All Saints Day, 2023

Revelation 7: 9-17          Psalm 34            1 John 3:1-3         Matthew 5:1-12

I have a favourite story for All Saints’ Day and as I am writing this in the airport hotel at Kuala Lumpur, on my way back from Nepal, I can’t check if I told you the story last year, or the year before, so please forgive me if you’ve heard it before, and just enjoy it again…

The story goes that there was a little girl, wandering through an English cathedral with her mum and as they walked through the ancient church, so the mum was pointing out each of the saints, memorialised in the stained-glass windows. This is St Peter; this is St Mary and St John and St Francis and so they went on. And then the little girl tugged on her mum’s arm, and she said, ‘I get it! The saints are the ones the light shines through…’ and I think that is probably the best description of a saint I have ever heard. A saint is the one the light shines through.

Crafting a sermon about the ones the light shines through is easy work after a week in Kathmandu with IGWR. In Giving We Receive is a charity that was set up here, some 13+ years ago, to care for some of the poorest children in Nepal; it links sponsors with children, to fund their education and housing and food and to show them that there is definitely still hope in the world, there is still light, and it shines in the darkest places.  Many of you are supporters of this amazing work, and I met many of the children you sponsor. Some of you have even been up to see the work, first hand, and can tell your own stories. And I am also aware that we are not the community that we were 13 years ago, and some people may not know about the transformative work that happens in Nepal – and just how many examples there are of living saints being the ones that the light shines through.

So let me tell you about Raja, or Saint Raja as he should now more accurately be known.

Raja is a big man with an enormous heart. He lives on the 3rd floor of a tall house, with his wife and daughter. The two floors below him accommodate 16 children who otherwise would almost certainly be street kids. He oversees another children’s home, a stones throw away, and 9 other tin sheds or single rooms where mothers live with their children and have no way of paying for their food or education. At the moment Raja is uncle to 41 children and he knows their stories and he knows their dreams and he is determined to break the cycle of poverty and change the destiny that the world dealt to them. And with his big voice and his cheeky grin and his high standards and his boundless energy and endless problem-solving abilities, Raja shines light. It bursts out of him. And he goes to the darkest places and shines it right there.

Like the day when he found Rita left in a garbage bin, literally thrown away, aged 2, because she had special needs. Or when he discovered Ajay and his siblings, begging on the roadside to raise funds for their alcoholic parents so they could buy their next drink. Ajay, covered in 60% burns, inflicted by his parents, so they could earn more to “pay for their child’s medical treatment”. Or when he met Sunita, who had been trafficked twice – sold by her brother both times – and left with her two beautiful and clever kids with no way of being able to afford to shelter, feed or educate them. Or when he found three brothers trying to survive in the jungle, the youngest being under 18 months old. Or the boy living in the liquor store to escape his violent and abusive drunk dad, covered in human bite marks and with complex broken bones.

The work we started here, and continue to fund, goes to those dark places and shines brightly. That light says darkness doesn’t get to win. And that light says blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are the hungry and thirsty and blessed are those who are mistreated and hurt and hated. The kingdom of heaven is yours.

I spotted this light shining through Raja easily and straight away. But as the week went on so I began to realise the most grace-filled, redemptive thing I’ve seen for a long time. You see, Raja went and took light to the darkness and as he left each situation with those precious kids in tow, so a light was lit in them; a tiny flicker at first, but every good deed, every meal, every hug, every day in the community of their new 41-strong family, the light is tended to, the flames are kindled and protected and they grow into true brightness.

The saints are the ones the light shines through. And it shines through every single one of those tiny saints. They have seen light and then, quite by consequence, they have begun shining light. They needed hands and feet and funds to take the light to them but they quickly discovered the light is catching and they are now the hands and feet that take the light to others. Saints are the ones the light shines through and it they are shining brightly in the IGWR houses in Nepal.

Of course, you don’t have to go to Nepal to find those whom the light shines through. We see it here, in the faces of one another, so often. In those who choose kindness and care and put themselves out to help others. Those who feed the hungry, show mercy, pray deeply, mourn fiercely, chase justice, seek peace and pursue it, those who live lightly and love outrageously. Saints are the ones the light shines through and you are here just as clearly as elsewhere.

And this saintly ‘glow’ I’m speaking of isn’t based on one’s good works, although that might make it easier to spot, it is entirely based on the work of the one true light, the light of the world, shining in and through each person beloved of God, shining through everyone.

But what I am left pondering is this…

~ how much does the light shine through me? How much does it shine through any of us?

~ and what might we need to do, or stop doing, to proverbially polish those cathedral windows to let the light shine brighter?

The saints are the ones the light shines through. Or as another one who clearly meets that saintly criteria, the amazing poet Amanda Gorman puts it – there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it. Amen.