2011-11-06–Feast of All Saints

Feast of All Saints

It is the Sunday after the Feast of All Saints. And it’s a good day to reflect on just what it means to be a saint. Because you are one.

Whoa! Really? I’m a saint? Some of you might be thinking that.

And you have good reason. After all, the accounts of the saints that abound in Christian history are, quite literally, fantastic! To be declared a saint is to have been a martyr—like St. Lawrence—or a miracle-worker—like St. Gregory Thaumatourgos—or to have established a mission—St Ignatius of Loyola, or to have proclaimed the Gospel for the conversion of a people—St Patrick of Ireland.

Saints are Christian people who did great things. Whose prayers—whether they were prayed in this life or in the next—moved the hand of God to intervene in human affairs in powerful ways.

Major saints have one or more feasts associated with them, during which we are invited to reflect on their lives, and how God worked in and through them.

Saints are saints precisely insofar as they are not like us.

And yet. . . .

When Paul introduces himself in his letter to the Church in Ephesus, he addresses his words “to the saints who are in Ephesus.” The letters to the Churches in Philippi and Collosae are similarly addressed “to all the saints.” For Paul, saints were not long dead. Saints were not ancient superheroes who could confound persecutors, work wonders, or convert the nations. The saints were the people who gathered in houses to continue in the fellowship of the Apostles’ teaching, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. Paul’s saints were the first century versions of you and me.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in St. Paul’s first letter to the Church in Corinth.

The Church in Corinth seems to have been a collection of house gatherings which were divided, and celebrated their divisions with different titles: “I am of Peter, I am of Apollos, I am of Christ,” seems to have been one of their slogans. They were divided according to their favourite preachers.

They were also a collection of churches divided along the lines of wealth—a division that spilled over into the Eucharistic celebration. It seems that the rich would gather first, have a lavish Eucharistic meal and leave the leftovers—if there were any to be had—for the poor who came after. And they needed to be corrected on that, too.

But what really roiled Paul was the tolerance of a man who was having an affair with his mother-in-law while remaining in the community. This behaviour, says Paul, is so bad that you are scandalizing your non-Christian neighbours.

And not just any non-Christian neighbours, for Corinth was the Red-Light district of Amsterdam in the ancient world!

And yet, when Paul writes to them to address these problems, here’s what he says: “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. . . .” Think about that. Let’s just say our understanding of what a saint is gets a severe jolt when we do.

A saint for Paul is anyone who is set apart by the saving work of Jesus Christ, who, in Christ, is called to be holy and will be revealed to be holy at Christ’s return. To be a saint is in other words both to be holy now and to be on the way to holiness in the future.

And if the believers in Corinth were on the way, well, perhaps we should see ourselves as on the way, too.

The point I’m after has not to do with morality, though. Even if the Church at Corinth was a moral mess—and it was—that’s a distraction from what I want to say.

For Paul, being a saint was both a present and a future reality. The Corinthians were saints already because of what Christ had done for them; they would be shown to be saints in the future when Christ returned. Their sainthood, if we can put it that way, was both an already and a not yet.

Jesus, in our Gospel lesson, is making a similar point. For him, too, saintliness is both a present and a future reality.  Look at the verbs in the Beatitudes—each one begins with an “are” and ends with a “will.” Blessedness, for Jesus—saintliness we might say—begins now and ends in the future.

The word that Jesus uses for “Blessed” often simply means “Happy.” But that cannot be quite what Jesus means here. Not least because Jesus is describing situations that are miserable. Happy are the poor, those who mourn, those who are persecuted? Hardly.

Jesus is using the word in a special, biblical way. For the word Jesus uses is often found in the Psalms and there, means favoured by God. God’s favour rests on you when you mourn. Well, that doesn’t make much more sense, does it?

The key, it seems to me, has to do with the theme of persecution which serves as our Gospel lesson’s climax. Persecution is the subject both of the last Beatitude and a general conclusion to the entire list. The list is working toward it. We are—if we are reading rightly—to see the emphasis falling here.

