01.11.2012
Archbishop Preaches in All Saints Church, Grangegorman, on All Saints Day
Sermon preached by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson on All Saints’ Day November 1st 2012 at All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, diocese of Dublin.
Jeremiah 31.31–34; psalm 145.1–9; Revelation 7.9–17; St Matthew 5.1–12
Jeremiah 31.34: ….for they shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
I know that it is only a rather ridiculous idea of mine but I have in the back of my head the picture of Mrs Cranmer sitting, around this time of year, beside a meagre and mangy fire in Lambeth Palace – knitting. It is cold, it is wintry and the archbishop is tearing his hair out writing Collects for the Sundays and Saints’ Days of the Prayer Book in the English language. I have no idea if Mrs Cranmer knitted – she may well have done; after all she was the daughter of a German theologian and may, like Angela Merkel, herself the daughter of a German pastor, have been wise in her frugality. Be that as it may, as we all know, the architect of the Book of Common Prayer was Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, and I have always been struck by the use of this word: knitting in the Collect for All Saints’ Day. It carries with it a domestic feel which is often missing from the big occasions and All Saints’ Day is a big occasion in the life of the Church of God.
Those who know what they are talking about have suggested that the ideas for this Collect came to Cranmer from Ephesians 4:11–13 – but there is no mention there of knitting. I know of no other Collect which uses this word and, even if it has nothing to do with needles and balls of wool, I think it does speak of a very particular type of binding and entwining which are so important if we are to ‘get it’ about how Cranmer wants us to understand All Saints’ Day and to live day by day in its spirit:
O almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son our Lord Christ our Lord…and so it continues in the wonderful ebb and flow of language which we associate with Cranmer’s Prayer Book and which, realistically, we find nowhere else in the Christian world and its regular attempts to modernize liturgical language and idiom.
The Celebration of All Saints came out of the period of the church which we associate with martyrs. Martyrs are those who bear witness, the everyday people whose stance, in strong and resolute principle, for faith in God led to their sacrificing their lives for the cause of God. Martyrdom is a contemporary reality in worldwide Christianity as well as being an historical deposit. The understanding of martyrdom is deeply embedded in the Revelation to St John the Divine, which was written at the time of sustained persecution in the first century. We have the extraordinary picture of those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb wearing robes which are not red but white. The purity of their witness, their martyrdom, is what the author wants us to hold as a vivid and a glorious picture. They have direct access to the throne of God. All others who are there are elders and angels. But these humans are there because of the glorious ordinariness of their witness on earth. No longer are they struggling in pain and in suffering. Now they hunger and thirst no more; they have drawn together the very best of heaven and earth. The Lamb who is on the throne will actively shepherd them and lead them, without their having any lingering sadness or inferiority, to the living water which is such a feature of St John’s Gospel. The martyrs, like All Saints, hold together earth and heaven in a single space.
It would be a terrible shame were we to confine sainthood to the past. The readings for All Saints’ Day have no intention of allowing us to do this and neither has the Collect. The Collect continues as follows: Grant us so to follow thy blessed saints in all virtuous and Godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The connection is made between all of those unselfconscious and unacknowledged acts of kindness and love which people make irrespective of their social standing, their theological education or their sense of personal worthiness. .. for them that unfeignedly love thee…. The innocence, the fragility of this Collect is held with the utmost tenderness in the word: unfeignedly… It is the total innocence of the love of God by God’s daily witnesses and martyrs which sustains and upholds the dynamic and the outreach of the church. It is the people who perhaps do not even think of themselves as church–y who in fact live out the love of God unfeignedly. Unfeignedly to me means: without pretence and without pretension all in one.
St Matthew draws into the embrace of God people who are like this. Not everyone has the opportunity to stand on the Mountain where it is understood that Jesus delivered this Sermon. If you ever get the chance, take it! You will see the land roll gracefully down to the Sea of Galilee and you will get that tremendous sense of people sitting on a hillside listening, no matter how hungry they were. I suspect that the people who were there reflected the sort of people whom Jesus mentions among the blessed. Too often we think in abstractions. Too often we live in the third person and push that sort of understanding on to the Bible. And so we see the people of flesh and blood in the pages of Holy Scripture as people un–like ourselves, as better than ourselves, as people to whom we could not even aspire. Frankly this is a load of nonsense! Who does not know someone of flesh and blood who is poor in spirit – thinks little of themselves; mourns – because they have lost someone precious whom they cannot bear to be without; is meek – those who are surprised, frightened even, that their perspective is heard, noticed, regarded as having worth; is a peacemaker – in a situation of domestic violence where aggression and shame seem to be the only emotions on offer. We all not only know these people but are these people – each and every one of us here tonight.
And God has already called us to be saints, to be knitted together as the people whom God has chosen without any deserving, any merit on our part. We are knitted together into the covenant which Jeremiah speaks of too. Jeremiah gives voice to a gracious God who loves his people in what perhaps is the best human way – with a broken heart. Despite the depth of marital and spousal giving by God to Israel, Israel broke the covenant and the God of the broken heart restored the covenant. There is an even greater strength in this sort of love and Jeremiah is not ashamed to give it voice. God takes almighty risks – that surely is why God is God and why God is almighty. In the case of people who actually mock God, God gives to them a law which is to be and remain an instinct within them to love one another and in so doing to love God.
What can we take away from this act of worship this evening? I cannot speak for any of you. For me it is the dynamic and the integrity of Holy Scripture. It pulls no punches about corruption, about abuse, about exploitation of the vulnerable. It pulls no punches about the willing, indeed wilful, outreach of God to those who are corrupt and corrupting. It pulls no punches in calling blessed those who think so little of themselves that probably they think deep down they should not ever be here at all.
St Matthew 5.1: When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.
Have we the humility or the hunger to do the same? And do we have the nerve to let ourselves be part of Mrs Cranmer’s knitting pattern?