Sermon Preached by Rev Coralie McCluskey
at All Saints Datchworth

Sunday morning - 31 October 2004

All Saints Patronal Festival

What better place could there be to preach on All Saints’ Day than in All Saints Church, Datchworth.  Surrounded as we are by a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, imagine the saints who have worshipped here in the last 800+ years, men, women and children who brought Christianity to the village, who built the first church and lived the gospel in this community.  Just for a moment try to remember one genuinely holy person you have known.

Add to them the long line of saints who are named in the Church’s calendar, a list of men, women and children who in their diversity and variety are breathtaking in their range; all sorts and types and conditions - and therefore really encouraging and a source of hope for us all, the saints of today and tomorrow.

So today, on this feast of All Saints, our Patronal festival, as we contemplate those, both named and unnamed, what do they have to say to us?  I think above all there is one thing that stands out in their lives – they knew their need of God.  This must be the very heart of the matter as we celebrate their lives and as we reflect on our own – a recognition of our deep need of God.  As I was thinking about this I remembered that beautiful Herbert Howells setting of psalm 42 Like as the hart desireth the water brooks, so longs my soul after thee, O God.  The combination of words and music have the power to bring you back to the need we have for God.  In New Hymns and Worship Songs there is a modern version, number 17, As the deer pants for the water so my soul longs after you.

In a world where conflict and confrontation are increasingly prevalent; where the innocent are often victims of man’s inhumanity, greed and desire for power and where sometimes we ask, where is it all going to end, it is in the lives of the saints we can find the support and strength we need.   They speak to us from the past, but a past that can be drawn into our present and give us the courage and strength we need for the future.  They can be with us, beside us as companions and guides, sustaining us with their prayers and guiding us by their example.

The saints too can help us to recover a vision of the church which is God’s and not ours; a vision that recognises our frail humanity – knowing our need of God – and at the same time rejoices in the mercy and grace of the God who, in Christ, has come among us and alongside us; who accepts us just as we are, and whose Holy Spirit is already at work in and through each one of us particularly as we come before him in this sacramental celebration, for transformation and change.

Blessed are those who know their need of God.

We could all name saints in our life time who have, knowing their need of God and the call to service deliberately chosen to work among the oppressed, the poor, the outcast, not to bring people the splendour of liturgy, of formal worship but through the sacramental life of the church bringing people something of the splendour of their own humanity.  Jesus said in as much as you have done to the least of these you have done it to me. 

God needs hearts that are full of love and service; hearts that reach out to heal and to care, hearts that will challenge the divisions in our world, international debt and economic injustice, the ever widening gap between rich and poor, the significance, worth and sanctity of every life, that will challenge the endless list that destroys creation.

Today, here in All Saints Church, as we celebrate the lives of the saints we celebrate a feast that challenges the sometimes mediocre nature of our own discipleship, but as we do so it also gives us the means and courage to go on.  It is a call to holiness, a rejection of the common sense approach, opting instead with courage for the best for God.  At the end of this Holy Eucharist we are charged with going out to love and serve the Lord, to go out with joy and confidence, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, to be the instruments of God’s love in bringing others to faith, to a knowledge and love of God, yet all the time keeping alive that vision of the Church which was so dear to those who have gone before us and with whom in these holy mysteries we are united in that love which knows no end, that vision of the Church of Jesus Christ, as a wonderful and sacred mystery.