Today is All Saints Day, according to the church calendar. As someone who grew up in low-church evangelicalism, I never quite knew what that meant. As someone who is still in a Baptist church, I still don’t know quite what it means. But I have to admit that I’m beginning to form an opinion about it.
Despite disagreements with Catholics regarding what happens to souls after death, I’m starting to see All Saints Day as an important and neglected part of church life. We don’t grieve well as a community, despite the fact that our mortality is a key part of both our spiritual and physical existence. We need to practice grieving together. We are fallen humanity, and death is our curse—passed down through Adam. All Saints Day is a day to remember this, and grieve it. But not just that. We have been redeemed by Christ, and even though we are “outwardly wasting away,” our spirits are being “renewed.”
I think we often fail to sit with these two truths, and absorb what they actually mean. I think All Saints Day gives us a chance to do just this.
Do we think about what Christ’s death and resurrection means for our relationships? Not just our relationships with those who are living, but those who are dead in Christ?
Rob Moll surprised me in The Art of Dying by pointing out that “Those who have died are still with us as members of the body of Christ. Death has not severed that spiritual relationship. All is not over at our final breath, neither for the dead nor those still alive. The dead, of course, go on to a greater and fuller life with God. Those still alive, however, are not entirely severed from the great body of Christians no longer walking the earth” (Art of Dying, 166).
After all, he points out, they’re merely “asleep in Christ.”
Christ’s death purchased our union with him as fellow heirs, brothers and sisters. And it also purchased union with our fellow humans, though perhaps in a different way.
Most of us know the passage below, from Hebrews 12. How does it strike you now, with this in mind?
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
All Saints Day gives us a chance to do two things:
First, remember and grieve the brothers and sisters in Christ whose presence we miss and long to enjoy. This is a good and healthy practice. Death is real, and loss is hard. Remember our losses, mourn the sin that brought death to the human race, mourn your own sin, mourn the pain of sickness and separation. We need Christ.
Second, rejoice, knowing that the dead in Christ—some of who are listed in Hebrews 11, some of whom are our parents, our children, our friends—are not separated from us in a permanent way. We are still, in a mysterious way, through the blood of Christ, in relationship with them—a relationship that will stretch into eternity.
Hebrews, aside from stating that these saints are “witnesses,” gives us some guidance in how we might observe All Saints Day. The author says being surrounded by these faithful saints is not just a cause for lament and rejoicing. He says that recognizing them should propel us forward into more faithful living—clamoring to get out of the grip of sin, running the hard race before us with endurance: Since we are surrounded…therefore let us run with perseverance.
Christ, of course, is the perfect example, and we should always look to him as the firstborn of creation, and the author and perfecter of our faith. But the saints along the way were not forgotten in Hebrews. Perhaps, All Saints Day is a chance to remember the saints along our way, knowing that their faith and their endurance can encourage us as we come along behind. If remembering the saints who have come before causes me to mourn sin, love Christ, and strive for holiness, I want to do it.
Would you join me?