When we do, we come to understand that Jesus is talking about that space in our lives where the life of the kingdom of this world—the life that is dominated by sin, death and the devil—buts up against the life of the kingdom of God and of his Christ. When we suffer, and especially when we suffer as a result of being faithful, we are caught in the clash of hte kingdoms.

The already/not yet tension that Jesus speaks of in the beatitudes erupts precisely at the point at which we believers are caught between the two kingdoms—what the NT calls, the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of God or heaven.

The first kingdom—ruled by sin, death, and the devil, has been decisively defeated by Jesus. The second kingdom—the kingdom of God and of his Christ –has invaded and even if the outcome is certain, the old order is not passing away easily.

For Christ himself came as one who suffered. Christ came identifying with the prophets who were murdered for their message. Who came, indeed, as their climax. As the end of their line.

And if we have been, to use St. Paul’s language, “sanctified in Christ Jesus,” and “called to be saints,” then, we can expect to walk his way. If Christ himself was made perfect through suffering (that’s how the biblical book of Hebrews puts it)—through walking straightforwardly into the borderlands between the two kingdoms, there to face the full fury of sin death and the devil, then we can expect no less.

The twist is this. This suffering—as real and as miserable as it is—is a sure sign of God’s favour.  And believers—saints—need to be reminded that in the midst of their suffering, the favour of God does indeed rest upon them. That they may indeed be undergoing severe persecution. That they are indeed suffering, but that such suffering is not finally meaningless. That their suffering and persecution is a sign not of this present world’s strength and victory, but of its weakness and ultimate defeat.

The blessedness of the saints, in other words, is neither obvious in the present nor sequestered in some far away future. It is a present reality to be sure, but it is apparent only for those whose eyes have been opened to see that the Kingdom of God is near and will one day be revealed in its fullness. Who can see that the Risen One who suffered for us stands with us in our present suffering. He stands to commend us to His Father, as his faithful ones. His saints. The One who gives us all that is His by giving us Himself.

Which brings us back to saints. And specifically to those who are called to be saints here at the Church of the Epiphany. What are we to take away from all this?

(1) Our blessedness—saintliness—is not always clear. Sometimes it is obscured by our sin. Sometimes it is hidden in suffering. Sometimes it seems overwhelmed by persecution, both threatened and actual. And even if that last point is not true of us, it is true of the vast majority of our brothers and sisters around the world.

(2) Our blessedness—saintliness—is Christ’s. Our favour with God—that which makes us saints—rests not in us. It lies not in our capacity for holiness, but in Christ who in what Martin Luther called the great exchange, takes our sin upon himself and gives us in its place, his holiness, his righteousness, his very life.

(3) Our suffering is not without meaning. Our suffering, which is always the suffering brought about by the passing away of the kingdom of sin, death and the devil, is never without a point. Our suffering always places us at the rough edge, where the old kingdom confronts the new. Where the end of the old is made plain. Where the eruption of the new is even now taking place.

It is not an easy place to be. And please don’t hear me saying that. Jesus does not say that. St. Paul does not say that. Nor do I. Some of you tell me of bodies that are breaking down. Others have loved ones whose bodies may well be strong, but whose minds, whose very personalities, seem to have been almost entirely obliterated by Alzheimer’s. Some of us, though young, are facing the suffering that comes with serious disease, and the treatment that promises to kill that disease slightly faster than it kills us. Others of us know the grief of having lost loved ones in their prime. None of this is easy.

But, even if it is hard, saints—that’s you—you’re not alone. You are surrounded by brothers and sisters—more saints!—who  will carry you as best we can. Who will care for you and pray for you and pray with you and even pray instead of you when you can’t. Because that’s what saints do.

More than that though, we have the presence the One, whose presence makes us saints. The One who suffered for us. Who hallows our suffering with his own. Who bids us come to his table, to take his life inside of us.