Alleluia! Alleluia!

'Tis the season for singing, "For All the Saints."  It is a great hymn sung midst a great season of worship. The words written as the Civil War was sending so many dead soldiers home has words that continue to resonate in our hearts and spirits,  "For all the saints, who from their labor's rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy name, O Jesus, be forever blessed."   While this first verse is more well know, the fourth verse sends our spirits soaring as well, "O blest communion, fellowship divine! We feebly struggle, they in glory shine, yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.  Alleluia, Alleluia!    

In so many of our churches we repeat each Sunday that ancient creed which sends forth that glorious refrain, "I believe in...the communion of the saints."  Numerous have been the times when we have heard or read in moments of departure from this life to the next a text from Hebrews which says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses..." (Hebrews 12:1).  The language, the texts, the music, and the images of All Saints worship are filled with so much spiritual power that we easily become like the Hebrews at Mt. Sinai trembling before the trumpet blast from heaven.  

It always seemed on All Saints Sunday that the veil between here and there was so thin that whispered murmuring could be heard from the other side and shades of the light of eternity brightly shining on the other side could be seen somewhere on the edges of what could not be seen with the eyes of earth, but only with the eyes of the heart.  The season of All Saints is a moment when the possibility of glory breaking in among us seems as real as the possibility of the next breath.  "Alleluia!  Alleluia!"