Did you ever imagine being a super-hero when you were a kid? Able to fly like Superman or have a lasso of truth like Wonder Woman? Sometimes we long to be extraordinary or exceptional and in doing so, we risk selling our true selves short. Of course, even better than the comic book super-heroes and heroines, we are heirs of a truly astounding collection of Christian women and men whose lives of faith warrant celebrating and holding up as examples and motivators for us ordinary day-to-day Christians. In the Episcopal Church, we find those commemorations in a book call Lesser Feasts and Fasts. We must, when we read of these extraordinary lives, not think of these saints as so different from ourselves. Rather, we read their stories knowing we are called by God’s grace to an equally extraordinary and saintly life—a life abundantly full of the joy, the peace, the freedom that following Jesus gives us.
This Sunday we celebrate one of the seven principal feasts of the church year: the Feast of All Saints. We always avail ourselves of this celebration to “make new saints” through the sacrament of baptism. We also give God thanks for all those saints not commemorated by name in our calendar. In celebrating this joyous feast together, we renew our commitment to being faithful followers of Jesus called to live saintly—or holy—lives, set apart and distinct from the world and characterized by overflowing love and compassion.
Our world really needs us to live this kind of life. The witness we can offer this week radically transcends the partisan politics that consume our society at the moment. This witness can remind and encourage everyone that there are greater callings, greater opportunities, greater challenges than winning or losing this election will bring about.
My favorite line from my favorite All Saints hymn says, “For the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.” Yep, for the sake of our world, I want to be, and I want you to be, one of those.
Peace,
James+