Knit Together
Collect for All Saints' Day
November 1 of course is All Saints’ Day. One of the great festive holy days in
the church calendar. We’re allowed
to transfer it to the following Sunday, so we celebrating All Saints’ Day today
in our worship together.
All Saints’ Day.
Have you ever thought about the fact that’s is not called “some” saints
day? It’s not Some Saints’ Day,
it’s All Saints’ Day. There is no
division or separation or exclusion among the saints.
This is the
way the word “saints” is used in the New Testament. Writing at the beginning of the letter to the Ephesians, a
few verses before this morning’ s reading Paul says: Paul, an apostle of
Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are
faithful in Christ Jesus… all
the saints… Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The saints are all the people who
seek to follow Christ.
The saints are not separated or differentiated: by age, by relative sinfulness or
holiness, by political persuasion, slave or free, male or female. And, although Paul wouldn’t have been
thinking of this as he wrote to the Ephesians, today we see there is no
separation between saints living and dead. It is All Saints’ Day.
And to be a saint, to be among the saints is to be knit
together. In one sense, there
really isn’t such thing as a single saint. Yes, an individual person is a saint, but never in
isolation. To be a saint is to be
part of the communion of saints.
Remember the All Saints’ Day collect we just prayed: Almighty God, you have knit together your elect
in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our
Lord.
Almighty God, knit together your elect in the mystical body
of your son. God’s elect, the
saints, are knit together. And it
is the mystical body of Christ that knits, weaves, binds us together into one
communion and fellowship.
As I think about it, there are several Implications of being
knit together in Christ.
First, among the living saints, all of us who seek to follow
Christ and still live this mortal life.
We are knit together into one communion. Knit together by the body of Christ.
The world seems more belligerent, divided, and partisan now
than it has every been, at least in recent times. Or maybe it isn’t; maybe people are just acting on feelings
that have always been there. But
actions can be controlled. What if
we worked at acting like we were bound together in Christ? What if we all worked at acting like
the body of Christ unites us and holds us together?
Second, the living and the dead are knit together, too, by
the mystical body of Christ. I
think especially of the faithful departed saints whom we remembered on
Wednesday at the All Souls’ Day service.
These are the saints we knew and loved in life who now live in the
nearer presence of God. These are
people who, in life, were bound to us by bonds of love and friendship. Those bonds are not broken by death. We are still united, knit together by
the body of Christ.
I’m reminded of a prayer I know I’ve mentioned before. It’s not in the Prayer Book, but it is
a part of our Anglican tradition and is often said at burials.
What you give, dear
God, you do not take away….. These
people whom you gave to us, whom we have loved, you do not take away…..
For what is yours is ours always,
if we are yours. And life is
eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is
nothing save the limit of our sight.
Lift us up, O God, that we may see further; cleanse our eyes that we may
see more clearly; draw us closer to yourself that we may know ourselves nearer
to our beloved who are with you.
Finally, for all of the saints to be knit together in one
communion, is to have a common purpose, a common hope. It is to share the promise of fullness
of life in Christ, to seek the ineffable joys mentioned in the collect, to hope
for the riches of Jesus’ glorious inheritance among the saints described by
Paul in Ephesians.
All the saints, living and dead, share this common promise
and hope. And for us, today, to be
knit into this holy fellowship of saints is to be supported by them in our life
in Christ. We are knit together with
all the saints, the famous ones in the windows, the dear ones we remembered on
All Souls’ Day, the familiar ones sitting next to us in the pews. A mighty cloud of witnesses, living and
dead, sharing a common hope, offering their presence with us to teach, guide,
support and encourage us as faithful followers of Christ.
We are knit into the communion of saints. Thanks be to God.
