Being and Becoming

Image credit: The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs (assumed to be painted by Fra Angelico about 1423-4). 
Egg tempera on wood, 31.9 x 63.5 cm, https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG663.3. The image is licensed for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons agreement.

All Saints Day, Year C
2 November 2025

Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

Most of you know that I grew up without television. I saw the 1974 World Cup final at a friend’s house, and a little TV here and there, but not much more.
I also grew up without comic books as my parents did not approve of them. I missed comic books more than TV.
Even though the culture of comic books escaped me, I know that it includes a sub genre of superhero stories. We have always liked heroes.
We deem fire fighters and police officers and soldiers heroes, and anyone who comes to the defense of another. But those we call heroes usually deny any heroism. They tell us they just did their job or did what anyone would have done. And while we like putting people on a pedestal, that’s the beautiful thing about those ordinary heroes, they are actually like us and we can be like them.

In 1981 the poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron wrote and sang about the election of Ronald Reagan,

And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes
Riding to the rescue at the last possible moment
The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse
Or the man who always came to save America at the last moment
(…)
Especially in “B” movies

I am quoting these lines not out of disrespect for Ronald Reagan but because Scott-Heron names how we have come to expect, or perhaps have always expected our political leaders to rescue us even though democracy is not to be about heroes but requires the participation of the people.

Though my parents had no television, there is an anti-hero film my father introduced me to and that I in turn introduced my children to, High Noon with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. In it, if you don’t remember, Grant plays the town marshal Frank Miller who had just resigned to begin a new life with his young pacifist Quaker bride, played by Grace Kelly. However, the community learns that an outlaw whom Grant’s character had put in prison has been released and is coming to town, presumed to exact revenge. Miller believes that he must stay, even though he had resigned. He does so assuming others would stand with him. Yet no one does. When all is done he drops his marshal’s star into the dust of the main street and he and his bride leave the town. Though he had saved the town, the town is lost regardless, for it had no sense of justice or of solidarity.

This is an anti-hero film because neither the hero nor what he stands for are valued. And yet the hero myth is that someone will save the day and that we are left off the hook. In High Noon no one cares and the film exposes the emptiness of such myth.
In the song There Ain’t No Such Thing As Superman Gil Scott-Heron sings,

Yes, and you was out there on the corner when being cool went blind
Are you alone? Understand that if we’re gonna win
We’ve got to get together, stay together, be together, stick together
So tell me why can’t you understand
That there ain’t no such thing as a Superman?

There is consistency in Scott-Heron’s writing.

Today we celebrate All Saints Day. And one of the ideas about saints is that they are some sort of heroes. And that they are some kind of hero means that a life like theirs is unattainable, and so we don’t need to try. You know, like the population in Hadleyville in High Noon remained on the sidelines. Or in the way Scott-Heron sings about the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse as opposed to collective action which he sings about in There Aint No Such Thing As Superman,
Understand that if we’re gonna win
We’ve got to get together, stay together, be together, stick together

I have great sympathy for the kind of collective action that Scott-Heron calls for, yet there is a problem here, too. His vision is a wholly secular vision which means that all the work of liberation and redemption has to be done by us. He is right that a single hero lulls us into complacency but to assume that all the work has to be done by us alone can lead to despair, especially in times like ours. And yet God’s people are a people of hope.

We have hope because in Jesus God has already done all the heavy lifting. In his death Jesus suffered with us and for us. In his resurrection Jesus has defeated sin and death. We have been promised a seat at the banquet table and the redemption and restoration of all things. Sam Wells describes the work of Christ as the whole presence of God before humanity and the whole presence of humanity before God.¹

It is All Saints Day. The New Testament speaks about saints 64 times, never in the singular, always in the plural, because Jesus wants a relationship not only with me, but also with you, and all of us, and thus has called us into a community called the Church.
Being the Church means that we are workers in God’s vineyard. While we don’t have to do the saving, since in Jesus God has done the saving, we don’t just lounge around but ask what kind of church we need to be to be faithful to Jesus in light of today’s challenges.
We are not called to heroism but to faithfulness.
Sainthood in this sense is both ontological, i.e. in our baptism God has clothed us with the garment of salvation; and it is aspirational, i.e. through the strength of the Holy Spirit we walk in the way of Jesus.
Faithfulness is what All Saints and All Souls celebrate: The faithfulness of God which has made possible the faithfulness of the saints. Saints are ordinary people like you and me who with the Church seek to be faithful to Jesus.

Our Gospel for today are the Blessings and Woes from Luke’s Gospel, from the Sermon on the Plain. Our reading begins at verse 20 but it is only in verse 13 has Jesus called the disciples. And so while Jesus’s reading from the Prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth announced what his ministry is about, the Sermon on the Plain provides the 101 of discipleship. And the discipleship we are called into is counter-intuitive to the world in which we live, yet it is the way of life.
It is the way of life because while walking it, our life assumes a direction that is not about us. It is not about our anxiety, not about consumerism, or power, but about the world God loves.

God has called us into a community and discipleship is a path we go together, encouraging each other along the way. It does not require us to be perfect, for the sainthood of the New Testament is not one of perfection.²

Like us, those we remember today were not perfect, but they are God’s beloved. And it is love that changes us, even if only gradually. We give thanks for those who have gone before us, part of the great cloud of witnesses, as we remember that we do not worship heroes but the God who liberated Israel from Egypt and raised Christ from the dead.

Amen.