day

The Rev. Clint Brown

Early in the second century, the Roman governor of the province of Bithynia in Asia Minor, a man by the name of Gaius Plinius Secundus, also known to history as Pliny the Younger, wrote to the Emperor Trajan about his problems. He had the usual troubles of a governor: workers’ strikes, municipal scandals, political disaffection, but also religious unrest. Many of the temples, he reported, were becoming more and more deserted, many services had been discontinued, and the trade in the buying and selling of animals for sacrifice for the health and well-being of the god-emperor had dropped off considerably. It was all the fault of some troublemakers that his informants had identified called Christians. They were a secret society that could be up to no good and who were almost certainly disloyal to the emperor. So a number of these Christians were rounded up and brought before Pliny for a trial. It turned out that upon examination there was insufficient evidence pinning them to any criminal activities. They were religious zealots and cranks, perhaps, certainly obstinate and inflexible, but, on the whole, more of a nuisance than a threat.

In the course of his examination, Pliny found out something about the practices of these Christians, what they did when they came together. They were accustomed, he learned, to meet on a fixed day of the week very early in the morning to sing hymns responsively to Christ “as to a god,” and to bind themselves by a solemn oath, not to some nefarious crime or seditious plot, but simply an oath to keep the moral law. Later they took a harmless meal together and then went home. All this was naturally confusing to Pliny, what Christians actually did when they met on Sunday, but all of us have no difficulty in recognizing some of the elements of what is now called a Communion service, and, as I speak, there are millions of Christians just like us engaged in just such a service of worship right now.[1] And so it has been for all the centuries, Sunday after Sunday, without fail, in great cathedrals, in country churches, or wherever two or three could gather. We have never stopped coming together to remember.

History is an important value to Christianity. Our faith does not rest on a set of philosophical principles but on a relationship with a person – a historical person – what he did, who he was. We, therefore, are trying to continuously make present what is past, continuously holding up in front of us the reality of the Incarnation. God became flesh and dwelt among us, in time, as a part of history. Our insistence that we read from the Bible connects us to the past. The fact that our bishops are ordained in the apostolic succession connects us to the past. Our recital of creeds and ancient songs connects us to the past. The forms of our prayers and even some of the very words that we speak in our liturgy are often traceable to the very earliest documents that record such things. Yes, we Christians are very interested in maintaining continuity with our past, and so it makes sense that we would devote a Sunday each year to all the saints, remembering the heroes of the faith.

In the Book of Hebrews there is a remarkable passage in which the unknown Jewish-Christian author is writing a word of encouragement to an unknown group of Christians. After citing numerous notable examples of faithful men and women in the Old Testament, the writer reflects, “All these won a glowing testimony to their faith, but they did not then and there receive the fulfilment of the promise. God had something better planned for our day, and it was not his plan that they should reach perfection without us” (Hebrews 11:39-40, J. B. Phillips translation). What that means is that the faithfulness of those faithful men and women of old is only completed by our willingness to pick it up and carry it forward. If we do not do our part, their efforts will have been in vain. That is why we cannot forget the past or the heroes of the faith. We depend on them; they also depend on us. So as you kneel at the altar rail today and carry forward for one more week that sacred act of memory that we Christians have been doing since the beginning, take notice of the saint to your right and to your left, but also see the rail extending into eternity on either side with all the saints bowing with you in one great act of communion and know that the past has been made present once again.

[1] All of the above is a paraphrase of C. H. Dodd, The Founder of Christianity (London: Collins, 1971), 3-4.