All Saints’ Sunday
“After this I looked, and 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”
In the 1960s, a newly-ordained Presbyterian minister in the United States saw what was already at that point a growing danger in the lives of children and their families, and thus a growing need that was not being addressed. He saw early in the realm of media – particularly television – how much of an impact it was having on the hearts and minds of children, how much it had already come to dominate their lives and shape their imaginations, and he could see as well how this was only going to get worse over time.
Uniquely, this person did not feel a vocation to be ordained to minister in a church setting – which he never did – but rather to use media to impact the lives of children and shape them in virtuous ways. Curiously, Fred Rogers began his television ministry here in Canada, first broadcasting Misterrogers on the CBC in 1962, though he would return to the US in 1966 and begin Mr. Rogers’ Neighbourhood.
Until, and even more so after, its national debut in 1968, the show struggled on very limited budgets, and so in May of ‘69 Rogers sat before a US Senate Hearing on the funding of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) to ask for money for his show; the senate committee was being chaired by Senator Pastore, who was well known as a hardcase. In the senate hearing, which you can watch on YouTube, Rogers lays out what ,the heart of his program is which was, to paraphrase, not to create drama for children through violent scenes, but rather to speak to the kinds of drama children face every day: getting haircuts, relating to siblings, how to deal with anger, and to deal with these things constructively. Almost like a prophet, Rogers says that if they can just make it clear that our feelings are mentionable and manageable, “we will have done a great service for mental health.”
Rogers also quotes a song that he uses on the show about managing frustration and anger, and how we can remind ourselves to stop when we’re feeling overcome by anger, “And know that the feeling is really mine. Know that there’s something deep inside that helps us become what we can. For a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.” And with that, the hard-screw Pastore granted Rogers and PBS the equivalent of $180m today.
Now whatever it is that we do in life, or enjoy in life – whether a profession or a hobby – we all have some kind of goal for it, maybe it’s more clearly defined for one thing than another, or maybe it’s just that we know the kind of nurse we would like to be, or the kind of woodworker we want to be, more like so-and-so, and we work towards it. Fred Rogers knew how we should be in the world because Fred Rogers was a Christian, but he also knew that in order to get there we – children especially – need formation in it, it doesn’t just happen. And he knew that there are many things that want to pull us away from being formed in that way, things that was us to become different kinds of people, like as he witnessed with the formation television gave children.
Theologically, we might call this formation sanctification, or the ‘holy-fication’ of things, making things holy(er). We know that salvation from God is not something earned by us or gained by our labour, but a free gift from God through our faith. Receiving this gift is like being given the opportunity to become a marathon runner, but becoming and maintaining yourself as a marathon runner requires a certain amount of discipline and formation, it’s not really a one-and-done thing; no marathon runner runs a race and then goes back to eating pop-tarts and skipping exercise until the next race. Every marathon runner, we might say, is already a runner and is also in the process of becoming one.
And I think it’s this way with us, at least a bit, that by our faith we are offered salvation from God, this great and wonderful gift, but then comes the task of living as one who has been saved and as one who wants to be saved. No doubt you are a better nurse or woodworker or runner now than when you began, but you may still think you have a long way to go; our finding salvation through Jesus doesn’t mean that we will automatically begin to live lives that resemble Jesus’, but the work of our faith is that work to sanctify our lives, to practice our faith so that day by day, and bit by bit our lives gradually take on the shape of his life, and our love of his love; and all of this work and practice, though we participate in it, is still nothing less than the work of God in us by His grace.
This is what Rogers was up to in his Neighbourhood – he never said it explicitly, part of his genius perhaps, but the hope that a girl may some day be a lady and a boy a man is ultimately rooted in his hope, I think, that we would all grow up to be formed by the virtues of faith, hope, charity, and so on, and fully become the people that God created us to be, running the race before us, living the life that Jesus modeled for us on earth, and growing steadily on each day by faith and grace.
Today of course is All Saints’ Sunday when we celebrate the Saints of God, that vast multitude, the innumerable souls of those Christians of remarkable faith throughout history who stand not only in that chorus around God’s throne, but also stand for us as models and exemplars of what ordinary human lives, suffused with God’s grace, and living solely and intently for God, can become.
And while this day is of course our day to commemorate all those figures together, it is not their greatness that we commemorate, instead we gather to give thanks and celebrate the action of Jesus Christ in human lives, because what makes the lives, the faith, the witness, the martyrdom of the saints great – as they would attest themselves – is not them or their efforts, but what Jesus did through them. And their lives, their witness, and their martyrdoms remembered all these years after they lived do not point us back to them, but they point us – as all the saints do – to Jesus.
And the good news of course is that this greatness is not limited to them. We may not all be called as they were to actions or service or martyrdom that will have us remembered by name one-thousand years from now, but we are nevertheless all called to become great in our own ways, as we are called, by allowing Jesus to work through us as he did the Saints. And we allow this through the softening of our hearts, the practice of prayer, of repentance, of mercy and forgiveness, charity – our sanctification, our becoming holy(er), is the gradual work of opening of the doors of our hearts to welcome in Him who can, through us, as he did the saints, work great and wonderful things and use us to His glory.
