Pew Sheet, Sunday, November 3rd 2024. All Saints Day / Kingdom Season 1

A few weeks ago, I went down to down to Canterbury to give a talk in one of the local churches on the Friday evening. The talk was called, ‘Living with the Saints: Refreshing the Church’s prayer and worship using religious icons’. It is a topic very close to my heart as someone who derives great pleasure from spending a week painting one, and I find them to be a powerful tool when praying. Icons help me refocus both my mind, and my mind’s eye from the transient worries and concerns of this world to the heavenly realm, where God is surrounded, so scripture tells us, by a great multitude of saints from both the Old and New Testaments (and every era since then), who are always praising and worshipping God in that place we cannot see, but know to exist if we truly believe the promises of God.

Today, as we celebrate “All Saints Day” this morning, we bring to mind that innumerable host of saints now reunited with the one who gives each of us our very breath, and will one day, when it returns to him, welcome us to that place which is our only true and eternal home, ‘the city of the living God’ and the ’new Jerusalem’ (Hebrews 12:22-24) where death is no more, and every tear is wiped away as God reminds us in our passage from the Revelation of St John. As we worship God, it is so easy sometimes, to forget that we do not do so alone, and that our songs of praise and liturgical acts of worship are joined by those watching and waiting for us to rejoin them in that place where the worship of God is both eternal and unceasing; and where our prayers and songs of praise join with theirs as the church militant here on earth, and the church triumphant in heaven go about their unceasing and only proper work, which is to know God and to make God known through our prayer and praise.

We often talk about the saints, both those we have encountered in the Bible, and those we have known and whose loss we have mourned (for we will all be sanctified and made holy as they are when we see Christ face to face) in the past tense, without realising that this is an anomaly. For whilst we see them no more, or may never have seen St Peter or St Paul say, they are as alive in God as we are; and prove it by uttering their unending songs of praise with us when we do likewise.

Some might regard this as a fanciful idea, but this is what scripture teaches, and I for one could not do my work as a priest with integrity if I thought that this was not so. It is the picture I hold on to when taking the funerals of those both known and less well known to me; but known to God. It is also another reason why I have no problem in asking the saints to pray with me each time I light a candle and sit in the presence of an icon, just as we might sit and talk or reminisce with someone we have lost when we sit and look at their likeness in a photograph, because I know that they are already praying with me, and for me, and for all of us, just as we might have prayed for them.

Nothing draws me into the presence of God more easily than some beautiful music or an icon in which the reversed perspective of the drawing reminds you that you are the vanishing point in the picture rather than that which you are looking at. The perspective broadens, rather than narrows the deeper you look into an icon, and in so doing, helps you to see the bigger picture when you do so. It is one way I suppose, of dying to self, something I am reminded of each time I read the story of Lazarus afresh, for I often used to ask myself ‘why let Lazarus die?’ Why couldn’t Jesus have healed him from afar as he had done for so many others? Why put Mary and Martha through all that grief? We know of course in hindsight, that it was so that they and others could see the bigger picture, the broader perspective of God’s plan for the redemption of the whole world as the one who will make all things new. In death, as in life, Lazarus was no further from God’s care than we are, or those we will remember in our Loving Memory service this evening, but we, like Mary and Martha, need only to look upon Jesus to see and believe it with our own eyes.

Collect

God of holiness,
your glory is proclaimed in every age:
as we rejoice in the faith of your saints,
inspire us to follow their example
with boldness and joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Isaiah 25:6-9

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death for ever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Revelation 21:1-6a

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

'See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.'

And the one who was seated on the throne said, 'See, I am making all things new.' Then he said, 'Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true,’ and said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

John 11:32-44

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.' When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, 'Where have you laid him?' They said to him, 'Lord, come and see.' Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, 'See how he loved him!' But some of them said, 'Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?'
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, 'Take away the stone.' Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, 'Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.' Jesus said to her, 'Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?' So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, 'Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.' When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, 'Unbind him, and let him go.'

Post Communion Prayer

God, the source of all holiness and giver of all good things:
may we who have shared at this table as strangers and pilgrims here on
earth be welcomed with all your saints to the heavenly feast on the day of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Please pray for:

Anyone mourning the loss of loved ones this day. For all providing end of life care, bereavement counsellors, funeral director staff and grief-workers.

Monday

Bell Ringing, 7.30pm in St Laurence. Contact Jan on 07835 461361.

Julian Prayer Group, 8pm on Zoom only during the winter. Zoom ID 996

4332 0665 Password: Julian.

Tuesday

Zoom Morning Prayer at 9.00am ID: 748 9970 4493 Password: Trinity or contact Didier on [email protected]

Wednesday (William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1944)

Morning Coffee, 10.00-11.45am in the St Laurence Rooms.

Midweek Holy Communion at 12.00 noon, St Laurence Church.

Thursday (Willibrord of York, Apostle of Frisia, 739)

Friday (The Saints and Martyrs of England)

Junior Choir, 6.30pm, followed by full Choir Practice at 7.30pm.

Saturday (Margery Kempe, Mystic, c1440)

Pastoral Care: Call 07305 271148 or email [email protected]