All Saints Day 2024

So most of us coming from more informal church backgrounds are probably a little perplexed by something like All Saints Day. In many of our neighborhood churches they celebrate Christmas and Easter as major feast days. In more liturgical setting, where the church looks to the ancient church for its inspirations will see that there are more feast days in the calendar. Actually feasting and fasting are ways to be formed as a Christian by the calendar.

Think about it this way. If you are a farmer, and it is February, you are sensing that soon the calendar is going to ask you to plant, and you start to prepare for that. The long hot days of summer have you preparing to harvest, and you get your machinery ready for that. November as harvest come to a close its a time to celebrate the bounty Christ has given.

In the same way the church calendar invites us into seasons of preparation, seasons of work, and seasons of celebrations. Now by the time of the reformation the calendar had become a book full of exceptions. There was always a Saint day to recognize. A reason to fast. And important event to remember. In the Eastern church where they have retained much of this they Fast something like 260 days a year.

Englands church being a reformed movement curtailed that into a few important feasts. Trinity, All Saints, Saint Micheal and all Angels, Epiphany, and a few others, but nothing like the Calendars of old.

So what is the History of All Saints day

Martyrdom and the recognition of its virtue was an early thing in the church. By 270, there where bishops having Days of celebration of Martyrs in the calendar. By the 600s it became a regular part of the whole church calendar, and it was the Irish that added to it festivals where you would remember the day by dressing up or remember those who are dead. That costuming is the origins of Halloween, the feast of All Hollows Eve, or the remembrance of the Holy Ones.

Some reformed movements did away with the celebration all together as it did become a time to think about those languishing in purgatory and trying to pray them out. As the reformed churches of Europe moved away from purgatory, anything that would keep peoples minds there was also done away with.

In the English church is truly is a time to remember those made Holy by the blood of Christ who have gone on to be with him in heaven.

Scripture. so what of todays Scripture.

Revelation 7:9–17 “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. “Therefore they are before the throne of God, a…”

We see that the people who have gone before us are in heaven and worshiping God. What need to remember is that these scenes of worship in Revelation are the very scenes of worship our service looks to for inspiration. These are not previously happening events that we re-enact, this is happening in Heaven outside of space time, and we join in and worship with them That is why we say with Angels Archangels and all the company of heaven … Those who have gone before us are there giving God perfect praise and we join as part of our communion service.

One other place I want to take our attention liturgically is the prayers of the people…And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom. Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.

It is essential that we think correctly about those who have gone before us. This is not telling us that we need to be good like them, it is not telling us we need to get them out of purgatory, It is asking that in the same way that Christ has made them Holy by his work on the Cross, so they can have heaven, that we would also cling to Christ and be made Holy, and by the work of Christ we would also stand in Gods presence.

We must always remember that our work does not make us Holy. In fact so much of our work is done in rebellion. Not only do we break the ten commandments, stealing, lusting, hating, coveting, being jealous, but we also in our best moments think of ourselves as purchasing some kind of worthiness.

The scripture tells us our works are as filthy rags before God, that our Holyness is something God does. He takes our filthy rags with him to the cross, and gives us his perfect Righteousness that we would be Saints, and as saints we would sit at his throne and feast on the food that leads to eternal life.