All Saints

It is an extraordinary privilege to be here in this historic pulpit on this All Saints Sunday. I am grateful to the Revd Canon Dr William Lamb, your Vicar of the University Church and all those who invited me to be present today. Thank you.

Permit me to start on this All Saints Sunday in a strange place. I want to share with you that powerful short story by John L’Heureux called “The Expert on God”. John L’Heureux subject of his story is a Jesuit priest, although I suspect plenty of Anglican clergy would recognize his torment. “From the start,” writes L’Heureux, “faith had been a problem for him, and his recent ordination had changed almost nothing. His doubts were simply more appropriate to the priesthood now.” Doubt becomes a habit. L’Heureux writes, “He doubted Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. He prayed for faith, and some kind of faith came to him, because he left off doubting about the Eucharist and moved on to doubt other matters: the virginity of Mary, the divinity of Christ, and then later the humanity of Christ. At one time or another, he doubted every article of belief, but only for a while, and only one at a time. Faith demanded a different response to each mystery, he discovered, but doubt was always the same. The initial onslaught of doubt lasted for only a moment, a quick and breathtaking conviction that none of it was true, and then that conviction itself surrendered to doubt, leaving an awful lingering unspeakable ache. In the end he doubted the love of God, and that doubt did not pass.”

L’Heureux story gathers pace on Christmas Day “not because Christmas is symbolic, but because that is when it happened.” Our priest is driving home after saying Mass, and he notices “a dark blue car turned half on its side and three boys huddled near it.” Then he noticed a “tiny red sports car in the field on the opposite side of the road. It was crumpled nearly in two.” Anticipating what he might find, he takes the “little vial of holy oils”, sprints to the car, the driver was pinned, head down, in the passenger seat. It was difficult to get into the car. But with some perseverance, he manages to get behind the passenger seat, pull the seat down, so he can get to the boy driver and nestle the boy in his arms. He placed “his thumb on the boy’s bloody forehead saying, “I absolve you from all your sins. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” Then he was silent.

Silence surrounds him. No ambulance wail. No response from God in heaven. And at that point, “his doubts became certainty and he said, “It doesn’t matter,” but it did matter and he knew it. What could anyone say to this crushed, dying thing, he wondered. What would God say if he cared as much as I? He shook with an involuntary sob then, and as he did, the boy shuddered in agony and choked on the blood that had begun to pour from his mouth. The priest could see death beginning to ease across the boy’s face. And still he could say nothing. The boy turned – some dying reflex – and his head titled in the priest’s arms, trusting, like a lover. And at once the priest, faithless, unrepentant, gave up his prayers and bent to him and whispered, fierce and burning, “I love you” and continued till there is no breath, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Perhaps this Sunday more than many Sundays we are conscious of the tragic nature of the world. Jewish lives were slaughtered at a music festival and in their homes; Palestinian lives are collateral damage of an aerial onslaught that takes out apartment buildings and schools. Ukrainians were living normal lives just two years ago, now the country is tragically reenacting the first world war with twenty something’s killing each other in trench warfare. It is appropriate to pause and ask the question: why is the God of love so silent?

The famous beatitudes assume a world where there is poverty, mourning, hunger, conflict, and persecution. The reality of suffering and pain is an assumption of the Biblical witness. Throughout Scripture, we can hear the cries of anguish as people become refugees or die at the hands of an occupying power. From the Babylonian Exile to the torture and death of Jesus, suffering is never evaded and is a constant presence.

Across the four Gospels, there are only seven sayings of Christ on the cross. The rest of the time, Jesus is silent. Yet this is a silence that speaks volumes. It is the silence of a God Incarnate who knows just how cruel this world can be. Sometimes, like our “expert on God” – the priest in John L’Heureux’s story – we need to just sit with the silence. It is all we need from God.

Yet this cannot be the end. And it is not so in the John L’Heureux story. And it is here perhaps we find a saint – a saint worthy of All Saints Sunday. There is a paradox at the end: a doubt about the love of God becomes a certainty. “Doubt becomes a certainty” And the priest is cradling the dying boy in the car in a posture similar to the Blessed Virgin Mary cradling the body of Jesus; it is a pieta. And the priest with passion and power sends the dying boy into the life to come with the words “I love you, I love you, I love you.” The Beatitudes are all about how suffering can be used for love. The priest brings the love of God to the dying boy. The priest becomes a saint that knows that love is what he is called to give in the hardest and most brutal of moments. Perhaps like many a saint, in all his doubt and skepticism, the priest becomes the anticipation of a resurrection hope.

So, in conclusion we are forced to revisit the claim that the death of Christ ushered in cosmic possibilities of resurrection. This is the triumph of love. We are, as the Epistle reminds us, children of God formed by God’s love and when Jesus is revealed, we will be like him. Christians must frame each moment of human agony with God’s love. In silence, God is present in the hell of human misery; in hope, we trust, know, and believe that resurrection must and will come.

On this All Saints Sunday, let us carry the pain of Israel Palestine in our hearts; let us never get indifferent to the agonies of families in the Ukraine and elsewhere in this suffering world; and, sure, let us sometimes sit with the silence of God rather than any simplistic words; and at the same time, even if it is difficult, let us find the hope to trust in God’s resurrected possibilities that can and will bring grace to all this horrendous tragedy. Amen.