Hebrews 12:1 - Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,Frederick Buechner once wrote, “In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.”
As I have celebrated each All Saints' Day at Creator these "handkerchiefs" and the "great cloud of witnesses" become more important. For my Catholic friends All Saints Day officially remembers the saints, apostles, and martyrs which is then followed by All Souls, the commemoration of all the faithful departed.
Whether it is celebrating saints as part of the liturgical year, or just a mention of the various heroes from the recent past or long ago in a sermon or prayer, Hebrews 12 gives us some ground for looking back at our “heroes” for inspiration in the battle of faith.
For Lutherans hearing the word saint Martin Luther's famous “Simul Iustus et Peccator”can come to mind translated as “A Christian is simul (at the same time) iustus (just or righteous) and peccator (a sinner).” It helps us not separate the saints into “official” saints and ordinary, garden-variety ones. We sing “For All the Saints.” We are all saints being made holy in Christ, not because we have distinguished ourselves with holiness.
All Saints' quickly following Reformation Sunday is a consistent reminder of the iconoclasm in the early days of the Reformation where venerated objects of worship representing various saints were destroyed.
Something terribly important gets lost in the process. First, it’s important that the dead are not forgotten. We stand on the shoulders of men and woman—distinguished and ordinary, recently deceased and long dead—who fought the battle and kept the faith. God used their lives and faith to give birth to ours.
Today we sang in worship “For All the Saints”
For all the saints who from their labors rest,
who thee by faith before the world confessed,
thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blest.
Alleluia, alleluia!
This confirms that remembrance of all the saints is the worship of the Lord in whom we are one in faith by grace: “Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest.”
Like most great hymns, “For All the Saints” teaches while it offers worship and praise. Why do we remember those who are dead as still among us in the communion of the saints? Because they are the cloud of witnesses:
O may thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
and win, with them, the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, alleluia!
We repeated the Apostles’ Creed as Spencer was confirmed. We believe in the “communion of the saints.” Historically, that statement meant the unity of the living and the dead in one community of faith in Christ in the great cosmic spiritual battle. Those who are dead in Christ were the church triumphant, now reigning with Christ. This great “cloud of witnesses” surrounds us and cheers us on all through our lives but especially in our worship.
I don't know if the great cosmic battle language has the same resonance as it did for those worshipers in my youth who would sing hymns like "Onward Christian Soldiers?.
Making worship inclusive of the whole community of saints—the living and the dead, however and whenever it’s done—broadens our understanding of the church, reminds us of those who went before us on the journey of faith, and reinvigorates our trust in Christ’s ultimate victory over sin and death.
It is a reminder as fresh as The Bittersweets' song And Death Shall Have No Dominion and is also there in one of the best-loved and most frequently sung of Christian hymns:
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,
casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
who wert and art, and evermore shalt be.
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