I Believe in the Communion of Saints

Rev. 7:2-4,9-14 & Matt. 5:1-12a

Our parish leadership is currently developing a new Mission Action Plan; the St Peter’s 2021 to 2023 MAP. The Parish Council kicked the process off last month, and on Wednesday we invited our clergy, staff and lay leaders - chairs of committee, head server, and so on - to contribute, ahead of the Annual Meeting, when we will invite input from the whole parish.

 Already we have had some really useful debate on the nature of our task. MAP does not stand for “maintenance action plan.” Of course we have to maintain our parish structures and programs; that goes without being said. As Vicar, and working closely with the Wardens and Parish Council, clergy, staff and other parish leaders, I am in charge of the day to day operational management of our busy city program church: our worship, our pastoral care, our Christian Education program, our staff management, our social service, the care of our historic buildings, and making sure that finances are well managed so that we can pay for all this. Important and ongoing as all of that is, it is not what a MAP is all about. M.A.P. stands for “mission action plan” and the question we have been grappling with is: what is our mission here at St Peter’s as we look ahead to the next 3 years?

 One key component of our mission that has come to the fore, for example, over the now three planning sessions with the parish leadership, is our outreach to RMIT University, and the current engagement with literally hundreds of students who are now visiting us to pick up food through the Social Enterprise meals program. How can we build bridges and pathways into our worshipping church community? How can we as an Anglo-Catholic church find ways of engaging with these young men and women who are on our doorstep? As we reflect on our mission, it is important understand who we are as a church, and what distinguishes us as Anglo-Catholic Christians? Our student friends are not going to want to join a complacent, confused or bickering church community.

 This feast day of All Saints is a good day to reflect on such things. Our faith as Anglo-Catholics is deeply incarnational; our bodies matter, in this life and the next. That is one of the reasons we take the stance we do on the full inclusion of LGBTIQ+ people. We are the Body of Christ, all of us, living and departed. Veneration of the saints is important to us; it is a deeply incarnational devotional practice, tied up profoundly with the real presence of Christ that we experience in the Eucharist, in our gathering, and in our mission to the world.

 Our first reading today, from the Book of Revelation, tells of St John’s vision. His context is the first-century persecution of Christians and the profound struggles of the early church. It is apocalyptic theology. I’m not sure that our age quite compares, but just this week three martyrs at the Basilique Notre-Dame, in Nice, were killed at Mass; one was beheaded. And we are in the midst of a pandemic, that to date has killed well over 1 million people world-wide, and which shows no sign of abating.

St John is at prayer on the Isle of Patmos, when he is consumed by a vision of angels and the heavenly host. As we hear in today’s reading: “there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”

As Anglo-Catholic Christians, we believe in the communion of saints, we believe that there is a thin veil between life and death, we believe that those who have gone before us matter; indeed more than that, they are still with us in and through the mystery of the Eucharist, through our prayers and devotions, and through our works of mercy and social justice undertaken in the name of Christ. As I push our social enterprise coffee caravan out onto St Peter’s place each morning, I often think of one of our parish saints, or souls at least – the Hon. Frank Callaway – who donated the funds that made this enterprise to serve those in need a reality. 

I think the Beatitudes is a job description for sainthood, indeed for all Christians. Our Lord’s sermon on the mount turns the world upside down: the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor in spirit; those whose loved ones have been killed will find comfort; it is the meek, not the proud and powerful, who will inherit the earth; those who hunger for justice and righteousness will be filled. We know the words so well. These are the saints we celebrate today, the unlikely ones who heard the gospel and embraced a priority for the poor and persecuted, those with pure hearts who saw God, the child-like peacemakers. These are the saints.

Today we meet symbolically outside. The West Door is finally open after 111 days of pandemic restrictions, but 20 people still cannot worship inside the church. Just over a hundred years ago our forebears at St Peter’s were forced to do the same. In Fr Colin Holden’s history of the church, there is a photograph taken in 1919, during the Spanish flu, depicting a celebration of the Mass at the church steps, just as we are doing today. Today we connect in a profound way with All Saints, and tomorrow with All Souls, who have gone before us. We connect with St Peter and the martyrs of the church whose lives were laid down for us. We connect with the parishioners of St Peter’s who built this church, literally and metaphorically over the past 174 years. And we seek to connect with the parishioners who are yet to come, the students and others who are not yet Christians, those who will gather to worship in this place next century because of the mission we will be engaging in over the coming years.