Do you
know what it takes to be a saint?
If you’re
looking to get a day on the church’s calendar, being a bishop, virgin, monk or
missionary helps. But those aren’t, particularly, the people we celebrate
today, on All Saints’ Sunday. The church
created this holiday to remind us that a lot of God’s saints are people whose
holiness was never memorialized in a Big Book or calendar – whose lives showed
God’s love, even if no one ever canonized them.
All
Saints’ Sunday is about celebrating the saints who are – in the words of the
hymn – just folk like me, saints without fame, the kind that you and I can be,
too.
You don’t have to be a saint, of course. Many –
probably most – of God’s beloved children aren’t. But you can be. It’s an
invitation extended to all of us in baptism (as God extends that invitation to Luke
and Julia today). Some of what it takes
to be a saint is implied in the words of the baptismal promises we all repeat
together today and at every baptism. More of it is in the Bible. And some of
that is printed right there in the insert in your worship program, so you don’t
even have to open the big book.
“Blessed
are the poor in spirit,” says Jesus, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Blessed
are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who yearn for God’s
righteousness from right down in their bellies. Blessed are the meek, and those who stand up for God in the
face of resistance and embarrassment.
It’s not
hard to hear those words as a description of saints. But if we want to be saints it’s more important to hear those
words as a description of God.
Jesus is
telling his disciples and the crowds not a list of ways to act in order to be
blessed, but that God already, independently blesses those whom the world
ignores, looks down on or avoids.
God
blesses – God fills with love and grace – those who either will not or can not
pursue the world’s standards of success and happiness. God embraces and upholds
those who are pushed out of the security of society’s expectations, or who
voluntarily give that up for the sake of God’s righteousness, justice and
peace.
That’s
what God is like. God is a rebel, God
takes risks on people, and God is often uncomfortable company at dinner
parties.
Jesus is
telling us this about God because – on purpose or accidentally, in Jesus’ day
and in our own – most of us live like we don’t really believe this about God. Many of us, much of the time, live
like we believe God blesses those who help themselves. Like I won’t need God’s blessing if I can provide my
own security and comfort. Many of us, much of the time, live as though we have
plenty of time to wait for God’s righteousness until heaven comes on earth –
instead of as if we need that justice and transformation right now more than we
need air or water.
Saints –
the ones who get a day in the calendar, and the ones like you and me who don’t
– are the people who live on their trust in God blessing those who don’t succeed,
thrive, or settle for the practical.
Saints
give up family and income and sometimes health to go work for God’s
righteousness where no one else will. Sometimes we know those people’s names,
and call them Mother Teresa, or Francis of Assisi. Sometimes those people get
in our way, and we call them idiots, rebels, or naïve. Sometimes we never hear
of them at all.
Saints aren’t
always the ones who give it all up and live extraordinary lives, either. Saints
are (as the hymn says) all over the place in our daily lives, too. Saints are
the ones living the same kind of lives we are – in school and offices, in the
stores, in the church, and on highways – and living this life as though they
believe that God blesses the poor, the peacemaker, and the merciful, and the righteous troublemaker, the uncomfortably
pure of heart. And they live as though this is the most important thing of all.
You can
spot this sort of saint because these are the people who are utterly grounded
in God’s love and grace even in the midst of grief and strife and injustice and the petty stress and misfortunes of
everyday life – the things that are so easy to complain about.
These are
the people who somehow manage to find fuel for grace-filled prayer and deep
generous love of neighbor on Fox News, MSNBC, and Facebook, where others find
cynicism and anger.
This is
the kind of saint who finds $5 to feed a neighbor when the world and the
electric company are nagging about bills – or finds $50,000 to anonymously buy
a local ministry a new roof when the world is pumping anxiety about taxes and wise
investment and not having enough money to retire.
These are
the people who juggle that same crazy busy family, work, and personal calendar
that makes me cranky, exhausted, and impatient, and find in it a never-ending
stream of moments that reveal God and tasks that nurture love.
These
saints are the people for whom a cancer diagnosis, the loss of independence, an
unexpected failure and crisis at work, or a flat tire are fountains of blessing
instead of wells of anxiety or fear. These are the people who find joy and
peace in the need to give up on doing it for ourselves and depend on and trust
our fellow children of God.
These are
the people who seek God, over and over, among the people and places many of us have
learned to avoid – dangerous neighborhoods, unbalanced or irritating individuals,
those dangerous people in the other political party – and know that they will find God there.
These are
the saints we celebrate today. The saints who live – in ages past and this year
and place – without name or fame, but in the absolute confidence of God’s
blessing for those who don’t succeed and thrive by ordinary standards.
We don’t
have to be saints. We won’t all be
saints, much less all the time. But this is who God invites [Julia and Luke to
be today], who God invites you and me to be.
God
invites us to be saints who live without fear – without fear of dependence or embarrassment;
without fear of poverty, weakness, or loss. Saints who live out the reality of
God’s blessing in the our very ordinary lives, who may not be remembered, but
who transform the world just the same.
Will you,
with God’s help, choose to be one, too?
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