Sermon for All Saints’ Day (observed), November 3, 2024

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9+Psalm 24+Revelation 21:1-6a+John 11:32-44

At the beginning of my sabbatical in August, the first thing on my agenda was to walk the Camino de Santiago, the medieval pilgrimage route to the tomb of St. James in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. For many people like me, this is a spiritual pursuit, a time of prayer and silence to spend time listening for the Spirit's voice, away from the noise of everyday life. For others, it's a holiday. I encountered a couple who had just been married in Vigo, Spain, who took their parents and the entire wedding party on the Camino for their honeymoon. There were families and couples and youth groups with their tunes blasting from their phones, and yes, there were pilgrims walking alone or in twos and threes, seeking connection with something sacred.

No matter one's motivation for walking, there is a custom that everyone follows: when passing or encountering another person along the way, you greet and are greeted. Hola. Buenos días! Buen Camino. Good walk. Have an easy path. Whatever it is this Camino is for you, may it be what you seek. It doesn't matter how many times you encounter the same person along the way, you stopped to rest and they passed you or vice versa, the refrain is the same. Hola. Buenos días! Buen Camino.

There are not many -  if any - places in this world where everyone is headed in the same direction with the same goal in mind. The Camino de Santiago actually has 7 main routes and more than 200 recognized routes ranging from 60 to 2,800 miles, and they all converge on this one place, the Catedral de Santiago de Compostela. Its symbol is a scallop shell which shows all of these pathways converging at a single point.

Where else can you find such a thing? Certainly not in sports where one side wants to win. There are rivalries in our workplaces and in our families. Even Christian communities committed to following the way of Jesus can’t seem to agree on the way to do that or where we are going or what it looks like when we get there.

But on the Camino, there are many paths but one destination, and everyone encourages everyone else along the way. It isn't a competition (well, maybe some of the youth were making a race of it prancing up steep inclines like mountain goats). On the hot days when someone takes a break in the shade, there is always someone else to ask if they are okay, if they need help. It's the kind of encouragement that made my heart sing. Buen Camino.

After a couple of days of this, I actually thought of this day, All Saints' Day, when we celebrate this great feast day of the Church, remembering the saints through the ages who have born witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus, often to forfeit their lives for the Gospel. Every week when we gather at this table, we invoke saints and angels through the ages who are gathered around the throne of God singing a song of praise, and I imagine them surrounding us with encouragement along our own way, whispering buen camino as we sometimes muddle along through our days.

This morning, we welcome two of the newest members of Christ’s body through the sacrament of baptism, and maybe this is an instance of everyone moving in the same direction. I will even pour water on their heads using a scallop shell, a symbol that no matter how we get there, we are all headed in the same direction and are made one body through the sacrament of baptism. We promise to support these two and their families as they grow up in the Church. We aren't of different minds about baptism as the full initiation of these little ones into the household of God. We can celebrate this day for them and for us, that they have been reborn into the life of faith. What a gift a day like this is.

So, to Frida and Nico, buen camino. To all of us, buen camino. With the saints who came before us, we are all in this together.

Thanks be to God.