Revelation 7:9-17 Psalm 34:1-10
1 John 3:1-3 Matthew 5:1-12
Today, we are in the second day of a three day observance of those who have entered the life to come. All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day comprise this three day articulation of what the resurrection means for us as Christians as it pertains to the people who have left our lives through their deaths.
In our baptismal theology we believe that everyone becomes a "saint" through Holy Baptism; that is one is born of water and the Holy Spirit. And the presence of the Holy Spirit within us makes us "saints" who are set apart to do the work and ministry of Christ.
We do not all live out our baptism vows in the exact same way. We do not all have the same public impact with the witness of our lives. Most of us remain very local and unknown beyond usual geography and social groups of our lives. But there are others who become known through their manner of life to a greater audience.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa of Calcutta are more widely known than we are. And what does this mean? It means that saints are global and regional and saints are locale and particular to our own settings in life. And that's unavoidable. Just like in Baseball, the Hall of Fame is unavoidable, in the life of the church, that some Saints became widely known was and is inevitable. It is the calling given to some to become well known saintly people as global and historic witnesses who lived out the recommended Christ-like values in special ways. And we celebrate them in individual feast days and in a grand single day, like today, All Saints' Day.
Why do we do this? Do we want to elevate and revere people above Jesus? No, but we want to display a vast gallery of exemplars of what the risen Christ can do in the lives of many different people. If the Risen Christ did wonderful in St. Mary and St. John and St. Francis, what can the Risen Christ do in us? Saints do not take away glory and honor from Christ; they only demonstrate the Risen Christ in a variety of personalities so that the appeal of Christ can reach us in accessible ways.
In the Eucharistic preface for All Saints Day, we declare that God has surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses in the lives of the saints. If you believe in ghosts, I would call this a Holy haunting. The cloud of witnesses is the atmospherics of the saints. It's the values of how they lived which are ghostly haunting us to live our very best lives. Let us live in this cloud with them as it is the atmosphere of the values available to us. This cloud? No, not that offsite internet storage place; live in the cloud of the witnesses who are the holy ones who have informed the highest values of our lives. This is how we understand what we confess in the belief of the communion of saints; we live within the holy haunting from cloud of witnesses of the ones who have been great in love and justice.
And this gives us a clue about how we should live our lives now; we should live in such a way that we will enter the cloud of witnesses at our deaths, so that we to can become holy haunters of the future generation towards the values of love and justice of Jesus Christ.
What is the Holy Haunting inspiring for us this All Saints' Day? For one, get out and vote. Live lives of doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly before God. If we do this we might be worthy to join the Cloud of Witnesses someday as Holy Haunters of the people to whom we will leave on this earth.
We believe the saints are in heaven and we want to go there too. But they are also still a present cloud of witnesses and they haunt us in gentle ways to walk in justice, love and mercy.
And who knows, if we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in the best way that we can, we too may become Holy Haunters in the Cloud of Witnesses to inspire those who will continue to live after us.
With God's help today, let us all seek to be holy haunters in a future cloud of witnesses, but not yet, we're not done with the work of justice and mercy of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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