Abstract
The first of November is All Saints’ Day, the Feast of All Saints, the Solemnity of All Saints, All Hallows’ Day and Hallowmas. It is the day the Church on Earth explicitly acknowledges its sense of union with the Church in heaven: the Church militant at one with the Church triumphant. In the New Testament, every follower of Jesus, everyone who has hope in the resurrection of the dead, is a saint. Every recipient of Paul’s letters, Gentile and Jew, was acknowledged by the apostle to be a saint of ecclesia, the church.
In the twenty-first century, as the churches in the West become ever smaller, it is a source of strength to remind ourselves that we do not stand alone. It is no false comfort to be reminded that the Church on Earth is at one with the Church in heaven.
What are the marks of saintliness? In the Gospel of St Matthew, in the account of the Sermon on the Mount, we are told that Jesus saw the crowds gathering and, with his disciples, he turned and went up a high place. Seated, he began to teach. The Sermon of Beatitudes is perhaps the most famous sermon in Christian history. In the first two hundred years or so after the death of Jesus, no passage of Scripture received more attention from the Church Fathers than these sacred words.
The Beatitudes, ten in number, are wisdom sayings. It may be more accurate to refer to them as ‘Wisdom from the Mount’. In some translations, we hear Jesus begin, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ while, in other translations, it is, ‘Happy are the poor in spirit’. Whether it is ‘Blessed’ or ‘Happy’, the meaning is one of deep contentment. Taken together, the ten wisdom sayings are a vision of heaven on earth. When Jesus prays, ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’, it is this vision of heaven that He has in mind.
The wisdom sayings are not external rules to which we must conform: they call for transformation of the soul, conversion in the inner life and a change of heart. Steeped in the Tanakh, in the Torah, Prophets and Writings of the Hebrew canon, Jesus drew upon the wisdom tradition of His people. We find beatitudes or wisdom sayings throughout the Old Testament: in the Book of Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Isaiah, Job and Ecclesiastes. We find them also in the Dead Sea scrolls, in the sacred writings of the Qumran community. Elsewhere in Matthew, we hear Jesus say, ‘Blessed is the one who is not offended because of Me’ or ‘Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear’.
What are the marks of saintliness? In the version of the Sermon offered in the Gospel of St Luke (6:20ff.), Jesus said: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. Give to everyone who begs from you. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
These are tough words, but words which some of the most remarkable people in human history have used. After his home had been bombed and standing alongside white state officials on what was left of his front porch, Martin Luther King Jr. told a largely black crowd, ‘Love your enemies and let them know you love them.’ Jesus said, ‘If you love [only] those who love you, what credit is that to you?’ At the end of his life Mahatma Gandhi said: Mine is not an exclusive love. I cannot love Moslems or Hindus and hate Englishmen. For if I love merely Hindus and Moslems because their ways are on the whole pleasing to me, I shall soon begin to hate them when their ways displease me, as they may well do any moment. A love that is based on the goodness of those whom you love is a mercenary affair.
It is the seventh Beatitude, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God’, which shaped Gandhi’s thinking. Inspired by Gandhi’s devotion and commitment to the Sermon on the Mount, Martin Luther King Jr said: It was the Sermon on the Mount…that inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to dignified social action. It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred the Negros to protest with the creative weapon of love.
When King was accused of being an extremist, he replied, ‘Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you.”’ On the lips of Jesus, Gandhi and King the Sermon on the Mount has changed the course of human history and doubtless has saved many lives. In the 1960s, in the United States what bloodbath would have ensued had not King been shaped by the Sermon on the Mount?
The Sermon on the Mount is about transformation of the soul. Self-forgetfulness is the message which lies at the centre of Christ’s meditation. It is through the death of the ego that the human soul is able to spiritually grow and realise itself in this life. The Victorian Church of Scotland minister, the blind poet and preacher, the Rev’d George Matheson, DD wrote: The Kingdom of heaven, the inheritance of the earth, the satisfaction of the spirit, the vision of God, the reputation of being called the children of God, the privilege of illuminating the world—these are among the summits at which the human soul is permitted to aim. But how is it to gain them? In the same way as, according to Paul, the Son of Man reaches His own glory—by the act of self-burial.
For Matheson, Jesus never tired of emphasising the inwardness of the kingdom. Those who die to self, those who are humanitarian by their action, are the greatest in the kingdom. Christ is enthroned by virtue of his selfless, self-forgetful humanity, not by any notion of the supernatural.
As we reflect on All Saints’ Day, it is instructive for us to remember that this same selflessness we find in Jesus, we find also in the spiritual teachings of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and in the Zoroastrian and Jain Scriptures. This suggests that heaven will be full of people of other faiths. Historically, the Church may have understood All Saints’ Day to be the union of the saints on Earth with the Saints in heaven in narrowly Christian terms. If saints are those who live as Jesus bid us to live, then in heaven—whatever that may be—we are united to Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, Jews, and all the others. Suddenly, heaven has become more colourful and interesting.