Communion of Saints

Some years ago I pulled myself away from my family to preside at the Christmas day service at church. It was my turn on our clergy rotation. The services the night before were fabulous, glorious with overflowing crowds, full orchestra and choirs, and high ceremonial. But Christmas day was different: a simple service with no music in the small chapel, mostly for those who were physically unable to make the Christmas Eve extravaganza. I’m sad now to say that I was resentful to have to leave our small children on Christmas morning for what felt was a superfluous service.

It was as I expected when I arrived: just a handful of older people were gathered. I put on my clergy-face and plowed forward in the service. I got to the place in the liturgy where it says, “With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven we laud and magnify thy holy Name…” when I looked up to the back wall where the Columbarium was and I remembered in a flash the many people/friends (including sweet Susan who died the week before!) that I had buried over the years. I remembered the baby born with a genetic disorder, and later driving Jeremy to the mortuary with the dead baby in his arms, and the faces of all the others whose funerals I had presided over came rushing at me. Suddenly I realized that we were not alone. We weren’t just a motley crew of broken people hobbling along on Christmas morning; we were actually joining the ongoing chorus of worshippers in heaven who continually and gloriously praise God. Those who live in the praise of God! There were hundreds, thousands of us there that Christmas morning in the small chapel and at that moment I was overwhelmed and stopped the service for a time to collect myself.

I’ll never forget this as the day I discovered “The Communion of Saints,” and how the veil that separates us and them is extremely thin. Today, whenever I reach that place in our Anglican liturgy, I remember that what we are doing is far more important than what we are doing at the moment. We are joining in what God is doing and what the people who surround him in heaven and on earth are doing.

Christianity is not about me. Not really. It’s about God and his love for the living and the dead. It begins with us joining our voices with angels and all the company of heaven in the ongoing music of heaven. Eternity’s song. This coming Sunday at Christ Church we will celebrate the feast of All Saints and remember that what we do Sunday by Sunday is so much bigger than us but includes us.

Gratefully,

Chuck Collins

 

Note on the artwork: Revelation 5:8 presents the saints in heaven as linked by prayer with their fellow Christians on earth
“St John on Patmos” by the Limbourg Brothers, c. 1416