Sermon preached by the Reverend Richard Tombaugh

St. Paul’s on the Green, Norwalk, Connecticut

November 4, 2007

May the words spoken and heard here be spoken and heard in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The evenings before at least three of the Church’s major festivals are fundamentally important in conveying the Gospel message of abundant grace. Christmas Eve is a holy time of waiting in the maternity lounge in Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus, the hope of the world. To the familiar biblical images surrounding this event time has added the semi-Christian images of Christmas trees and Santa Claus. In the Solemn Vigil of Easter Eve we rehearse the history of our salvation as we await the first rays of sun light which herald the resurrection of Jesus and the promise of his victory over death. Our Easter celebration has also been enriched with semi-Christian images of eggs and bunnies, symbols of fertility and new birth.

The evening of our festival of All Saints, All Holy Ones, or All Hallows presents a different example. All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween is primarily a secular event which is about the terror of death and uncertainty about life beyond the grave and which includes many popular customs that date back to the pre-Christian Druids of Ireland and Great Britain. Though it is a purely secular event, All Hallows’ Eve, like Christmas Eve and Easter Even, provides the Church with profound insights into the Gospel message of abundant grace.

Children are the chief celebrants of Halloween. We adults serve as their acolytes. On Halloween children dress up in outlandish costumes having to do either with death-related themes: skeletons, witches and warlocks, ghosts and goblins, or with heroes who seem impervious to death: superman, bat man, spider man, and, of course, our own intrepid pledge man. Dressed in their costumes the children walk through their neighborhoods, enter houses often made to look frightful, collect candy and return home. The whole business is a joke. Behind the scary masks and costumes are laughing children. Inside the frightful houses decorated with spider webs and gravestones are friendly, generous neighbors.

The child who ventures forth with a trick-or-treat bag takes a sane, adventuresome risk and finds that the universe can be a safe place. The child discovers that there is a humorous side to the images of death. This humor is a great therapy for the fear of hell, because in hell there is no laughter. You remember, of course, that Satan and his angels fell from heaven because of gravity. Children are not embarrassed to struggle with the great decisions between good and evil, life and death, heaven and hell.

Benedictine sister Genevieve Glen writes of children; “They are all too aware of the human need to wrestle in the inward night with the unreasoning, the untamed, the inexplicable, and yes, the evil in us to believe us when we tell them that there are no witches and warlocks, no ghosts and goblins, and no phosphorescent skeletons…. They know, too, that if you’re afraid of something, the best thing to do is to dress yourself and your friends – and even your little brother – as the thing your afraid of, so that you can see it in familiar flesh and confront it and deal with it and prove to yourself that it can’t really hurt you. They know that pretending that it isn’t real won’t work if it is. There are monsters under the bed.” The message from the children is that even though there are monsters under the bed, we can face our fears and by grace and humor be set free from them. This wisdom of children is infinitely preferable to the adult attitude that denies monsters under the bed, yet remains always fearful. The children may not be able to articulate the Gospel but they have caught its essence. Their hearts are filled with faith and fun.

Today we celebrate the feast of All Saints’ with triumphant music, splendid prayers, festal hangings and vestments. This is the sunny side of Halloween. All Saints’ Day is a day of joy; Halloween is a night of comedy. The saints we honor today, a vast, innumerable crowd, are but graduates of the school of grace and struggle in which the trick-or-treaters have just enrolled. The saints are those wise enough to face their fears and accept the help of God as naturally as a small child walking in the dark on Halloween accepts a parent’s hand.

It is into that school of grace and struggle that we welcome through Baptism this morning a new member, Luca Marty Pantaleo. He will join the great throng of saints we remember today and through his baptism become one with them and us in the communion of saints.

These saints have accepted adventuresome risk that always involves threat and fear, but they know the therapy for fear. They take God seriously at his word, while they regard everything else and everyone else including themselves lightly and with an appropriate touch of humor. Saints are called forth into the unknown as into a dark night. Their costumes are, in the words of Barbara Taylor, “immoderate faith, intemperate hope and inordinate love.” Their hearts are full of faith and fun. Ignatius Loyola told his seminarians, “Laugh and grow strong!” Philip Neri performed ridiculous dances in the presence of cardinals and wore his clothes inside out. Teresa of Avila taught her Carmelite nuns to dance on holy days and even gave them castanets.

Today in the feast of All Saints we remember those who have gone before, known to us and unknown, costumed and uncostumed, children of God living by love and delight, all of them with one common home where their feast has no ending. Today we not only remember them, we pray that we may follow after them. Fortunately the children who venture forth on Halloween night provided us with a map for our journey drawn in the bright colors of childhood trust, courage and humor.

Despite its pagan beginning Halloween has been baptized. It has become All Saints Eve in more than name alone. Both All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day address the same themes; both are concerned with the hope of life beyond the grave; both desire to choose the side of angels and both commend courage in a scary universe. All Saint’ approaches these themes with triumphant joy. Halloween deals with them through mischievous humor. Blessed are those who pass through the humor of Halloween to the joy of All Saints.