All Saints Day

 

Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12


There is an important sense in which if we want to know if Christianity “works”, we should not look to ordinary Christians, but to the saints.

When we use the word “saint” in the biblical sense, it refers to followers of Jesus Christ- to Christians. So, when St. Paul speaks about the saints he is referring to members of the church.

But, in another sense it refers to those who have truly turned their entire self over to the way of Christ, and placed all their hope in God. A “saint” in this sense might be more what the author G.K. Chesterton is referring to when he said, 

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."

 And what Oscar Wilde meant when he said, 

“St. Francis [of Assisi] has been the only Christian since Christ” (I haven't found the source for this).

 Of course both statements are hyperbole, but they do say something true.

I suspect that all Christians feel that they have compromised their faith in certain areas. We have a tendency to pick and choose which of Christ’s teachings we want to follow. I suspect none of us can claim to be completely faithful to all of Christ’s teachings- with regards to money, or forgiveness, or service to the poor, or sexuality, or honesty in our speech, or gossip, or jealousy, or prayer. 

Imagine you are testing a cake recipe. If you really want to know how good the cake recipe is, then you have to follow the recipe as closely as possible. You can't change the ingredients or ignore certain ingredients. If the recipe calls for raisins, but you don't care for raisins, so you don't include them. And then say you decide not to add sugar, because you're on a diet.  You don't know what the cake would have tasted like if you didn't mess with the recipe. You are no longer testing the recipe. You don't know what the recipe would have produced.

The way that most of us live out our Christianity is like changing the recipe. But the saints are those who try their best to apply the recipe.  That is what G.K. Chesterton is saying, 

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."

 The Anglican priest William Law says,

“If you will here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.” (A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life)

We don’t know what we would become if we refused to compromise and completely turned ourselves over to God. … The saints are examples to us of what happens when we try to follow the recipe. In the saints we see God’s grace manifested in human lives, which then blesses world. They are those who have been willing to be conduits of God’s grace by removing their ego and resistance to God’s ways. The saints are the results of the Christian experiment followed through on- without messing with the variables- without messing with the directions Christ gave us- without messing with the recipe. 

I don’t want it to sound like sainthood is something completely in our power to attain. We can think that it is all up to us, and get lost in rules and discipline. We can forget that God is in the process from start to finish- from giving us the desire to pray, to the strength to serve others. On the other hand, we can give up on the idea of becoming a saint, and settle for a life that is labeled “Christian”, but that doesn’t require anything from us- that is the cheap grace Bonhoeffer speaks about.

When we look at the saints, we see people who are able to reflect God into the world. The writer and pastor Frederick Beuchner says of the saints that, “Their sainthood consists less of what they have done than of what God has for some reason chosen to do through them”. God works through these people to give us a glimpse of heaven on earth. Sometimes God used them to bring healing and to show miracles. In them we see love and peace and courage that is beyond our understanding. The saints report back to us about the joy of mystical experiences of the vision of God in prayer that is beyond any joy the world can give. They show the courage God can give us to stand up against powerful evil, even when we are faced with death. They show us examples of ways God can use us to transform the world.

So where do we start if we want to become saints? … There was once a couple who were lost and stopped to ask a farmer for directions. The farmer thought for a moment, then said, “well, I can tell you how to get there, but I wouldn’t start from here”. Maybe we feel like that. It’s a lovely dream, but surely I can’t get there from here. Dallas Willard would say that is what the beatitudes are all about. He would say, and I agree, the best way to interpret The Beatitudes is to see them as an expression of the all-embracing love of God. It means that wherever you are, that is a perfect place to start.

In the ancient world Jesus spoke these words into, those who were poor were not seen as blessed- the rich were blessed, not the poor. Those who were in mourning were not seen as blessed, rather those who were able to avoid death in their family were blessed. Those who were meek were those who got stepped on by the powerful and pushy, people pushed in front of them in line at the grocery store. Those who hungered and thirsted for righteousness were lacking righteousness, that’s why they had to hunger for it, they weren’t blessed. Those who were merciful got taken advantage of by the unmerciful- nice guys finish last. The pure in heart might be seen as naïve by those who had become hardened and jaded by life. The peacemakers are those who find themselves in the middle of a fight, that does not feel like a blessed place to be. And to be persecuted, in the ancient world, and in our own world, does not seem like a place of blessing.

Who was seen as blessed in the world Jesus grew up in? Those who are healthy, wealthy, and wise. The blessed are those who never have any bad days. The blessed are those who never endure any accidents. The blessed are those who never have to endure pain, or disease.

And this is the shocking thing about what Jesus says in The Beatitudes. In the ancient word these were seen as evidence of a lack of blessing. These are not starting points if you want to become a saint, but Jesus turns it all upside down. Wherever you are, and whatever you are going through, God is there with you. You are in a place where you can receive God’s blessing. You are in a perfect place to start the journey to become a saint.

If The Beatitudes are the beginning of a saint, then Revelation and John’s letter show us saints in bloom. We read that in heaven John sees 

“ … a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, [is there a place for racism in Christianity?] standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, … 

[John hears who they are.] They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

“Therefore they are before the throne of God,
and serve him day and night in his temple;[To serve God is to be next to the source of all joy, love, beauty, and peace, and could therefore never be burdensome]

and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more;
the sun shall not strike them,
nor any scorching heat.
 For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

In the end, to be people of the kingdom, is to be in the process of sainthood. There is no other path for us if we want to follow Christ. And if following Christ is the path to the God of love, joy, peace, and beauty, then as Léon Bloy said, 

“The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”