Bulletin & Homily -- Sunday of All Saints (6/27/21)

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+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today, as we enter into the season of Pentecost, the time of our living in Christ and in the Spirit, the Church encourages us on our journey through the example of the saints. We look to the saints on every day of the year, but on this day, we commemorate all the saints, known and unknown, from every corner of the world.

In today's Gospel reading, our Lord has a sobering word for the Apostles. To truly receive the Kingdom of God, they are called to leave behind anything that might keep them from fully following God. "Whoever loves father, mother, son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." These words have often inspired great feats of asceticism, as in the life of St. Antony the Great. But there may yet be other wisdom Christ can teach us about the way of the saints through these words.

Perhaps Christ's words here are not only prescriptive, but descriptive of the kind of life discipleship tends to create. To follow Christ boldly is to stand with Christ in the poor, Christ in the marginalized. It is to be on the side of the Kingdom of God when it is often more profitable, more easy, more smooth to pass by and stand with empire, or with the status quo. "Whoever denies me before human beings, I will also deny before my Father." To deny the love of God and the concern of God for our neighbor is to deny Christ. When we boldly witness to that love, we often earn enemies, sometimes even enemies out of former friends. We know that God does not call us to hate anyone. We also know that the love of God is not self-seeking. Therefore, to love God more than our own family and friends need not mean that we devalue those whom we have an authentic affection for, but we see that to act on the love of God sometimes brings us to a place of resistance against evil and injustice where others, even others with the best intentions, fear to follow.

Many of us have already lost fathers, mothers, siblings, whether biological or spiritual. We have been kicked out of churches, we have strained relationships with relatives because we live as our authentic selves in our myriad identities and relationships, and do so all under the life in Christ. Though we may not have been "stoned, sawn in two or killed by the sword" (in the words of today's epistle), we have nonetheless experienced losses in our social and relational circles in the process of witnessing authentically to our lived experiences under God.

Like St. Peter, we may often relate to the cry, "Lord, we have left everything to follow You." I have heard from other Orthodox Christians in our jurisdiction, "If this church did not exist, I could not be a Christian." We have left much, and we see many others in other churches deconstructing, leaving behind or being forced out of community because they love God and the ones whom God loves so deeply that they refuse to let our human institutions block out his voice. We have left everything to follow Christ, whether by choice or by circumstance. It is not an easy journey.

And in the midst of this hard road of carrying the cross, Christ invites us into the family of saints. We are called to inherit the twelve thrones of the Apostles. By faith in Christ we conquer kingdoms, enforce justice, shut the mouths of lions, quench raging fires, escape the sword and put evil to flight. We stand amidst the saints, the great cloud of witnesses. When the visible church rejects us, the saints become for us the Church. When our temporal family may become estranged from us, we can place them in the capable and loving hands of our eternal family. In truth, we are all the communion of saints, some realized and some not yet realized. The saints pray for us. The saints pray for those who have become estranged from us, when words between us and our families fall short. And we can join their prayers and take up the work of sainthood by our continued faithful living, by our continued faithful following of Christ, until the day when we will all be saints together. Every day will be All Saints Day, and God will truly be all in all. Amen.​