Sermon for All Saints-tide – “Growing into Saints” preached at the Eucharist, Sherborne Abbey on Sunday, 3 November 2024 by The Reverend Christopher Huitson. (Revelation Ch 21: v 1 – 6a; John Ch 11: v 32 – 44)

I have to tell you that the incidental music on the organ which accompanies my short journey to the pulpit has always made me feel like a million dollars. Yes, I know that it is not for me but is giving glory to God and the reading of the holy gospel but all the same I’m sure God won’t mind me taking some pleasure from the music – just as we absorb some vicarious goodness from the stories of the saints and their magnificent achievements.

When we look at the saints, we often imagine them to be readymade Christians, fully formed with a deep spiritual confidence and loyal to the core – real heroes and heroines of faith. We see them as deeply committed, perhaps ready even to lay down their lives for their belief but at the very least providing us with examples for us dimly to follow.

But that is to forget the lifetime of growth in faith that will also have taken place. Just as we forget that there was a time, when we were very young, when we knew nothing of the hymns, the worship of the church, the Bible and its stories, of Jesus and his parables and his self-sacrifice and so on, so we also forget that the saints needed to grow in faith just as much as we have done.

Often they struggled with faith. St Augustine of Hippo recorded his life in rather more detail than most and you can see in it a change and development over the years. His “Confessions in thirteen books” as the original title has it, is a masterpiece.

So we need to remember that they too were engaged on a journey of faith. The biblical insight is that we, on our pilgrimage, “are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses”. Sanctity is not so much about hero-worship as about accessibility; the saints are real men and women of every age in whose lives we can glimpse heaven in our midst. They are our partners in prayer. The church calendar reminds us of saints down the ages whose lives we rarely know much about. From time to time a better-known saint pops up and then the weekday Eucharist will have a short paragraph at the beginning giving us a summary of the saint’s life and significant dates.

November is a month for remembering. Yesterday was All Souls’ Day when we commemorated departed loved ones and the day before was the actual All Saints Day though we use the nearest Sunday so that we can celebrate the Saints on a more significant day. And Remembrance Sunday is not far away when we especially think of the loss of life that war brings. In a way All Saints Day is the church’s Remembrance Day and certainly many of the saints felt that they were engaged in a war, a spiritual battle against the forces of evil and the external forces which tried to contain and even stamp out Christianity. Some of them seemed to battle against their own inner desires and selfish or sinful tendencies. Others fought against the natural human inclination to flee from suffering or death. They learnt with great difficulty how to win their own personal battles – but, with God’s help, they were victorious.

Perhaps this explains the different feeling we have about All Saints-tide. For it is a time of joy and happiness. We don’t think of the Saints with sadness but with a confident joy. We talk about the Communion of Saints, and our hymns paint a picture of a heavenly host marching in triumph to God’s kingdom.

They are like the first settlers in a new continent blazing the trail for the rest of us. Here we see people who have followed Christ to the utmost, even ready to lay down their lives for their faith. They make up one communion and fellowship.

And so we take comfort from that vast array of saints that no one can number. For they have already journeyed as we now journey and their prayers encourage and guide us and inspire our own prayers. We are called to run with endurance the race that is set before us so that we too may join them in God’s heavenly kingdom.

We celebrate the achievements of Jesus, our Lord and master, as well as sing the praises of the saints themselves as they confessed their faith before the world and told the story of their journey of faith.