Today is the day which the church since the third century has come to know as All Saints Day. For the last several years, this church has celebrated this day as a way of reflecting on our Christian history and remembering those saints of our congregation who have passed from us. It is a day that roots us in our historic faith, and reminds us of the great cloud of witnesses which surrounds us on our journey of faith until we reach our Home.

It perhaps may seem odd to you that we would call anyone a “saint.” In some traditions, sainthood is conferred only on those of extraordinary faith and service. But that is not our intent today. We begin by insisting that the saints are ordinary people. Sinners even. I recall the church at Corinth, filled with liars, cheats, idolaters, adulterers, and sexual perverts, and how does Paul address them in his letter to them? As those who “are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.” (I Corinthians 1:2). In the New Testament understanding of things, all Christians are called of God to be saints.

And how is sainthood attained? By the discipline of an iron-willed determination? Or by fame or notoriety for your religiosity? No. By an infusion of divine love, and by the sanctifying work of Jesus Christ. We are sanctified in Christ Jesus by virtue of our baptism, but we are called to be saints. As Wesley’s old hymn states, “All the saints thy love hath made.” To know the love of God, to feel it, even to be overawed by it, that is the beginning of sainthood. Sanctity is the renewing, life-changing work of God within human beings: the work that enables us to attain what we cannot achieve by sheer determination or by good works alone.

To refuse to honor the saints is to assume that sainthood is a human achievement, which understood rightly, never is. To honor the saints is to affirm that human transformation is a work of God, but that we have touched, seen and known those whose humanity was transformed by God in such a way that God’s work became real and living among us.

That is why the saints are to be seen as a gift from God. They are actual embodiments and evidences of a transforming grace at work in our midst. The Christ who has made ordinary people into the sanctified people of God is still active, seeking to do the same in us. In honoring those who have been changed by God’s love, we above all honor God and find hope for ourselves that God also can do the same work in us until we all are perfected in His presence along with all the saints of the ages.

Think of those who have gone before us: Ken and Ola, Betty, Dorothy, Helen, Iona, and Mac. It may seem weird to call them Saint Dorothy or Saint Helen, and perhaps it should be. But can you see how God was working through these ordinary people to bring us such joy, such faith and such endurance? Can you see them as channels of divine love and goodness? Can you find God’s grace shining through their lives despite their faults and foibles? If so, then you understand how God’s love has been made known to you through people who by the grace of God have become saints.

Barbara Brown Taylor says it this way:
......What makes a saint? Extravagance. Excessive love, flagrant mercy, radical affection, exorbitant charity, immoderate faith, intemperate hope, inordinate love. None of which is an achievement, a badge to be earned or a trophy to be sought; all are secondary by-products of the one thing that truly makes a saint, which is the love of God, which is membership in the body of Christ, which is what all of us, living and dead, remembered and forgotten, great souls and small, have in common. Some of us may do more with that love than others and may find ourselves able to reflect it in a way that causes others to call us saints, but the title is one that has been given to us all by virtue of our baptisms. The moment we rose dripping from the holy water we joined the communion of saints, and we cannot go back any more than we can give back our names or the blood in our veins.

So All Saints' Day is a family reunion indeed, of a clan made kin by Christ's blood. There are heroes and scoundrels at the party, beloved aunts and estranged cousins, relatives we adore and those who plainly baffle us. They are all ours, and we are all included. On All Saints' Day we worship amidst a great fluttering of wings, with the whole host of heaven crowding the air above our heads. Matthew is there, and Thomas, Barnabas, and the Virgin Mary. Teresa is there, along with Ignatius, Pius, and Columba, plus all those whom we have loved and lost during the year: Hank, Dorothy, Margaret, Al. Call their names and hear them answer, "Present." On All Saints Day they belong to us and we to them, and as their ranks swell, so do the possibilities that open up in our own lives. Because of them and because of one another and because of the God who binds us all together, we can do more than any of us had dreamed to do alone. .....

I love this day because it gives me hope for myself, and for all of you. In the midst of my doubts, and sometimes my indifference, All Saints Day urges me on toward the high calling of God. To a tired and doubtful church, the writer of Hebrews wrote in Hebrews 12, “Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” (Hebrews 12:1-2). Bernard of Clairvaux once expressed the significance of this day when he declared: "What does our commendation mean to them? The saints have no need of honor from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs. Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them. But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself enflamed by a tremendous yearning." [quoted in J. Robert Wright, ed., Readings for the Daily Office from the Early Church (Church Publishing, 1991), p. 496.]

So listen to the stories and names of those who have gone before you on this day. Feel in your heart a great yearning to be like them, and a burning desire to be with them again. In the words of the classic American jazz song:
O when the saints go marchin' in,
O when the saints go marchin' in,
O I want to be in that number,
when the saints go marchin' in.

