All Saints eSerm

The Communion of Saints
Sermon by T. A. Kantonen

Whenever we confess our faith in the words of the Apostles’ Creed, we include the affirmation: "I believe in the communion of saints." What do we mean when we say this? Who are the saints? And what is the "communion" of saints? All Saints’ Day prompts us to look for an answer to these questions.
According to the New Testament, the saints are not a select group of persons with haloes around their heads. They are simply the members of the Christian fellowship, men and women who live by faith in Jesus Christ and in whose lives the Holy Spirit is at work. When Paul wrote "to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi," or at Rome or Corinth, he meant all Christ’s people in those cities. Thus the New English Bible does not use the word "saints" at all but replaces it with the term "God’s people."
In celebrating All Saints’ Day, attention needs to be called to the word "all." Historically it refers to the fact that the medieval church, which accorded deep reverence to those whom it regarded as having achieved full sainthood and designated special days to many of them, set aside one day for remembering all its saints. The church of the Reformation, with its strong stand against worshiping the saints, drastically reduced the number of saints’ days but continued the tradition of observing All Saints’ Day, provided that the commemoration of the saints was in keeping with the gospel. Today when all Christendom is sincerely seeking the fulfillment of the Lord’s plea "that they may all be one so that the world may believe," the festival of all saints has a timely importance. It calls us to realize the unity of the church, for the fellowship of saints includes all of Christ’s people on earth, no matter what their nation, race, or denomination may be.
But more than that. All Saints’ Day also calls us to remember the believers in Christ who have completed their labors on earth and transferred their membership from the church militant to the church triumphant. It gives us a vision of heaven, lifting the veil which separates the people of God on earth from the people of God who have finished their earthly journey and reached the goal we are striving for. "We feebly struggle, they in glory shine." But death cannot sever the bond of Christian fellowship, for those who have departed in Christ are still in Christ as we are in Christ. After a roll-call of past heroes of the faith, the apostle describes them as a cloud of witnesses surrounding us. They are a kind of cheering section urging us who are still on the playing field to put forth every effort to "win with them the victor’s crown of gold." Bishop How’s great hymn "For all thy saints," from which we have been quoting, describes beautifully the spurring impact of the victorious saints in heaven upon the struggling saints on earth:

"And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph-song,
And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong."

The saints in heaven have entered the Sabbath rest of the people of God, but the saints on earth have a battle on their hands. The Apostle speaks of encumbrances which must be thrown off, of the tenacious hold of sin which must be broken. That is what led Luther to say that in this life the saints of God are never complete but always in the making. "This life," he said, "is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified." Instead of claiming sinlessness, the more of a saint a man is the more he sees his own imperfections. Paul called himself "the chief of sinners" until the day of his martyrdom when he could say at last, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7).
Many years ago I gave a lecture at a pastors’ conference in a theological seminary on the subject of sin and sanctification. During the discussion period, the Professor of the New Testament, one of the saintliest men I have ever known, said, "From my own experience I must say that I am not making any progress in sanctification. I only see myself more and more clearly as a sinner." One of his students got up at once and said, "This is terrible. Here is our teacher who by word and example is supposed to teach us the Christian life and he only sees himself as a sinner." Whereupon another professor answered, "Young man, don’t you recognize a saint when you see one? The closer to God a man is the more keenly aware he is of his sin." That is the kind of saints we are at best. This is what Luther had in mind when he said that a Christian is a saint and a sinner at the same time. He is a sinner but one who is on a footing of war against sin both in himself and in life around him.
This conception of sainthood underlies the beatitudes, the traditional gospel lesson for All Saints’ Day. Our Lord ascribes blessedness to the poor in spirit, the mournful and penitent, the meek and humble, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the sincere, the peacemakers, the reviled and persecuted. The road to God’s kingdom, the road which the saints have trod, is the road of humble receptivity, of sincere concern, or heroic struggle. The emphasis is not on our achievement but upon our willingness to accept what God offers. It is our weakness, our failure, our helplessness, that entitle us to his grace. As Tertullian says, "Saints are beggars who live by the wealth of God." Or as Luther says, "The saints are the hungry, the thirsty, the naked and poor, who have wives and children and suffer shame." They are ordinary struggling Christians who put their trust in God and rely not on their own holiness but on the "alien holiness" of Christ.
Such are the saints, but they are to be found only in the communion of saints. There is no such person as a solitary Christian. In Luther’s quaint words, a Christian is never alone, for he is "baked together with Christ and all his saints into one loaf." The Holy Spirit who creates faith in our hearts also binds the hearts of believers together into a fellowship in Christ. Thus when we say, "I believe in the holy Christian church, the communion of saints," we are not speaking of two different groups. The holy Christian church is the communion of saints. Saints are Christ’s people, and the church is the fellowship of Christ’s people.
Christ himself is the living center of the faith of the church and of its members. In the words of the Apostle, the race is to be run with "our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom faith depends from start to finish." So close is the relation between Christ and his people that Bonhoeffer can define the church as "Christ existing in community."
The New Testament bears out this definition. It is full of impressive word-pictures that portray the close relation between Christ and his people. He is the foundation, we are the temple. "For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11). In him "the whole structure is joined together, and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:21-22). He is the vine, we are the branches. "He who abides in me," says Jesus, "he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). Without a living relation to him we have the same chance to live and act as Christians as a sawed-off branch of a fruit tree has to bear fruit. He is the bridegroom, we are the bride. "I betrothed you to Christ," says the apostle, "to present you as a pure bride to her one husband" (2 Corinthians 11:2).
There are many other images, but the strongest of them all is that Christ is the head and we are the members of his body. "We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love" (Ephesians 4:15-16). The church is not a mere organization but a living organism. We are not merely disciples and followers of Christ but parts of his living body, ingredients of the life of Christ on earth. We are, as Luther says boldly, "Christs one to another."
The thought that runs through all these images is that there are no saints apart from the communion of saints. True Christianity is never a private matter, you in your small corner and I in mine. The stones of which the temple is built are fitly joined together to be God’s dwelling place. The vine and the branches form one living whole. The bride and the groom are not twain but one flesh. The members of the body are held together by every joint, and one member cannot say to another, "I do not need you." When the different parts of the body fit together and work together, the whole body grows and builds itself up in love.
God’s saints, whether on earth or in heaven, do not ask: what is there in it for me? Love "seeketh not its own." In Luther’s words, "faith seeks nothing for itself in this world or the next" and "faith is nothing where love does not follow." True faith is God-centered and neighbor-centered, not self-centered.
A popular gospel song views the final goal of faith in this way:

"When all my labors and trials are o’er,
And I am safe on that beautiful shore,
Just to be near the dear Lord I adore
Will through the ages be glory for me.
O, that will be glory for me,
Glory for me, glory for me."

There is hope and trust here, to be sure, but how different this is from the picture which the word of God draws of the final scene! It presents "a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands." But their song is not "glory for me" but "Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb! ... Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever!" (Revelation 7:9-12).
So close is the togetherness and the for-another-ness of the communion of saints that not even the saints who have entered the Sabbath rest of the people of God enjoy the full joy of heaven before we are united with them. In the verses immediately preceding our text the apostle concludes his description of the departed heroes of faith with these words: "Yet they did not enter upon the promised inheritance, because, with us in mind, God had made a better plan, that only in company with us should they reach their perfection" (Hebrews 11:39-40, New English Bible). It is only when God’s redemptive purpose for all mankind will have been fulfilled in Christ’s coming in glory that we shall have a perfect All Saints’ Day.

Good News For All Seasons, T. A. Kantonen, CSS Publishing Co., Inc., 1975