Sermon for the 5th of November - Feast of All Saints

Thinking about Saints today - I wonder what a Saint is – it’s not something that obviously defined – when I googled it, I got words like holy and virtuous.

Gospel reading can help us – it calls out various attributes like; hunger and thirst for righteousness, be merciful, be pure in heart, be peacemakers

Peacemakers – what the world so badly needs right now – Middle East, Ukraine, and many other places…..the main headline in our paper this morning said “We find a tunnel and blow it up”. We are desperately in need of peace.

What is peace? Is it just the absence of war? What about justice, love, self control?

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
We cannot have peace unless we are taking care of those in need. We cannot have peace whilst allowing enormous injustices to continue. We cannot have peace, whilst there are people in slavery, people who are starving, or people whose homes and livelihoods are being destroyed by global warming.
Peace and Justice are inextricably connected.

One of the most famous Saints - Francis of Assisi – was known for being a peacemaker……we’ve just sung his famous prayer – make me a channel of your peace.

What might it mean for us to become peacemakers? Remove prejudice, hatred, violence, ….smaller things also break peace – gossip, greed, Sharing, Standing up for justice, choosing how we spend our money, kind words, seeing who might be lonely or suffering and offering support/comfort…

Maybe not clinging too hard to our own opinions and rights – humility, gentleness, self control, generosity, kindness…

Think about the news and social media we read and watch – are they reporting on people and circumstances fairly (which some do) or are they using propaganda and clever headlines, twisting the truth in some way, to make things seem more exciting?

There are so many small things we can do to make the world a more peaceful place. Thinking about what we read or watch, where and how we spend our money, what we say about others……..we are all able to bring a little more peace into our world if we want to.

So why so often do we fail to do this? St Francis says…..
“You can not give what you do not have” – we need to find peace ourselves in order to be peacemakers….
When things are going well, that’s fairly straightforward – but what about when things go wrong – how easy is it to be peaceful when you’re really upset about something or when you are dealing with a crisis?
[“The true peacemakers are those who preserve peace of mind and body for love of our Lord Jesus Christ, despite what they suffer in this world.”]

According to Francis, precisely when the things of this world do not go according to our own will, our peace is tested.

But it’s when things go wrong that we most need to be peacemakers – stopping an argument escalating when we are upset, resolving a conflict, being willing to not always get our own way, not saying the unkind or judgemental thoughts we so often have.

Is this easy? Absolutely not – especially if you are naturally more hot-tempered!

So what can we do to be better at this? To be more like St Francis? Well, he saw peace as a gift from the Holy Spirit. For Francis – God was the way in which to find peace.

So perhaps spending time with God would help. Using meditation, prayer, music, walks in nature, art – whatever brings you close to God and allows you to centre yourself and bring stillness to your life.

Saints were not perfect people – and like them, we won’t always get things right – but perhaps, if we focus our attention on receiving God’s peace, then we might slowly become a channel of peace, and be able to bring more hope, joy and love into our world, just as Saint Francis prayed.