We ran into a crisis that, in the end, wasn’t a crisis. In fact, it could not have conveyed the meaning of today more appropriately.

It was the crisis of the candles. Every year, weeks before All Saints Sunday, we do an inventory of the candles that we light in memory and in celebration of the saints we name today. Of course, every year there is a different number of people we remember, and therefore a corresponding number of candles. And sometimes, depending on our stock, we might need to order more.

So, there is a bit of stress, especially if we need to order more and time becomes a factor. This year, our dedicated altar care group assured me that we had enough candles.

But, there was a catch. We had used them before, probably during All Saints Sunday worship last year. Though these candles were all uniform and about the same length, they were not new out of the box. Pause.

When we discussed the situation, I wondered out loud about this belief we have when it comes to celebrations – that every individual deserves their own, unburned candle. It’s like the fact that many people, like myself, share a birthday with someone else in the family. Don’t we deserve our own day? “It must be tough,” some have commiserated with me, “sharing the limelight with someone else!”

Indeed, we tend to centre meaning on the individual. That’s a whole lot of pressure we put on ourselves – to make it or break it! We therefore value self-reliance and seek reward for our individual achievements and successes.

When our faith is dependent on ourselves, individually, we at the same time create a culture in which people have a hard time asking for help. We resist relying on and learning from others. We see that as weakness.

This is one of the lingering legacies of the Reformation. While Martin Luther brought the bible to the people and encouraged a personal engagement with scripture and sacrament, his legacy also individualized faith. The lasting consequence was to leave us believing everything important hangs on the balance of individual decisions.

Consequently our sense of community erodes and our connection weakens not only with each other on earth but with the “mystical union” (Prayer of the day, n.d.) we have with all the saints in heaven, in Christ.

When you grieve the loss of someone special in your life, for example, what do you believe about your connection with that loved one right now? To what degree is the relationship over? And, if you believe it isn’t over, how has that relationship changed?

On All Saints Sunday we counter the tendency to individualize everything, and affirm instead that we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. We light candles that have already burned before! In our baptism we unite with all the saints on earth and heaven. As Luther famously said, we belong to the priesthood of all believers, in every time and every place. Each of us belongs to and is part of something much bigger than ourselves.

The foundation of our faith is not our individual decision to follow Christ but rather our confession of being held in the communion of all the saints whose foundation is Jesus Christ. Our faith is not alighted on the merit of our own individual efforts. Our faith is lighted up because the flame has always been shining and showing us the way, going before us all.

My brother tells of a recent mystical experience of connecting with our dad who died five years ago. His telling of the story is published in the recent edition of “Eternity for Today” (Malina, 2024):

“I was going through a rough week,” he writes, “questioning a lot of things. It was two o’clock in the morning, and I had been tossing and turning in bed for hours. Just as I was finally drifting off, there he suddenly appeared before me, unquestionably my dad. I jolted in surprise. His smiling and jovial face had never seemed so vivid and warmly familiar.

“And he told me something I so needed to hear, words which not only encouraged me, but also affirmed my faith in an inter-connected universe where the eternal and material dimensions weave together in undetermined ways, where God’s love in Jesus binds us all in heaven and on earth: ‘Be at peace. Don’t be afraid. Just keep going. One step at a time. I am with you. God is with you’” (p. 30).

Even and especially when we grieve our losses, we discover other ways we are connected. We may even be able to affirm that the relationship is not over, it has only changed. And maybe then we discover new roles and new ways of being in relationship.

In their book, “Beyond Saints and Superheroes”, authors Allen Jorgenson and Laura MacGregor challenge readers to re-envision our identity in community to be like candleholders rather than trying to be the light ourselves (MacGregor & Jorgenson, 2023).

So, we hold others, especially those unlike us with needs different from our own. And we empathize with them. But true empathy is “not about imagining how you would think or feel in the given situation. Rather, it is about imagining how someone else feels in the situation they are in” (Morris, 2018, p. 171).

This shift in thinking moves us out of our individual self-preoccupation to an other-centred way of thinking. To do this, we first practice simply—but perhaps not easily—just being with another rather than compulsively doing for another. When we can simply hold space with others, the tiny flame has oxygen to breathe, so the light of Christ can shine brightly for the world to notice.

When we practice just being with someone else, we love them by meeting them where they are at. When they have that sense of being seen, that they matter. In that space of grace, then, we recognize the light of Christ which, although it may appear fragile and small, actually gives enough light in the night for all to see.

Listen to the words of Professor Jorgenson who wrote this poem called “Candleholders” :

“Yesterday was All Saints’ Sunday at church and candles lumined the nave to honor the departed, the beloved, the beleaguered.

“We were invited to light one for a soul deep in our heart, and I walked to the altar and lit a candle in honor of you… sadly missed…

“The candles were variously held by brass, by glass holders. Some votives sat free. I took one of these and tipped it toward the Christ light. As it flamed, I breathed a prayer of thanks. I set you – on fire – into a bed of sand, imagining holding your hand once again, but no, you were grasped by grains of sand without number.

“I pondered you then, with all the saints: each one different, each one the same, each one broken, each one whole – together a circle of support.

“As I made my way back to the pew, I thought I heard you say:

“Today is All Saints Sunday, but each day is holy, as are we, as we hold each other and so the Christ” (MacGregor & Jorgenson, 2023, pp. 110-111).

References:

MacGregor, L., & Jorgenson, A. G. (2023). Beyond saints and superheroes: Supporting parents raising children with disabilities: A practical guide for faith communities. Mad and Crip Theology Press.

Malina, D. (2024, October 22). My dad in my dreams. Eternity for Today: Daily Scripture Reading for Reflection and Prayer, 60(4), 30. Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

Morris, S. (2018). Overcoming grief (2^nd ed.). Robinson.