All Saints has come in a time of war, with shocking loss of life in Israel and Gaza, and on the West Bank. There is great grief in the land, sudden and aggravated, for Jews, Christians and Muslims. Day after day it grinds on, taking life and traumatising lives. These are deathly days.
I add the words ‘all in’ in two senses of the saying: many saints are exhausted just now, and, at the same time, fully committed to bringing the compassion, justice and healing of our Lord, seeking empowerment from the Holy Spirit, linking spiritual accompaniment and strategic planning as they go.
Halloween, All Saints, All Souls – what is the point of these days at such a time? They name a season of remembrance and thanksgiving in the Christian faith regarding those whom we have lost in the course of the previous twelve months. The first weekend in November sees people gather in services of grieving and gratitude, a company of care and hope.
It is a time as well for the cultivation of the character of saints. The living body of Christ in the world, saints are called to present their bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is their spiritual worship. It is language that comes from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the early church in Rome (12.1). It comes to mind because early in the life of the Church the word saints came to be associated with martyrdom. As is often noted, the word for witness in the Greek NT, marturia, came soon to signify those who suffer persecution and death for their faith.
In times when death seems to stalk the land, as if a character in an old poem or ancient prophesy, tales that are gruesome to relate abound. As the body count began to rise, I was put in mind of the novelist Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy. Set largely in a War Hospital in Edinburgh during the First World War, the journeys of war poets to recover sanity in the expression of the madness of war feature largely. One of the most powerful images in the novels is that of the ‘ghost road’ – the road taken by the spirits of the dead as they return from the killing fields. Or so the living imagine it, seeking to remember them and in some cases to make contact with them.
We are not there yet, though we are not far off. For weeks in Tel Aviv a traditional Shabbat table has been laid in front of the main art gallery with over 200 places prepared for the return of hostages by their families.
One of the biblical readings laid down for All Saints is the teaching of Jesus known as the beatitudes, that series of blessings and affirmations offering comfort and guidance for the living of the life of faith, comprising a call to active sainthood, from humility of spirit to the rigours of peace making and the suffering of persecution.
Each moment or clause in the teaching moves between the present and the future tenses of the verb to be. To take a fitting example for All Saints, Jesus says:
‘Blessed are the those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’
Even as they mourn, they are blessed. Even as their comfort lies in the future tense, they are blessed. It is a powerful affirmation of hope of the gritty kind. The kind of hope that helps people gut it out through times of grieving. When death is all round and the cries are going up in diverse languages, when bodies go unfound or uncared for in the traditional way, and funerals are much altered or not possible.
‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’
Seeking to experience in our present grief the force of this future joy, we might wish to ask Jesus, when and by whom will those who mourn be comforted? By you yourself, Lord, at the Lord at the end of time? Or is it possible, in the near future, tomorrow or later today, that those who mourn will be comforted by others who mourn, or who have known in their own lives what it is to be in mourning?
We seek to provide assistance to those most vulnerable through the support of our partners, including partner Churches and organisations in Gaza. And our partners are at work to find ways to journey with and assist each other. Sunbula is working with Atfaluna in Gaza to channel support, for example. The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem has issued a call to international partners to provide humanitarian aid for Al Ahli Hospital. More broadly, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance of the PCUSA has a call to give (financial assistance), act (engaging our government) and pray in support of Gaza. Our own Moderator has signed, alongside other UK Ecumenical Partners, a Christian Aid statement with five key action points. When we ask, ‘What can we do in this moment of overwhelming need and contested interests?’ we must continue to ask not in despair but in hope.
At the inauguration of the current American President, a young African American poet, Amanda Gorman, the first national youth poet laureate in her country’s history, gave a dramatic presentation of her poem, ‘The hill we climb.’ Hearing her live was a riveting experience, and I continue – white and male as I am – to seek to hear her speak to us now. Among her many memorable and moving lines were the following:
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried. That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
‘Even as we grieved, we grew.’ Youth poet though she be, Amanda Gorman’s words are voiced out of centuries of oppression, struggle and hope.
In a moment that holds All Saints and All Souls in its hands, can we make bold with a young poet and a young Messiah to dream again and give voice to bright prayers? Let us pray to the Lord:
You are the light of the world
who calls us to be the light of the world,
in the dark places within us
and between us
shine your light, O Lord.
Help us be and bear
your light,
and so live.
Grace to you and peace,
Stewart