Saints Among Us

All Saints’ Day is celebrated around the world on the first day of each November. It is a principal feast of the church, one which we can also celebrate on the first Sunday after November 1st. All Saints’ as a feast began in the early centuries of the church in Ireland, then spread to England and later to Germany. The desire was for the living to remember, honor, pray to, and thank all those who have died – the famous and holy and the not so famous and ordinary. The communion of the saints in which we believe is the ongoing relationship that we get to have with those we see no longer.

This day is also one of four times a year we set aside for baptisms. Today we welcome three new Christians into the communion of saints and Christ’s body as full members of the church.

When I think back to my early childhood, one of the first conversations about God, or faith, or religion I remember hearing was not about Jesus per se, or the church, or about sin, or keeping the commandments, or even forgiveness. God was introduced to me, and to many of us I believe, by talk of heaven. I became captivated by thoughts of heaven, and still am today. Would my neighbor’s dog go to heaven when he died – I wondered? Would my grandfather’s father go to heaven – even though most people at the funeral thought he was a pretty salty old man? Was heaven just beyond the clouds? Were there angels? Would I too get wings and be able to fly? Did I, I wondered, really have a guardian angel that watched over me? I was also told this when I escaped harm or trouble. Would I meet that angel in heaven and get to say thank you?

The first prayer I remember learning, even before the Lord’s Prayer, was: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” I once came across a longer version of this Old English prayer that adds the lines: “Four corners to my bed, four angels there aspread: two to foot and two to head, and four to carry me when I’m dead.” I don’t know about you, but I am glad I never had to learn the full prayer when I was four years old because I’m not sure how soundly I would have slept.

Though I did not know it at the time, in learning that traditional childhood prayer, I was searching for something I still long for: reassurance. I wanted and want to know: is there more to this life than what I see and taste and know and feel today, and if there is, I want to know about it and be prepared. The passage from the Wisdom of Solomon speaks of the souls of the righteous in the hand of God where no torment will ever touch them. The Revelation passage speaks of heaven as an end to mourning, crying and pain. God wipes away every tear from our eyes. Of all the images the Bible gives us for the divine – creator, judge, loving father, the notion of God forever present in heaven with a piles of soggy tear-soaked Kleenex at his feet is an image that sits well with me. Maybe before the real fun can begin in heaven, the saints we remember today shed a few tears that need some wiping away. Tears of missing for a while those they love, tears from feeling fully loved and whole and forgiven for the very first time, and tears in knowing that saying that childhood prayer long ago wasn’t a waste of time after all.

There will always be some of us who can not wait for the version of heaven that comes after we live and die, they long to see and feel and experience it now.

There is a Jewish folktale that tells a story of a poor man who grew tired of the corruption and hatred he experienced each day. He was tired of the injustice that fell upon himself and his people. He would speak passionately to his family about his desire for a city where justice was honored and peace experienced. In the story, the poor man, night after night, dreamed of a land free from discord, a city where heaven touched earth.

Fed up, one day he announced that he could wait no longer. He packed a small meal, kissed his family goodbye, and set out on a journey in search of the magical city of his dreams. He walked all day, and just before the sun set, he found a place to sleep just off the road, in a forest. He ate his sandwich, said his prayers, and smoothed out the earth where he could lie. Just before he went to sleep he placed his shoes in the center of the path, pointing them in the direction he would continue the next day. The man, like many men I can only conclude, was not great at directions – I include myself in that camp – and relied on the direction of his shoes to point him the right way. While sleeping, another man walked on the same path and discovered the traveler’s shoes. A practical joker this traveler, he could not resist, and he turned the shoes around, pointing them in the direction from which the man came. Apparently, pointing one’s shoes was the Mapquest of that age.

Early the next morning the traveler rose, said his prayers, ate what remained of the food he had brought, and started his journey in the direction his shoes were pointed. He walked all day long, and just before the sun was setting, he saw the heavenly city off in the distance. It wasn’t as large as he had been expecting, and it looked – well it looked familiar. He entered a street that looked much like his own, knocked on a familiar door, greeted the family he found there, and lived happily ever after in the heavenly city of his dreams. (From Stories for Telling by William R. White, pg. 92)

This story is about restlessness and longing, of crying out for answers on this side of heaven, in this life. What the man desired sounds a bit like what many people tell pollsters on the eve of many elections in this country: when people say they want peace over war, they want to see honesty in government instead of corruption, they want better schools for our children, healthcare made more affordable and accessible, and for all of us to live without fear of criminals at home or terror from abroad. There is a single out right now by Atlanta-based singer John Mayer called “Waiting for the World to change.” Mayer speaks for his generation and many more when he sings how “me and all my friends, we're all misunderstood. They say we stand for nothing, there's no way we ever could. Now we see everything is going wrong, with the world and those who lead it. We just feel like we don't have the means to rise above and beat it.” “So,” he sings, “we keep waiting on the world to change.”

The poor man in the story could not wait any longer for the world to change, so he started out on this journey to find this heavenly city. He had thought his journey would take him to a new land, a better place and a fresh start; instead, he arrived back home to begin again finding glimpses of heaven in the lives of those closest to him.

We can wait around forever for the world to change, or we can become changed. The waters of baptism change us. The bread and wine of the Eucharist changes us. Living in community changes us.

On many a day when I am a bit weary from the journey, I can wonder about who it is that gratefully turns my shoes around at night like the poor man in the story – so that when I awake I set off in the right direction. Perhaps that is what it means to be a saint for me on this day. They are people we meet along the way in life who remind us that we can wander all we want, but eventually, the journey leads back to the one who made us and who loves us forever. They point our shoes back to God.