ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

The Feast of All Saints – our feast as well

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints

Bishop Basil of Amphipolis
Parish of the Annunciation, Oxford
22 June 2008

Hebrews 11:33- 12:2
Matthew 10: 32-33, 37-38; 19: 27-30.

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints, and of course this means also that the Peter and Paul fast begins tomorrow and will last – depending on which calendar you follow – until the 29 June on the New Calendar, or 12 July on the Old Calendar.

The Gospel which we heard this morning, the Gospel chosen for this feast, begins with an extraordinary statement by Christ:
‘Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess before my Father who is in heaven.’ We see here Christ as the bridge between human beings and God, but it is this notion of confession – not in the sense of confession of sins, but in the sense of acknowledgement – that interests me today.

That same word, ‘confess’  – homologein – is used in the Liturgy, when for example we say ‘Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ That is the same word as is used here in the Gospel. Again, when we say the prayer before communion, ‘I will not give thee a kiss like Judas, but like the thief I will confess thee…’, that is also the same word.
In these liturgical uses, the first is plural – it is the community which confesses: it is a communal confession, and a sign of our oneness in Christ. The second is in the singular, and it is a sign – an admission, an acknowledgement – of our oneness with Christ personally.

Neither of these situations, however, corresponds to the use of the word ‘confess’ here in the Gospel – ‘Who shall confess me before men…’ Here, ‘to confess’ means to confess openly, to confess in public, not behind closed doors, and not in one’s own heart. The saints, then, are those who have confessed – acknowledged – who have in effect proclaimed Christ before other human beings. How have they done that? They have done it in every way imaginable: from going off to live in the desert  to living at the top of a pillar in the middle of the city; from being powerful princes of the Church to being obscure obscure housewives, or gardeners; from being brilliant theologians to being simple people who are not even able to read.

All of these are possible forms of holiness – and yet they all share one characteristic. In every case the person is following the will of God for them. Ultimately the will of God for all of us is that we should all be saved, and St Paul makes this quite clear – that we should all know Christ, and thus know the truth about ourselves and about God. The will of God is ultimately that all of us should be incorporated as persons, as human beings, into the one Body of Christ, and it is that all of us should receive the gift of the Spirit and show the fruits that come with that gift. Yet each one of us has do this in his or her own way.

When a human being is born into the world a new centre of the universe comes into existence – a point from which the whole of creation can be grasped and rendered personal – to be hypostasised, to use the theological term – and this is part of the mystery of embodiment. The mystery of embodiment means that we are part of this created, and ostensibly material, world, and yet at the same time we are outside it and look at it. This is frankly incomprehensible – and at the same time it is a fact which each of us knows.

Because we are embodied, and bodies cannot occupy the same space, we are all – all of us – different, and the road to salvation will be different for each one of us. But in each case it will involve Christ and it will involve the Cross – not his cross, which was unique to him – but our cross which is also unique – quite as distinct as the cross taken up by Christ.

The Feast of All Saints is a feast of the Church but is our feast as well. In New Testament terms we are all saints, What distinguishes us from the saints whose names we remember and whom we commemorate is a question of degree. We are on the same path as they were and as they are. It is just that we have not managed to move as far along it as they have. So let us join the saints, and let us learn ‘to confess Christ before men’ – not simply in church, not simply in our own hearts but before people in the public arena: in other words to confess Christ by the way we live, by the way we are seen to live, and not just in words or in inner faith.

Amen.