For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia!
In the Beloved Community we are gifts to one another. The gift is not simply the talents we bring to the community, but the gift of ourselves to one another. In that spirit it is important to give thanks for each life – the gifts of God for the people of God. On All Saints Sunday we offer songs of praise and thanksgiving in gratitude for those who have departed our Beloved Community to enter the greater presence of God.
Having just returned from the beautiful Isle of Iona in Scotland, I am more acutely aware of the true meaning of the “thin places” of which the Celts spoke. George MacLeod, the founder of the Iona Community called Iona “…a thin place where only tissue paper separates the material from the spiritual.” This recent pilgrimage to Iona certainly felt like a very thin place. In a similar way All Saints Sunday offers a worship experience in which the veil between the material and spiritual is very thin. We are truly surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses and they testify to us with their very lives.
We know that God is present with us, and that the dead are present with God. And in light of that truth we find ourselves in close proximity to the saints who have gone before us. We are awakened to just how thin the veil really is between us and those saints who have left this world for the greater Presence. Tissue paper…
Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race set before us. Inspired by the Saints and in solidarity with the Saints we bear witness to God’s good and loving work in this world.
Thy name, oh Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia!
– Pastor David