Sermon - Saints and Sinners: Revised and Edited

Icon by Olya Kravchenko (Ukrainian, 1985–)

Sermon given at the Choral Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook celebrating the Feast of All Saints on Thursday 3rd November 2022. A version of this sermon was also preached at St George’s Bloomsbury on Sunday 30th October and St Sepulchure-without-Newgate on Tuesday 1st November 2022. (All Saints Day, Year C) based on readings from Ephesians 1.11-end and Luke 6.20-31.

Inheritances are often complicated. 

 

St Paul’s Cathedral had a free late-night opening recently, so I went along with some friends. That evening there were guides on hand to offer academic and personal responses to a number of the memorials inside; part of an ongoing project called ‘50 monuments in 50 voices’.

 

My friends claim a distant link to one of the men memorialized in the cathedral. In fact, their ancestor, Lord Roberts, has two memorials there; a large tomb in the crypt, not far from Nelson’s and a bust located on the wall of the north aisle. The head of Roberts, carved in white marble is the spitting image of my friends’ father, who died not long ago. I’ve walked past that sculpture many times and had to do a double take, such is the strength of the likeness.

 

Military historians aside, Lord Roberts is all but forgotten today - despite being one of only two non-Royals to be afforded a state funeral in the twentieth century; the other being Winston Churchill. A highly decorated military commander of the Victorian era, he led campaigns in India, Sudan, South Africa and Afghanistan, ending his career as Commander in Chief of the Army. Roberts was feted at home. Rudyard Kipling wrote three gushing poems about him, including one as an obituary, in which he described the General as “Flawless in faith and fame”. 

 

Not everyone would hold such a saintly view of the man however, whose ‘scorched earth’ military strategies included the use of what are described as ‘concentration camps’ in the Second Boer War. From Khartoum to Kandahar, the sites of his most celebrated victories remain today some of the most divided and violent places on earth.

 

As we approached the guide standing next to the likeness of my friend’s late father, I expected to hear the worst about their distant relation. I was anxious as to how this would affect my grieving friends. Despite being associated by friendship - and not genetics - that evening even I couldn’t escape from my connection to Lord Roberts. I realised that I was tied - knitted together - to his story, those of my friends and their father. Blood might be thicker than water, but love seems to trump the lot.

 

Inheritances are often complicated. 

 

The guide began by giving a short factual account of the General’s military career - as balanced as it could ever be, given the perennial difficulty of the history books always being written by the victors.

 

But they went on to explain the reason for the location of the bust in the north aisle - which is placed opposite a memorial to Indian soldiers killed in action in the First World War (something I had not noticed before). Lord Roberts died in 1914 after catching pneumonia during a visit to the trenches to support the Indian soldiers fighting there. In the cathedral, he looks across the aisle at their names, carved in the same material as his. His last generous act on earth memorialized in stone. 

 

 

Trappist Monk and Spiritual writer Thomas Merton said: “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and discovering my true self.”

 

A great deal of that self discovery must involve coming to understand our inheritance. Not just the truths about our genetic inheritance - but our inheritance of faith - which includes the saints and martyrs who have gone before us. As the Collect for today reminded us, we are all “knit together” into “one communion and fellowship” with the saints.

 

This inheritance can seem no less complicated. 

 

We can feel just as uncomfortable about our inescapable connection to it.

 

Perhaps the accounts of the lives of the saints just seem a bit too far fetched (talking to animals?!). Or perhaps we feel ourselves unworthy to have our lives knitted together with those whose example of faithful living seems so far removed from our own. 

 

While the process of recontextualising the memorials in our public buildings seems a relatively recent phenomenon, the act of bringing the lives of the saints down to earth has long been part of the tradition. We don’t have to look beyond the pages of scripture to find evidence of that. St Peter’s denial, St Paul’s persecutions…all there in black and white.

 

If social media had been around in the sixteenth century, we would have photographic evidence of what the founder of the Jesuits, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, meant when he described his early life as one “given to the vanities of the world”. 

 

The mind boggles! 

 

Saints who lived in our Information Age have had their foibles more publicly exposed. Shortly after her death, letters from Saint Teresa of Calcutta were published that revealed that this icon of Christ-like service to the poor and destitute had spent many years in doubt - even questioning the existence of God. 

 

Unlike the Catholic Church, we have no mechanism for canonizing new saints; but here in the Diocese of London you can nominate someone to have a “holy day” named in their honour, by sending in a form (of course!) to St Paul’s Cathedral.

 

But before you rush off to nominate me or a friend - be warned - new entries for the Kalendar are only accepted after a long - and literal - cooling off period - fifty years after the person’s death. 

 

It’s policy which the American satirist Ambrose Bierce might suggest affirms his statement that saints are “dead sinners, revised and edited.” 

 

 

The Feast of All Saints is a time when it is popular for baptisms to take place; when the process of our revision and editing begins; when we are knit together, through Christ, into the fellowship of faith.

 

The Letter to the Ephesians reminds us that in Christ we have obtained an inheritance of eternal blessings; “the word of truth, the gospel of [our] salvation.” But to know the full extent of this inheritance we need to undergo a recontextualisation ourselves. The letter describes this process as the Holy Spirit enlightening the eyes of our hearts. This is our sanctification - what Thomas Merton described as the process of discovering our true selves. 

 

Discovering how to become more Christ like. 

 

This inheritance can seem complicated. 

 

We may not have memorials of our likeness in stone but we are surrounded by the likeness of Christ in each other, in the saints and in the scriptures. Any mismatch between these images and our own is a source of unease. 

 

In our Gospel reading, Jesus tells us the reason for this. Speaking directly to his new disciples on the level ground of the plain, he makes clear what blinds the eyes of our hearts. These ‘woes’ include covetousness, greed, pride - our tendency to seek earthly riches and power, which mask the blessings of the inheritance we have all received. An inheritance we make complicated by failing to accept it. 

 

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Jesus said - and did. 

 

Discovering who we are is about coming to terms with the reality of how we treat others. We receive and pass on this inheritance by acting as people of blessing.

 

The Saints are those who realised that. 

 

So as we gather here in communion, let us pray that our hearts may continue to be enlightened by the power of the Spirit, that we may grow to better understand the great blessings we have inherited in Christ - and come closer to discovering our true selves by going out and sharing them. 

 

May we be comforted by the knowledge that when we slip and fall from this path, we are caught by a safety net - that great cloud of witnesses - the fellowship of all those who have gone before us, to whom we are bound in and through the love of God. 

 

In the words of the great hymn we are about to sing:

 

O blest communion! fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluya!

Amen.


Image : Icon by Olya Kravchenko (Ukrainian, 1985–)