I
will begin this morning with my main point.
It is a quote from Alan Jones, the retired Dean of Grace Cathedral, San
Francisco.
You are a word about the Word
before you ever utter a word.[1]
That
truth has everything to do with one of the questions of the Baptismal Covenant
that we will all answer together in a few minutes.
Will you proclaim by word and
example the Good News of God in Christ?
Today
we celebrate the communion of saints.
“Saints” is one of those words we have to be very careful in using in
the Church. We often give people
(including ourselves) the wrong impression about what we mean when we use the
word “saint.”
We
call certain people “saint” because they are an example to us of following
Christ. St. Mary, St. Luke, St. Simon
Cyrene, St. Francis, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Nicholas and all those people we
commemorate on our church calendar who you just called out during the Gospel
reading.
When
we use “saint” in this way, we can give the impression that you are only a
saint if you are extraordinarily righteous, worthy of being emulated. And there are people from the recent past on
our calendar about whom this is certainly true:
Martin Luther King, Jr., Jonathan Daniels, Frances Perkins, and Thurgood
Marshall are examples.
We
include people in our calendar of saints because they are recognized in at
least some communities as being examples of faithful living. But that does not mean that they were
perfect, nor does it mean they were more successful in faithful living than
others, nor does it mean that they are the only people worthy of the name
“saint.”
What
do you have to do to be considered worthy enough to be called a saint?
Nothing.
If
you could earn sainthood by being good enough, there would not be any
saints. Individuals cannot make
themselves a saint. Churches cannot make people saints. Only God can make people saints. And how does God do that?
By
something we call “grace.” Grace is like
when I cracked up my car when I was 17 and I tried to hide it from my parents,
but of course they found out because parents are the other beings beside God
“from whom no secrets are hid.” And they
were really mad. But the very next week when
I had to go before the school board to complain about an unfairness I thought a
teacher had caused me, they were there to defend me. That’s grace. God says, I know what you are
capable of, both good and bad, and when you screw up I am very disappointed and
sometimes angry, but nothing changes that you are my beloved daughter or son
and I love you.
In
a few moments we are going to baptize two children. When we do that we are acknowledging that God
has made them saints and we join them to the communion of saints, in this room,
and in every room where the People of God gather and have gathered in
generations past.
And
we are saying the most astounding thing that we ever say as People of God: you
are marked as Christ’s own for ever. The
bond with God that we celebrate in Baptism, we say, cannot be broken. Can it be squandered? Absolutely, and most of
us did it at least once in the last week.
It can be squandered, but it can never be broken. God never gives up on anyone, and isn’t that
good news?
So
God has made every single one of us a saint.
We often hear someone protest, “But I’m no saint” and by that they mean,
“But I’m not perfect.” Again, the saints
were not and are not perfect. If you had to be perfect to be a saint, as I said
before, there would not be any.
So
you are a saint because God wants you to be, period. It is not, however, all “gimme the love,
God.” It is that, but it also comes with
responsibility. That responsibility is
that we “be the word about the Word before we ever utter a word.”
To
be a saint is to be a sacramental person. What does that mean? It means that
people can see God through you. You are a window, and you are that window long
before you ever utter a word. You are that window in the way you live and move
and have your being.
And
the way we are called to live is not easy because it is not about being
successful by the world’s standards. The
way we are called to live is laid out for us in the beatitudes from Matthew’s
Gospel. They tell us how to be blessed, but
the list does not make any sense, because the list includes lots of ways that
do not seem like a blessing at all.
Feel
that you are poor in spirit, that is, not good enough for God. Be in mourning because of a great loss. Be meek, which means something like feeling
powerless. Be merciful rather than seek revenge.
Be pure in heart, which I take to mean be open and accepting, being rid of
prejudice. Make peace rather than
solving problems by violence or the threat of violence. Be persecuted because we want to do the right
thing, and even dismissed as fools or even hated because we have chosen to live
in these ways.
Our
instincts say these are not ways to feel blessed. Our list of being blessed would include
things like financial security, safety, good friendships, loving families, and
at least the occasional time of just plain having fun.
Jesus
is not saying that these things are bad, but they have a couple things in
common. They all contain the seed of
idolatry—putting something like financial security or family ahead of loving
God and our neighbor. And they all very
easily turn into competitions and we choose up sides, or sides are chosen up
for us—the haves and the have nots.
No,
it is not about that, Jesus says. It is
the confidence above all things that you are unconditionally and eternally
loved by God and that you are called to love your neighbor in exactly the same
way. That is what it means to be
blessed.
And
it is what it means to practice our sainthood.
It is what it means to be “a word about the Word before you ever utter a
word.”
Do
not pray to be a saint. Rejoice that you are and keep practicing. That is all
God asks.
[1]
Quoted by the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church,
Rochester, New York on November 5, 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment