Homily for All Saints/Souls

My sisters & brothers, some are enjoying the fullness of God’s kingdom. Others, like us, still wait for their turn. Though Christ, we share full communion with all of them.

There are two very important details for us to draw from our first reading. First is the encouragement to seek the gift of Divine Wisdom. Or, ask God to fill you with God’s own spirit. The Old Testament ideas are interchangeable and the basis of our understanding of Jesus’ teaching about the Holy Spirit.

The second detail is that The Spirit/Divine Wisdom is described feminine imagery. We 21st century Christians tend to get so wrapped up in Jesus conversations about the Father, that we forget the deeper teaching of the God’s nature. God is neither male nor female but far more than both. This awareness starts in the Old Testament and has been consistently carried forward thought Christian history. It is important that we not lose sight of this, that we do not reduce God to some lowest common denominator.

Our second lesson brings up an important question for the first generation of Christians. They understand that the destiny of the faithful who are alive at the end of time is to be with God, but what about those who have already died? Remember they expected the second coming to be very soon. We know from 2000 years of history that it’s not happening soon.

Paul addresses their concerns about the faithful who have died. Christians have a certain hope: because we believe in the crucified and risen Christ, through him, God will bring those who are asleep into his company, the same as you and I.

Today’s gospel story is a parable about a master who leaves his household for a time, and suddenly returns. If, while he is away, his servant lives a godly, ethical life, they are “blessed” when the master returns. On the other hand, if they, realizing that the master is delayed in returning, misbehaves and lives a life of debauchery, they will be excluded on the master’s return. In fact, they will be caught in the act, because the master will return when least expected. Jesus is speaking in an allegory, about the relationship between how we live now and what our fate will be at the Second Coming; the master stands for Christ.

Our celebration today of All Saints and All Souls, revolves around the Christian belief that in Christ we have a spiritual connection with all the virtuous people who have gone before us. All Saints and All Souls days celebrate the final fulfillment of God’s promises of a holy paradise and the foretaste we experience now as God’s people. Do you remember Jesus’ preaching; the Kingdom is at hand, even among you? Today we celebrate that what Christ announced is true and our unity with Christ and one another extends not just to other believers in this life but in the life to come as well.

This awareness, that we share intercommunion between the living and the dead in the Body of Christ, is was far older than the Middle Ages. The patriarch John Chrysostom, who died in 407, says that a festival of All Saints was observed on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Constantinople at the time of his episcopate.

Today, we join this tradition in celebrating our vast spiritual family, in Christ.