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Saints
Luke 6:20-31,
Mat. 5:1-12, Hebrews 11:29-12:2
by Rev. Frank Schaefer
When we think of All Saints Day, we often
think of canonized saints; Christian heroes and heroines, that are no
longer with us--good people, but dead people.
We tend to "canonize" our loved ones who died. The longer they’ve been
dead, the better person they seem to have been. Perhaps this is also the
reason why many of our elders speak so highly of the past ("Back when .
. .in the olden days, . . . " Even in church historical terms, when we
talk about the past, we often refer to it as some sort of "golden age,"
no matter how dreary it may actually have been.
The interesting thing is that while we tend to reserve the expression
"saint" to the ones who went before us and are no longer with us, Paul
actually addresses the Christians at Corinth as "saints" (1Cor.
1:2--"agiois" Greek equivalent to the Latin "sanctus" the root for
"saint").
And let us be clear on this: he did not do so because they were a
congregation full of mother Teresas and Billy Grahams. Every time I read
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, I say (with relief): "and I thought WE
had problems!" The church at Corinth would have been kicked out of any
denomination a long time ago; the services were chaotic, there were
false teachings, cliques, divisions, adultery, the list goes on.
Well, if Paul calls the Corinthians saints, it can only be because of
their potential to become saints--their calling. And that’s actually how
the NRSV translates it: "called to be saints, together with all those
who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ . . ."
Did you just hear that? Are we in a place where we call on the Lord
Jesus Christ?" Yes, we are. If you are calling on that name in this
place or in any place, I got news for you: you too are a saint--a saint
in training maybe, but still some sort of saint!
So, how is a “living saint” to live? What are the characteristics of a
saint?
When we consider, both our Matthew passage and our Hebrews epistle
reading we learn that the saints who lived before us did not have easy
lives. In fact they often had to muster up an extraordinary faith in
difficult circumstances.
Whoever said being a Christian is easy? It’s not. It’s not for the faint
in heart. Jesus never promised his followers an easy life.
Nowhere does it say in the Bible that once we surrender our lives to God
that everything will be a ok. In fact, Jesus said that the student will
not be greater than the teacher. But “blessed are those who are
persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.”
So its not so much that we Christians are spared from life’s struggles
than that God expects us to demonstrate extraordinary faith in our
struggle with life--illness, losses, heart aches, family problems and so
on.
Blessed are you when you show faith in extreme situation, when you
demonstrate meekness when confronted, when you do the right thing even
thought it’s against the grain, when you keep a merciful attitude, when
you make every effort to make peace, and so on.
And the author of Hebrews gives us a long list of examples of how
believers before us have been faithful in extreme circumstances.
Reading these passages, the question that comes to my mind is: How can
we ever live up to Jesus’ job description of a saint; how could we ever
have the faith of a Joshua, Rahab, or of Stephen the martyr?
At times it seems that we cannot even muster up enough faith for the
normal struggles in life, let alone any persecution we might face. What
is worse yet is that the church of Christ often does not even stand in
unity and there seem to be more squabbles and church splits than
anything.
Since I accepted the call to pastor the Iona church, I have had
opportunity to talk to a number of people about the crisis this
congregation went through. Without getting into details, the theme I
heard again and again in these talks was shock and disillusionment.
Shock at how certain things could have been said and done in church of
all places. We thought, we were a loving church family? How could this
or that be said or done? How could I have been carried away in what I
said or what I did? Was what we had all these years just an illusion?
Are we not really what we thought we were? Saints?
What I am perceiving this congregation to be struggling with still is to
restore that sense of self-understanding and self-identity that we once
had. And at the core of this struggle lies God’s call to all of us to be
saintly, to become saints.
Just this past week I talked to someone who expressed this struggle to
me so aptly. This church family member said: “it is so hard to come to
terms with some of the things that transpired, because they are things
that seem so much outside of the “normal.”
I can relate to that. It is perhaps a similar realization that I made
for myself when I was a teenager, when I got drunk at a friend’s party.
You have to understand that I was raised in the pews. I evangelized. I
had brought several of my friends to Christ. I was known as the
Jesus-freak in my school, and I was known for a pious lifestyle, and
more importantly, I thought holiness was what I was all about. 20 some
years later, I am still embarrassed even to think about the
un-Christlike way I behaved at that party. That may be the reason I left
my home town—in fact, I left the whole country.
Seriously, this was a traumatic experience. I was shocked at the
discovery of what I was capable of, of what darkness was inside of my
soul. I was disillusioned and I was shaken at the very foundation of my
self-understanding as a Christian.
The fact is that we “living saints” are still sinners. The paradox of
the Christian teaching is that God’s redeemed people are 100% sinners
and 100% saints at the same time. As I said earlier, if the apostle Paul
called the believers at Corinth agios—saints—then that should put us
into the realm of saints for sure, for the kind of things that
transpired among the Corinthians were extremely sinful.
I honestly believe that there is even a redeeming aspect in the shocking
discovery of what kind of sin we are capable of. It keeps us honest; it
keeps us aware of the dangers.
This is exactly what the author of Hebrews expresses when he concludes
this passage with the words:
12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of
witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so
closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before
us…”
We need to be aware of the fact that that sin clings so closely; that we
are capable of sin. Every one of us—no exception. And then, we need to
work on ridding ourselves from it.
Here is a great prayer of a saint:
” "So far today, God, I've done all right. I haven't gossiped, I haven't
lost my temper. Haven't been grumpy, nasty or selfish. I'm really glad
of that.
But in a few minutes, God, I'm going to get out of bed; and from then
on, I'm probably going to need a lot of help."
Hear the good news this morning: there is grace and forgiveness and
there is encouragement for all of us. Christ calls us to keep going. To
watch our inclination toward sin and the inherent dangers, but to keep
moving on with the confidence that we are indeed God’s saints and part
of God’s loving family. We are saints in the making, a work in progress
and we need to keep looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our
faith. Amen.
