October 28, 2022
I had mentioned in one of my earlier writings, that northern Europe in its pre-Christian era had seen the darkening days of November as a season when the light of the life and the darkness of death intermingled into the grey of Autumn. In this season, they believed, that the separation between the living and the dead became thin, allowing communication between the living and the dead. Today early, pre-Christian practices are can still be found in some places where the dead are remembered and communicated to. It is in response to this tradition that the Christian church in the West instituted All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day, and November as a month of remembering the dead.
This cultural approach was, and is, quite common in the ministries of Christian missionaries. Those bringing the gospel to a new people would find a theme in their culture and connect it to a theme of the gospel, in this case the resurrection of the dead and the communion of saints to these autumnal festivals of the dead. It was, and is, a way of allowing Christian practice to more fully infiltrate a culture. This is how the Scandinavians developed the practices surrounding Saint Lucy of Sicily, but that is a story for another time.
All Saints, or all Hallows—as in “hallowed be thy name”—speaks to the lives of those made fully holy by their eternal reward in heaven. Traditionally Christians preserved the Jewish understanding that a day begins at sunset, not sunrise, or midnight. So, All Saints’ Day began the evening of October 31. It later became known as All Hallows’ Eve, like Christmas Eve.
But this is about more than saints. It’s about reformation. It was on the Eve of All Saints that Martin Luther went to the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany—All Saint’s Church—where the townspeople would soon be coming for services that night and the next day, and posted his “95 Theses.” These were 95 points of dispute Luther had with the hierarchy of the church in Rome and invited people to debate him on them. These spread like wildfire. Not just because so many came to All Saints’ Church, but as we now know, because Luther used the recent invention of the printing press to publish and distribute them.
People think that Luther’s concern was mostly about indulgences or sacraments. But that would miss the point. Luther was concerned about the state of the church, and how a few people of privilege, particularly in Rome, had more importance and influence in the church than others. Luther saw the church as a community of baptized believers, with each believer being an important part of Christ’s church and its ministry. Everything Martin Luther advocated about indulgences (buying spiritual favors from the church) and worship (worship in the language of the people, congregational singing, preaching and Table as equal parts of worship, and reception of both the bread and cup at the Table each week by all) have all been accepted by the Catholic Church. But the Catholic Church’s structure is different from all of the “protesting” churches, maintaining its historical hierarchy.
On Reformation Sunday, we celebrate our equality in Christ, regardless of our theological education or ordination, our gender, our political position, our social class, our nationality, or our race. Instead we create a community of faith by pooling our human and financial resources and discerning how to best use them to do God ministries in our community. We take for granted our freedom in Christ, almost as much as we forget our interdependence and accountability in the Spirit that binds us together. Yet this is how we understand what it means to be the Body of Christ here at First Covenant Church. And this Sunday, October 30, we will celebrate as a Protestant church in the Lutheran tradition, as a Covenant church proud of its pietist heritage, and especially our covenant life together in Christ.
Next Sunday, November 6, we will celebrate not our distinctives, but how we are part of the universal church around the world and through the ages. This will be our opportunity to celebrate all of God’s saints. Likewise, it will be a time to acknowledge those who have left our earthly community and joined God’s “Church Triumphant” by acknowledging the passing of those who have died since last year’s All Saints service. We invite you to remember those loved ones you have lost, however recent or however long ago. Please feel free to bring a picture of departed loved ones. We will have a place to put their photos and you will have an opportunity to light a candle before we come to Christ’s Table, in memory of the light they brought into your life and God’s world.
The season we have now entered here in Seattle can be a dark time, and at times may feel lifeless. But we gather, not to curse the darkness, but to lift high the light of Christ so that all may see the hope that is ours. A hope that will never be overcome. May God give all we saints faith to believe this.
Pastor Todd