All Saints Sunday is one of my favourite times of the year, and not because it is the same Sunday as the time change when we ‘fall back’ to daylight savings time. 

Our family has had an All Saints Sunday tradition of watching the movie “Coco” in the afternoon. Coco is a Disney/Pixar animated film that tells the story of a young boy, Miguel, in Mexico who is transported to the Land of the Dead on Dia de los Muertos (the Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead). The Land of the Dead is a colourful fantasy world of skeletons that more or less continue living as they did in fleshly life. As he tries to return home, Miguel encounters his family members and other adventures. 

Spoiler warning: the next paragraph describes the final scene of the movie.  

The final scene of the movie is back in the land of the living, at a Dia de los Muertos feast – an All Saints feast, surrounded by family both living and dead, enfleshed and skeletons. They are visiting and singing, eating and dancing, all as a great gathering of beloved family. The skeletons, with a golden glow, are imperceptible to the living, but there with them all the same. 

There is something in that scene that sparks an image of All Saints Day. The gathering of the great multitudes around the throne of God, singing and dancing, feasting and visiting. But it is not just an image for All Saints Day, but every time we gather at the Lord’s table, every time we gather to sing, pray and praise with beloved family⎯mothers and fathers who have gone before us in faith, siblings who gather at our side at the table, children and descendants yet to follow in our footsteps. 

This image of the whole host of heaven, the cloud of witnesses that holds us in our faith is one that we must encounter and remember on our way to Advent. It is the place to which the whole story of the Church Year has been leading us⎯ from Christmas and Easter to all the parables and stories of the Green Sundays. The vision of the Kingdom of God is as much our anticipated future as Christians as it is our present reality gathered around the table. 

As much as the great multitude is the end of the story, it is also what leads us back to the beginning, because All Saints and our forebearers in faith are also the ones who have handed on to us the story of Advent and the coming of Messiah. Our waiting for God’s promises was first begun by those who have gone before us. 

There is one more image from Coco that resonates with me. There is a cosmic scale to All Saints Sunday⎯the promises given to the whole company of heaven. But in that final scene in Coco, the vision of All Saints is also intimate and personal. It is a gathering in the backyard of the family shoemaking business; it is a family dinner with people who are truly known and loved. It is a vision All Saints where this little Mexican family of Miguel’s represents all families. It is God’s promise given not just to all generally and broadly, but also personally and directly. 

God’s promise that, in the Kingdom, there is a place where we truly belong.