What good is a saint?

A Sermon preached on All Saints Sunday, Nov. 6^th 2016 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Daniel 7: 1 – 3, 15 – 18, Ephesians 1: 11 – 23 Luke 6: 30 – 31

As we celebrate the Feast of All Saints today, are there actually any saints in the Bible? Yes and no, is the – as so often – less than clear answer. Those saints mentioned by name in scripture, St. Peter, Paul etc., are not identified as saints. They are Jesus’ companions, the apostles and disciples, his mother and father.  And most of the big Saints, with a capital “S,” St. Francis, St. Teresa of Avila, our own St. Augustine, are not in the Bible, because they lived and died later. We revere them and celebrate their lives because they are the heroes and heroines of our faith. They made their mark in the world. They left a legacy of holiness that outlasted their lifetimes. And more often than not, they died for their faith. Then we have those we often refer to as “saints” with a small “s,” as in she is a real saint. These are often people of heroically long-suffering patience or rigidly upright moral conduct. I have heard these two models for sainthood referred to as either “dying violently or living joylessly.” I do not aspire to either, and while Jesus does often warn his followers about persecution, neither model would seem to fulfill Jesus’ hope for us that we might have life and have it abundantly. 

And yet, the word saint is found in the Bible. We heard it a couple of times today. In the extract from Daniel it is hidden as the Greek word hagoi has been translated as “the holy ones,” as in:  “But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever – for ever and ever." (Daniel 7:18) In Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians however, the same word has been translated as saints: “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints” (Ephesians 1:15) and “I pray .. you may know … what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” (1:18) So clearly there are saints and they are going to inherit the kingdom. 

In fact Paul uses the word saints quite a lot – quite a few of his letters begin with some phrase like “from Paul to the saints or to those called to be saints in Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Colossae, or Philippi. They are, to use some of the other phrases, those faithful in Christ, loved by God, sanctified in Christ Jesus. For Paul, saints were simply the people of the churches, made special and holy, set apart simply by virtue of their faith in Jesus. How do you become a saint? Well, he tells the Ephesians, you hear the word of truth, the gospel, you believe in Christ, and you marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit. (1:13) That makes all of you saints, well done! And as today is All Saints’ Day, it is your day.

But, how do we live as saints? This is where today’s gospel reading comes in. Jesus does not use the word “saint”, but he does talks about those who are blessed, and those for whom only woes await. And it is those who are blessed who will receive the kingdom of God, that glorious inheritance that as we heard in Daniel and Ephesians is promised to the holy ones, or saints. Looking at Jesus’ instructions, however, it sounds like living either dangerously or joylessly is the recipe after all …. Blessed are you who are poor. Blessed are you who are hungry. Blessed are you who weep. Blessed are you when people hate you. (Luke 6:20-22) 

Jesus certainly also meant the physically poor and hungry. The Gospel of Luke that we have been using for most of this church year is explicit about Jesus’ love and care for the poor and the outcasts. He heals them, he eats with them, he is clear about society’s responsibility to change those rules and structures that keep them poor. But that is not the only meaning. He promises the kingdom to those who are not satisfied with their current, comfortable existence, to those who hunger and thirst for more, to those who recognize the poverty of just material success. To those who are starving for meaning in their lives. To those who hunger for community and who thirst for hope. 

These are the people who are open to Jesus’ Good News, these are the people who want the world to change, and these are the people who long for God’s kingdom of justice, abundance, love, and righteousness. Saints are people who choose Jesus and want to follow him and his example wherever it takes them.  We have an incredibly vivid portrait of where following Jesus takes us in our gospel lesson from Luke today. Look at the first sentence: “Jesus looked up at his disciples.” What does that imply? In order for Jesus to look up at his disciples, he had to be at a level below them. He is not standing up on a rock above a crowd of people to preach to them, and certainly not in a pulpit. Jesus was down on the ground as he taught this most central of his messages. He was crouching or kneeling in the dirt. Like Jesus, saints are never above or better or anywhere else than the people they serve. 

I suppose the reason the whole cult of Saints (capital “C”) developed – and by the time of the Reformation had become very complex and a distraction – is that following and imitating Jesus – the Son of God – seems like a very tall order. It seems easier to follow and imitate human heroines and heroes, people who are at least a little like us. Our Church did not throw out saints completely.  We retained many of the saints’ days, we kept the Feast of All Saints, and we even have a thick book of saints (Holy Women, Holy Men).  I think that is a good thing. I like to have concrete examples of what being a Christian is about, I like to remember their particular witness, their special gift. But it is also the result of a mistake. Sure Jesus wants us to follow him and his example, but he does not expect perfection. Most of the Saints are not. Look at them. Bad tempered. Unwashed. Uncomfortable. Unreliable. Unlike you and me of course.

What Jesus wants, and what makes us saints, is an acknowledgment of our imperfection, both of our own and of the world and a recognition of the need for change and transformation, our own and the world’s. To put it very simply: Jesus promises the kingdom of God to those who know they are not complete without it. Amen.

Struggling with God

A Sermon preached on Pentecost XXII, 16^th October 2016 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Genesis 32: 22, 31, I Timothy 3:14–4: 5, Luke 18: 1–8

What a strange God we are introduced to in today’s readings. One who gets into fights, one who is compared to an unjust judge. I am reminded of a film/movie I saw earlier this year - the Brand New Testament (or in its original French: Le Tout Nouveau Testament). The film’s subtitle is “God exists, and lives in Brussels.” The God of this film, which is very funny by the way, is a bit of a slob who wears a dressing gown and slippers all day, and is a grumpy sadist who appears to have created humankind just to have something to play with and torment at times. 

