Day One: All Saints Day

The table set for communion at Bunyan Meeting, as we prepare to share with the saints at home and in Myanmar (on the screen).

Hello, and welcome to our new series of LIFELIGHT reflections. LifeLIGHT because, as the winter (at least, in the northern hemisphere) pulls us down into darkness, our journey to Christmas is a journey into Light.

This year, due to popular demand, we are starting ahead of Advent, on what many Christians celebrate as All Saints’ Day. For us, this is not so much about Christians who have died and are celebrated as saints, but focuses on the living people of God, forgiven and free.

So I hope that on this day, your worship could begin: . . .

Leader: ALL SAINTS!

All: YES!!

. . . because according to the Bible, any congregation of God’s people can rightly be addressed as Saints. Paul starts nearly all his letters to the early churches on that assumption: ‘From Paul to the saints at . . . (wherever it might be)’. Try it with your own church name. How does it make you feel about the people there – sceptical? Oh, really!? Or, well, yes, we might be a bit rough round the edges, but OK!

Try it with your own name: ‘Saint . . .’ In my case, it’s Saint Janet, one of the saints at Bunyan Meeting. Huh? Hallelujah!

The thing is that we are saints, not because we have lived up to any particular ideal; quite the opposite, in fact. It is God who has called us, and God who has blessed us. In every one of those letters Paul goes on from greeting the saints, to describe the great gift of grace that God has given us, that we are forgiven, and set free, through the love of God in Jesus.

This is what Paul says it is like being a saint:

Wretch that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ! . . . There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

(Romans 7:24 – 8:1 – take no notice of chapter breaks, they are much later additions to the Bible!)

It may be communion at your church today, the first Sunday of the month. Don’t worry if you can’t worship face to face at the moment, or if worship is very different from normal. Paul’s letters are ‘remote’ communications to the saints all round the known world in his day! By Zoom or Skype or in socially distanced song-less congregations, let the saints bear witness to the love and grace of God at work in us today.

There’s a lovely communion hymn written in an age very remote from our own times, but which describes the gathering of saints perfectly:

Jesus invites his saints

to meet around his board.

Here pardoned sinners sit, and hold

communion with their Lord. (Isaac Watts (1674-1748))

On All Saints Day, give thanks for God’s grace and forgiveness by which you are called. Pray for all the saints you know, wherever they may be.

Thanks be to God!

Janet Wootton