Sermon preached by The Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
The Church of the Redeemer
All Saints’ Day

Imagine for a moment that you are living around the middle of the second century A.D. in a city in the Roman Empire, Smyrna by name, which is a port city in what we know today as Turkey. If you’re a man, your name is Linus. If you’re a woman, your name is Claudia. Your parents, now deceased, hated Christianity and hated Christians, and were alarmed at the fast rate at which this new religion was growing. You, on the other hand, have been drawn to this new religion precisely because you have come to know a Christian family and are very impressed by the life they live. In fact, through them you have come to know Jesus and have accepted him as your Lord and Savior.

So you are now a part of the Christian community. You worship every Sunday in the home of Lydia, one of the wealthy members of the congregation, because her large home will accommodate the growing numbers of Christians. There are no church buildings, and there will not be any church buildings for another 150 years, because Christianity is illegal throughout the empire. The Christian community of which you are a part worships as secretly as they can, but they do worship! If a Christian in those days wasn’t in worship on Sunday you knew he or she was sick, because to be a Christian meant that you worshipped with the community on Sunday.

You haven’t yet been baptized. You are in a period of testing. You are called a catechumen and you will be a catechumen for three years, during which time you will learn Holy Scripture, the catechism and the creed, and you will spend much time in prayer and fasting. While you are a part of the Christian community, you are not fully a part of that community. You are not allowed to stay for the whole liturgy. You must leave after the Peace, for only baptized Christians may stay for the Holy Communion. You are looking forward so much to the end of that three year period when, on Easter Eve, you will be baptized and, thus, become a full member of the Body of Christ.

Why the three year period of instruction before one could be baptized? If you were going to be a Christian, you and the Christian community needed to be sure that you were well-grounded in the faith, totally converted, totally committed to Christ, because to be a Christian meant that you might be arrested and put in prison and even executed for your faith. You needed to know what you were getting yourself into, and the Church needed to prepare you for possible martyrdom.

The first three hundred years of the Church were years when countless numbers of Christians were martyred for their faith. In fact, of the original 12 disciples, minus Judas, plus his replacement Matthias, tradition has it that eleven of them were martyred. Only John was spared martyrdom; he died of old age in Ephesus. This was a religion that called for total commitment!

And today is a very special day for you, Linus or Claudia, and for the whole Christian community. We’ll pretend that it isn’t the first of November, but the 23rd of February. It isn’t Sunday, but you are preparing to go to Lydia’s house before dawn for a very special celebration. It is the feast of Blessed Polycarp. Polycarp had been Bishop of Smyrna until the age of 86 when he was burned at the stake. Today is the anniversary of his death, and a very special part of the service today will be when the deacons open a box that has the few remains of his body—a few pieces of bone and a cloth that had soaked up some of his blood. These relics will be held up for all to see, and be reminded of his loving life and great sacrifice, and also be reminded of the fact that you might be called to be a martyr as well.

This is something of the reality of the Church of the first three centuries A.D. You were literally putting your life on the line when you became a Christian. Today we talk about total commitment to Christ, accepting him as Lord of our lives, but we do not live every day with the thought that being a Christian might mean a violent, painful, premature ending of our life simply because we profess Christ, but Linus and Claudia did live with that reality. And their community of faith and other Christian communities throughout the empire were accustomed to remembering martyrs on the anniversaries of their deaths, holding them up as examples for the whole Christian community. And because it was believed that a martyr’s death meant that a person would go immediately to the very throne of God, the intercession of these martyrs was invoked.

Because the first three centuries of the Church saw so many martyrdoms, the calendar became completely full of feast days, and even then, there were many martyrs who were not remembered. So in the fourth century a day was set aside to honor all martyrs of the faith, and that day was called the Feast of All Martyrs. In the seventh century it became known as All Saints’ Day, thus including Christians other than martyrs who had been exemplary in their Christian lives. And in the eighth century, the day was set in the western Church on the first of November.

I have told you all of this for two reasons. First of all, the average Episcopalian is basically unaware of the important of saints, especially martyrs, in the tradition of the Church. We look to the early Church, especially the Church of the first three centuries, as a model for Christian faith and practice. The Church of the first three centuries was saturated with the blood of the martyrs.

If you come to the Holy Eucharist on weekdays, you are aware that we still remember and honor the heroes of the faith. Look at page 20 of the Prayer Book. This shows you the calendar for the month of February. These are the saints days observed in that month. You will notice on 23 February the Feast of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who died on the 23rd of February, probably in the year 156.

The second reason I call this to your attention is because, even though in this country we do not live under overt persecution, we are nonetheless called to total commitment of our lives to Christ. Sometimes the Church in our day is seen more like a social club than the Body of Christ totally committed to him. We have Christians today who don’t want to pray too much, to give too much, to go to church too much, because that would be going too far with religion. It would be rather fanatical, and no one wants to be accused of being a fanatic. There is an attitude in our society that religion is alright as long as you don’t let it influence your decisions about important matters. Remember when John F. Kennedy was running for President and people were afraid that his religion might influence him? He made sure everybody knew that it wouldn’t!

Yet even a cursory reading of the New Testament reveals that our Lord wants and expects and will hold us accountable for nothing less than total commitment. That means making all of our decisions in conformity with our faith, worshipping with the community of faith as frequently as possible and at the very least on Sunday, being good stewards, making sure our children know and practice the faith, and when we fail, it means repenting, and recommitting ourselves once again to complete faithfulness.

We celebrate All Saints’ Day to give thanks for those countless Christians who have gone before us who achieved the sanctity of life to which we are all called. God is bringing into the fellowship of Christ’s Body, through baptism, several new souls today. Christopher, Taylor, Christopher, and Gabriella: Make no mistake, the commitment you are making, or that will be made on your behalf, must not be understood to be partial in any way. It is a total commitment of your entire lives. Through your baptism you are dying to self (and that you have in common with the martyrs) that Christ might live in you—not just once a week or when it feels right, but always and everywhere. May your commitment be such a commitment, and may God grant you the grace to keep that commitment, and may our witness strengthen you in your pilgrimage of faith.