Sermon preached at Evensong on All Saints' Day 2026

What do the saints look like? The eastern Christian tradition of iconography answers that question in a distinctive way which perhaps seems surprising to the ordinary western viewer. Icons tend not to be painted as portraits, as such; there is what looks like a certain Byzantine formulism at work, which does not especially focus on the particularities of features or facial distinctiveness. These are not portraits. The Orthodox iconographer Aidan Hart, who designed the screen for the anointing of HM The King at the coronation in 2023, explains, ‘Sacred art is always abstract, in that word’s literal sense, in that it ‘draws out’ the essence of the subject. It uses stylistic abstraction to suggest these invisible realities. Such art is therefore not naturalistic, but is realistic, for it affirms the spiritual as well as the corporeal nature of reality.’ 

In the Byzantine world, then, we might say that is what the saints look like – that is the most faithful way to depict them, because the icon shows us the inner reality of the saint (that person’s virtues or character), rather than resting on their physical features, which are more transient. The iconographer tries to depict the spiritual qualities of the holy person, those characteristics which have led that person to participate in the life of the Kingdom of Heaven. The ‘likeness’ of the saint depicted is supposed to lead us into their inner life of piety and devotion, their invisible qualities; we are supposed to glimpse their sharing in the beatific vision. 

One potential criticism of this approach – for all its beauty and wisdom – is the danger of some kind of unintended dualism. Now, elsewhere in Eastern Christian reflection is the tradition of the holy face, the belief that there is a kind of light which is visible in and around the features of a holy person. So, I am not suggesting that there is an inappropriate distinction between flesh and spirit, the outer reality of the person and their inner life. But I do want to note that our distinctive personalities and our individuality are sites of God’s creative holiness. If we think of holiness as God’s building project, that is not only a project which cultivates the inner virtues, but rather relates to every aspect of our life together in the time of the world. Personalities and individualities really matter. 

This afternoon’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews gives us a long list of heroes. These are the great examples, the shining lights of holiness, the saints, if you like, which the author wants to set before us. The context of the list is a long celebration of the theme of faith, which is, we are told, ‘the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ In other words, these heroic figures are all those who have behaved in the light of that which is promised, whose lives have been shaped by hopes yet beyond them.

‘…time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David, Samuel and the prophets – who through faith conquered kingdoms, ministered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions….’ 

There are still unnamed others, too, those ‘women’ who received their dead by resurrection, and that multitude of anonymous martyrs and hermits, whose presence in this great rollcall gives us such insight into the earliest Christian attitude towards discipleship and its perfection. The point is, this is a very diverse list of individuals and groups, not one single form of holiness, not a cookie-cutter model, but holiness embodied in distinctive human lives, characterised by faith in what was currently still a vision, a promise, something beyond them. 

And yet, it is in the lived reality of such sanctity that the vision really comes to life. That is one reason why the diversity we see in the operation of God’s holiness is so important. Its common features are the faith, hope and love which characterise the love of God and neighbour to which we are called. But those features are received, embodied, enculturated (if you like) in the greatest variety of lives, backgrounds, personalities and contexts. There are common features – those ‘spiritual qualities’ – because God’s holiness is a corporate enterprise, a building project, a endlessly interweaving symphony of love. But it is also visible in the highly particular lives of a vast cast of ordinary people finding their identity in Christ, and their hope in his promises. 

So, we should celebrate diverse individuality and distinctive personalities as the potential sites of God’s holiness – the vocation to sanctity is offered to every single baptised person. We are all called to be saints. And yet, we know from our own experience – not least of ourselves – how an overdominance of our whole personality can often end up limiting, rather than liberating us. Self-obsession can be truly destructive, especially when it exists only through insisting on its own terms. There is a self-forgetfulness in the lives of the saints which we often recognise as a kind of joy or freedom. Not because they have separated themselves from the world, but because some of the illusions we build up around ourselves cease to have ultimate power. If the world is being turned upside-down, and if hope in things not seen is the animating force of human existence, then a confidence in Christ’s love to hold us and heal us, can release us from the clutches of ego and despair. That confidence can free us from that most wide-rangingly gripping sin: idolatry. Idolatry of self, of ambition, of self-sufficiency, of power, of strength. 

A story is told of the great mystic Meister Eckhard preaching, and exclaiming right in the middle of a sermon, ‘I pray God that he may rid me of god!’ Doubtless many of his hearers must have been totally astonished. What he meant, of course, was rid me of the god who is the merely product of my own creation or my own context. Lead me into the freedom which is beyond that which I can imagine or fully perceive; allow me to appreciate the extraordinary otherness of the God who calls us to life. Our own images of God are always inadequate. Our own images of ourselves are usually quite problematic, too. We are not good at capturing the complexity, the distinctiveness of individual human lives, even when we’re proficient at painting recognisable likenesses. In order to depict a whole person, we would need to be able somehow to display someone’s spiritual qualities – their inner life, their ‘essence.’ One challenge of Christian existence is to integrate our outer and inner lives, so that they speak in harmony of God’s love. Just occasionally, we might recognise or sense that degree of integration in particularly holy people. Because the building project which is God’s own holiness, God’s own life shared among us, is one which embraces and transforms both our inner lives and our actions. It is visible in our created individuality. It is visible in our shared vocation to grow into the likeness of Christ, who is the head of the Body. There is only one person in whom such integration is perfectly complete. 

What do the saints look like? They look like Christ, the one who has taken our entire humanity into himself, and in whom every created individual can reflect his glory. That is our vocation. To become icons of Christ.