In the parable from Luke, in which Jesus tells his disciples about the “need to pray always and not to lose heart,” (Luke 18:1) Jesus gives us the character of the equally grumpy “judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.” (18:2) He only grants the widow’s plea for justice because he is fed up with her bothering him. So is God and God’s response to prayer like this judge? Does God only answer prayers when we get on God’s nerves long enough? No, of course not. Jesus is using a typical Jewish rabbinical from of argument called “from the lesser to the greater.” If, he says, even a slob like the judge grants justice to those who continually come and plea for help, how much more will God, Abba, Father who is love in person, grant justice to those who cry to him day and night. 

And yet, even with God there may be a period of waiting involved before we receive the justice we believe we deserve, or before God reveals how we can achieve justice in any given situation – we may well have a role to play in answering our own requests.

That is why, Jesus says, we need to pray always and not to lose heart. Prayer is a two-way communication; prayer is one means by which we open our hearts to God to show God where we need help, strength, confirmation, or reassurance. And we can use prayer for our complaints and questions too. When I pray, I often use the words “why” and “I don’t understand” and “help me!”  And that is nothing in comparison to what Mother Teresa, now Saint Teresa of Calcutta, said and felt at times. She went through long periods of doubt and suffering, her dark nights of the soul. She struggled with her faith and with her God. It seems to me that in this passage, Jesus is also preparing his disciples and followers, us, for those times when we do not receive the help, strength, confirmation, and reassurance we hope for. When instead we feel abandoned and alone, just as Jesus did for a moment on the cross when he cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). 

Jacob’s mysterious encounter in Genesis describes a prolonged struggle too. Jacob’s life was one of never-ending struggles. Fleeing his father-in-law, he is about to meet his brother, Esau, who has vowed to kill him. This is the night before that encounter. Jacob is on his own, he has sent his family with everything he had on ahead of him and probably collapses into a deep, exhausted sleep. But not for long, for an unnamed man visits him during the night and wrestles with him until daybreak. Is this God? Jacob thinks so: “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved” (Genesis 32:30) he says as he renames the place Peniel or “I have survived.” 

Well, I think Jacob struggled with many things that night. He fought with his own conscience, his failures, his weaknesses, his sins. He fought with his doubts, with what he felt were God’s unrealistic expectations for him: that he would inherit the land and that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in him and in his offspring.” (Genesis 28:14) Him, Jacob the conman, Jacob who betrayed his brother, Jacob who was about to meet that brother in battle, come on God, pull the other one!  

But although injured, Jacob comes out of his struggle with God both strengthened and renewed. He receives a blessing from God, replacing the blessing he had obtained from his father by trickery. And he is given a new name. No longer is he Jacob the deceiver, but Israel, which means something like “who contends or struggles with God.” As the man tells him, “you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”(Gen. 32:28) I think that means not just that Jacob has striven with other humans, like his father-in-law, his brother Esau, but also with Jacob’s own very human weaknesses, and prevailed. 

What we learn from this incident in the life of Jacob, from the story of the unjust judge, and from the example of Saint Teresa and many, many other saints is that it is OK to be impatient and persistent and to struggle with God. Struggling with God is in our Judeo-Christian heritage, it is in our DNA. We heard how the word Israel means something like struggle with God. Saint Paul teaches us that we are Israel: by adoption we are also Abraham’s children, we grafted on to the olive tree that is Israel (Romans 6), and we are members of the Israel of God. (Galatians 6:16) 

Jacob was afraid that he would die, not just for struggling with God, but simply for having seen him face to face. Throughout the Old Testament, we read of many occasions when people would hide or turn their backs rather than face God: Elijah wraps his face in a mantle (1 Kings 19:13), God puts Moses in a cleft of the rock to protect him. (Exodus 33:22) As Christians we do not have to fear death from struggling with God, nor from seeing God. God became human. In Jesus, God, whom according to John “no one has ever seen” is made known and visible to us. (John 1:18)  And through Jesus we learn to see God as a loving parent, not one who punishes, but one who wants us to grow to fulfill the promises given to us, both as individuals and as humanity.

But growth and development often involves struggle and even pain. We know that from our own children, they need a sparring partner, they need parents to rebel against and to struggle with. They need parents they can argue with. They need parents who will let them make their own choices and even mistakes. They need parents who will sometimes not do or give the children what they ask for, because we feel it is not in their interest, not good for them, or simply better if they do it themselves. These are struggles in love and out of love, and in most cases, because I don’t want to deny that not every parent/children relationship is good, the children still know and feel that they are loved simply because of who they are, and that all the struggles and fights and arguments will not change that relationship, on the contrary it is deepened and strengthened.

This is the God we are introduced to in today’s readings. The God who not only accepts doubts and complaints and struggles, but welcomes them. In Paul’s second letter to Timothy, he is told that all scripture, and at that time Scripture was only what we now call the Old Testament, so stories like Jacob’s, that “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” That is the purpose of our lives in Christ, that through scripture, through worship, through our relationship with God, and especially through our struggles with God we will learn, change, grow, and improve to become fully proficient and properly equipped for every good work God has planned for us, and to live this and the eternal life we are promised to the full. For that we pray always and do not lose heart.

Amen.