What is a Saint? A Sermon for the Feast of All Saints
November 4, 2019
Rev. Bingham Powell
Who is your favorite saint? Is it St. Mary, Jesus’s mom, with that courage she exemplified by saying “yes” to God’s request that she bear the incarnation of God to the world, the courage to declare God’s prophetic vision, or her courage to stand there at the foot of the cross when most of the other disciples had abandoned Jesus? Or maybe St. Peter is your favorite saint. That saint who didn’t quite seem to get it and yet was made the rock? Or maybe your favorite saint is St. Mary Magdalene, the first witness to the resurrection, the first one who got to proclaim the Good News that Christ had been raised from the dead, the apostle of the apostles?
Maybe it’s not a Biblical saint that is your favorite. Perhaps it is one of the later saints, like one of the martyrs, Perpetua and her companions, Ignatius, Lucy, one of those people who gave their life in witness to the transformative power of God in this world. Or maybe your favorite saint is Francis, who so beautifully exemplified love and graciousness and kindness, not to just people but all of creation, who preached to the birds, who once converted a wolf. Do you remember that story? There was a wolf terrorizing a town, so Francis went out and preached the Gospel and got that wolf to stop. He probably read theGospel that we heard today.
Maybe your favorite saint is one of the great theological thinkers, like St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas; or perhaps one of the mystics like St. Teresa of Avila, or St. John of the Cross. Or maybe your favorite saint is one of the modern saints, like Oscar Romero, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or Dorothy Day fighting for justice, fighting to bring about God’s Kingdom into this world.
Who is your favorite saint? Maybe it’s none of these famous ones. Perhaps your favorite saint is Aunt Sally or Uncle Joe, grandma, grandpa, mom, dad; someone who put you on their lap and told you Bible stories, or brought you down to church. Maybe they never talked to you about faith, but they are a saint to you because you witnessed the powerful impact that faith had in their life, the silent witness they had when they would wake up on Saturday mornings and serve breakfast to the hungry. Maybe it’s one of the names here on the wall around us, or one of those candles on the altar, someone famous to just a few, or maybe just to you.
Who is your favorite saint? More and more over the years, my favorite saint is you. Now you might be thinking, but I’m not dead. St. Paul talks about saints today in the Epistle reading, and when St. Paul uses the word, saint, he is not talking about people who have died. In fact, he starts this letter out by saying, “greeting to all the saints,” because a saint for St. Paul is anyone who follows Christ, or anyone who is trying to follow Christ. By virtue of your baptism you are a saint.
Today at the 9:30 service we baptized the newest member of the Body of Christ, a little baby named Reed. In Paul’s way of seeing things, we baptized him as a saint, which is a remarkable thing to say because he hasn’t done anything yet. He was born, but that was more of his mom’s good work. Parents up late at night, that’s sainthood, but what has Reed done? All he has done is been baptized. But that is the most profound thing of all because that baptism is the perfect and most profound symbol of grace. It is nothing of Reed’s own doing. It is God’s grace, that power of the Holy Spirit that came into that moment and made him a saint.
It is an important reminder that it is not about us, and that is what Paul gets at in this Epistle to the Ephesians. He is very concerned that they are beginning to trust in their own works, their own power, their own strength, their own doings, their own being. They are beginning to forget they had once set their hope on Christ and are beginning to set their hope on themselves, they are beginning to set their hopes on the principalities of this world. Paul is trying to bring them back to reality: those things are fleeting. If you put your hope in your own strength, I encourage you to spend some time at a hospital or a hospice center. Strength is going to fail you one day. It is all fleeting, our strength, our wealth, the powers of this world. So what Paul is trying to do is to bring them back to that hope that is set on Christ, that rock, that foundation that will never go away, that will be there through it all, that light that shines in the darkness we experience in this life. Paul is trying to bring them back to that reality, and that is pure grace.
What the saints are about is not about themselves, but what the saints are about is Christ. Those famous saints did it in a profound way. They are a powerful witness that has lasted generations, but so is Aunt Susie. Even if it was a light lit in a single person, it was important. That’s what the saints do. They point us towards God’s grace, God’s mercy, and God’s love.
That is what I see in you with every single passing year, with every single passing day. I see that love that pours out of you as you take care of each other. I see that love that pours out of you when you take care of the stranger and you welcome them. When you feed the hungry, I see that love, that grace, that mercy. It’s not about the work in and of itself, it’s about the God of love and grace and mercy towhich that work points. All of that flows out of your sainthood, for you are saints.
There is a section in one of my favorite books, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. The elder Zosima is talking a lot, and at one point he gets into this whole thing about the priests who are complaining. Now, we are not going to get into why they are complaining, although he does say they are right. The priests are complaining, and Zosima tries to get them to stop. He has a long, beautiful monologue, and towards the end of it he says that you just need to believe in the people. For when you believe in the people of God you will begin to see God’s holiness, even if you didn’t believe in all that before. It is by the witness of the people of God, it is by your grace and your love and your mercy that God’s holiness becomes a reality in this world. I believed that before I got here, but it has deepened as I have gotten to know you. It has nourished me. It has been a light for me in the darkness of this world.
All the famous saints are important, all the names on this wall, all the candles on the altar are important, and they are surrounding us right now, this great cloud of witnesses. But you also are part of that cloud. My fellow saints in Christ, by virtue of your baptism you became a saint, and you lit a light for Christ in this world. Thank you.
AMEN
