Isaiah 25.6-9; Revelation 21.1-6a;

John 11.32-44

The Rev’d Sarah Hillman

“As important as it is to mark the places where we meet God, I worry about what happens when we build a house for God. Do we build God a house so that we can choose when to go see God? Do we build God a house in lieu of having God stay at ours? Plus, what happens to the rest of the world when we build four walls – even four gorgeous walls – cap them with a steepled roof, and designate that the House of God? What happens to the riverbanks, the mountaintops, the deserts ad the trees? What happens to the people who never show up in our houses of God?”

That was a quotation from a book I’m reading at present by Barbara Brown Taylor, an American priest.

The book, An Altar in the World, aims to show readers how they can find God’s presence in the world around them without going on long pilgrimages or to special places.

Reflecting on what I’ve read in that book leads me to the conclusion that one of the things the saints managed to do was to be aware of God’s presence in the world around them. No one becomes a saint by notching up a record number of church services, but by living out the Gospel. That, of course, is a calling for all who name themselves Christians.

Of course, we need to remember that church is about much more than a building. Brown Taylor continues with some words about St Francis. “The people of God are not the only creatures capable of praising God, after all. There are also wolves and seals. There are also wild geese and humpback whales. According to the Bible, even trees can clap their hands.

“Francis of Assisi loved singing hymns with his brothers and sisters – who included not only Brother Bernard and Sister Clare, but also Brother Sun and Sister Moon.

“Francis could not have told you the difference between ‘the sacred’ and ‘the secular’ if you had twisted his arm behind his back. He read the world as reverently as he read the Bible. For him, a leper was as kissable as a bishop’s ring, a single bird as much a messenger of God as a cloud of angels. Francis had no discretion. He did not know where to draw the line between the church and the world. For this reason among others, Francis is remembered as a saint.”

So often we seem to lock God into a church building and then leave the divine there. But God is truly everywhere, and the saints were those who recognised that.

If we go back to the Bible, we have stories of God speaking to people in a whole host of places: on the top of mountains, under tress, by rivers, in the wilderness. We have stories of God revealing the divine presence in a still, small, voice, through the stars in the sky, a burning bush, a whirlwind. Jesus teaches using everyday images, showing how God is very much in life outside the building. He uses lilies and sparrows to get his message across, bread-making and shepherding, parties and crop-growing.

There are saints who are known for doing great things, but they were always people who knew God in their daily lives. There are countless stories of the saints and today, All Saints’ Day, we can remember some of them.

But All Saints’ Day also helps us to remember those countless saints whose names we don’t know, who are not famous, but who have lived for Christ, who have known his presence with then and in their communities and who have served him wholeheartedly. There have been many Christian martyrs – what made martyrdom possible was their belief that God was with them this side of the grave and would be with them on the other too.

Those who are saints are those who give attention to God. If we look at our daily lives, I wonder how much of that we actually do. Do we see God in the trees and fields around us as we drive or walk the dog? Do we find God in other people?

Mother Teresa believed that her work with the impoverished people of Calcutta was “doing something beautiful for God.”

She said: “There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.”

Mother Teresa’s life in Calcutta was full of clamour and noise. There is not much peace in the crowded slums. But as with all the saints, she found too that she needed space and quiet. And ensuring that she found these enabled her also to find the presence of God in the dirty, poverty-stricken, forsaken, noisy city.

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. . . We need silence to be able to touch souls.”

It is the times of space and silence and attention to God that enable us to find God’s presence also in the noise and clamour.

In times past, one of the ways in which God’s presence was celebrated and linked to ordinary life was through the festivals. Yesterday evening All Hallows’ Eve was often spent in a quiet vigil, preparing for the celebration of All Saints’ the next day, and then All Souls’ the day after. Now it’s a day of witches and ghouls, trick or treating and celebrating the darkness.

Religious festivals took on greater significance than they do today. For one thing, they were days off work, days for the family and community. Days when everyone would stop and take part. Nowadays those of us who have faith celebrate our festivals while the world carries on. Christmas is really the only Christian festival that is still widely celebrated. And for many the celebration of Christmas is done without Christ.

If we want others to find God, we need to be better at recognising God’s presence in the world than we are. We need to learn to be more attentive ourselves to God. Mother Julian of Norwich learned this. She was ill when she had her first vision. As she looked she saw all creation as if it were a hazelnut in the palm of her hand.

“And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: it lasts and always will, because God lives it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.”

It is about being attentive to God in the world. All the saints managed this. For them God was not confined to church for an hour on Sunday, but was an active part of their daily lives. They were aware that, though separate from God, they were also inseparable; that wherever they were or whatever they did, God was there. Now we may fully believe that God is everywhere, but I wonder whether that knowledge is something we live out or just something that we believe but which makes no difference to our lives.

God is alive, and faith is something living and changing and life-transforming. If we go into a room and there is another human being there, rarely would we ignore them, but we spend most of our lives unaware of God’s presence with us.

There is a religious discipline of paying attention: being aware of God in our daily lives. It takes time and space to start with but as we become more attuned to God we find that we will become more aware of God’s presence with us, wherever we are.

Faith is not just about a God who lives in heaven. It is about a God who came to earth, and lived as one of us. It is about a God who still lives with us, though the power of the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes it means turning aside as Moses did with the burning bush, but more than anything it means being aware of God in the now. As R. S. Thomas puts it:

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it.

I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.