THE FAITH OF OUR RESTORATION PAST
While there are many stories that could be told about our heritage in the American Restoration Movement, the stories of the two Campbell's, Thomas and his son Alexander, and that of the great frontier preacher Barton W. Stone deserve to be told year after year. These individuals, along with David Lipscomb, T. B. Larimore, Marshall Keeble and others, made enormous contributions to our own heritage, but they also remain with us as witnesses to the common aspirations but also diverse views that always have and continue to characterize our Restoration heritage.

At the turn of the century the second great awakening spread over the Kentucky and Ohio frontiers. Camp meetings sprang up throughout the region, the largest being the 1801 extravaganza at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, northeast of Lexington where people from many denominations gathered for days of preaching, singing and charismatic experiences. Barton W. Stone experienced the power of nondenominational Christianity at that meeting where he saw denominational walls fall and people gather around a common confession and the work of the Holy Spirit.

It wasn’t long after the camp meeting that Stone and his followers left their denominations and organized an independent presbytery named the Springfield Presbytery. The Presbytery failed to further their goals of non-denominational Christianity, so in 1804 they dissolved it in order to "sink into union with the body of Christ at large” and published a declaration of their intent called The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery. That document stated that the Bible is the “only sure guide to heaven” and rejected all other books and creeds that pretended to teach truth. Stone and those who followed him called Christians in denominations to throw off the baggage of traditions, creed and anything other than the New Testament and rally around it as their sole authority for belief and practice. Stone’s churches grew up all around Kentucky, Ohio and the Midwest throughout the early nineteenth century.

In 1807 Thomas Campbell, born in North Ireland of Scottish descent, arrived in Pennsylvania, settling in Washington County. Long a Presbyterian minister, he exerted considerable energy in a struggle to unify dissident Presbyterian groups. His efforts resulted in litigation to oust him from the his presbytery. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, he resigned and with others of like-mind, formed the Christian Association of Washington, Pennsylvania.

In 1809, his son Alexander arrived with the rest of Thomas' family from a stint at the University of Glasgow. Through his writing in journals such as The Christian Baptist and The Millennial Harbinger, Campbell became the leader and chief spokesperson for this effort to restore the simplicity and unity of the church of the New Testament. The Campbell's envisioned a mass exodus of believers from sectarian Protestantism so as to become one body, one church, with the New Testament as its only authority and creed. Out of the Campbell's efforts, congregations were formed in the region around Pittsburgh. Both the Stone and Campbell movements grew so that by the early 1830’s the churches from the Stone and Campbell groups commenced merging in Kentucky then in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. The late nineteenth century saw the expansion of this movement to the frontier, eventually to Oklahoma and Texas, and in the middle of the twentieth century, to California. A portion of those churches came to call themselves the Churches of Christ.

Restoration is not just a dream of the past but an ongoing work of God in each century as the church hears again its call to restore the Gospel and its ideals. The vision of Restoration may vary with different times and cultures, but all Restorations seeks to make things “right” again; to return to the intentions of God for the church in our age. While these goals will remain the same, the issues may differ with the passing of each new age. Even the Restoration vision of our forefathers varied somewhat. Both Stone and Campbell dreamed of the unity of all Christians, but Stone called for a fundamental restoring of the life of the Holy Spirit in the church as the path to unity , while Alexander Campbell urged people to tear themselves away from their denominational structures to take a simple, rational approach to the New Testament Scriptures and their practice in the church as the path to Gospel liberty and church unity.

Restoration is still needed among us today. True restoration always is needed when the church has veered from its intended ideals in beliefs and practices. In the nineteenth century, our forefathers and foremothers understood that restoration spirit to be a call to all Christians to unity and to the authority of Scripture. In a world of increasing cultural polarization and religious division, that is still a call we need to hear. In a world after modernity, we long for a word from God that can tell us the Truth about the cosmos and about our lives. We still seek an authoritative word for the doctrines and practices of the church. That word is the Word of Scripture – a word which is living, dynamic and authoritative as much now as it was in the 1st century and in the nineteenth century.

Perhaps there are other aspects of New Testament Christianity which should be restored in our day: such as their life in communities of hospitality and generosity, such as the passion of their convictions, and such as the power of Lord’s Supper and Baptism to act as life-giving experiences in the life of the church. That is the beauty of our Restoration heritage. We are given the task and opportunity in every new age to restore Christ’s church to her ideals, and to find again and again in the words of Scripture and in a relationship with Jesus Christ all that we need for life and godliness in this age and in the age to come.

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