All Saints' Sunday
Revelation 7.9-17; Psalm 34.1-10; 1 John 3.1-3; Matthew 5.1-12
Do you know the one about the little boy who read
the story of the life of St. Simeon Stylites, that strange holy man of the
early fifth-century who lived for thirty years on top of a sixty-foot pillar in
Syria? The child decided that he would attempt a similar act of saintly
heroism. So he went into the kitchen, climbed up onto the tallest cabinet, and
stayed there all morning. At lunchtime he got down. His mother, aware of what
was going on in her child’s mind, said: "Now, you mustn’t feel bad about
this. You have at least made the attempt, which is more than most people have
ever done. You’ve just got to remember that it is almost impossible to be a
saint in your own kitchen."
I can’t recall where I got that story from, but I like it. ‘It’s almost impossible to be a saint in your own kitchen,’ but isn’t that exactly what God wants of us? I think God wants saints in the kitchen; in fact God wants saints everywhere.
This morning I want to present a particular definition of a saint. Let me mention a few - Ralph Eustace, Phyllis Santer, Maud Price, Abraham Madiwa, Bill Hemming, Cherry Carter, Geoffrey Grant, Olive Rolls, Tsidi Moloabi, Solomon Salins, Richard Cain - all saints in my definition. You don’t recognise them? Well, they are all people who’ve played a significant, although sometimes very brief role in my life. Each of them, in very different ways, taught me something of God’s ways with people. Amongst them - a nurse, a teacher, a grandmother, a social worker and teacher, a church warden, a yogi, a vicar, an ordinand, a Church of South India pastor, a crazy chaplain. It’s amongst these people that my definition must start. They are people rather like you or me.
Very few of us, I imagine, would consider ourselves saints. Partly this is due to the idea of being "perfectly good" which the world has attached to the concept of saint. The number of conversations I’ve had in which someone can’t do something or other because they are not worthy. Low self-esteem seems to me to be an all too common trait. Now, of course, none of us can claim perfection in any let, alone all, of the virtues. But that isn’t the measure of saintliness. Indeed if we persist in that thought, everything about ourselves appears tainted, or even ultimately worthless. Not worthy we may be, but we are not worthless in comparison with the saints. Jesus considers us to be worth dying for; he didn’t go to the cross only for the virtuous. If we think of saints only as those who achieve perfection, we’ve got it wrong.
The Psalmist would have us think quite differently. “Fear the LORD, you that are his saints” it says in Psalm 34 (v 9). The word is literally “God’s consecrated ones.” It’s not our good behaviour, our good works, our faithfulness nor even our endurance to the end that makes us saints. Rather, we are saints because of what God has done; we have been consecrated by YHWH. Our good works and our faithfulness are the result of God's work in us. It is God who decides, God who makes the first move, God who calls, and God who consecrates. Christian, you are a saint, because of what God has done.
The writer of John’s letter agrees with the Psalmist, reading from verse 27 of the chapter before the reading set for today (1 John 2.27):
27 As for you, the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and so you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in him.
We are called ‘children of God’ because of the love the Father has given us. This anointing is God’s work of grace active in us; it is not the result of what we have achieved or indeed what we have decided to believe. It has been accomplished solely in accordance with God’s will for us, God’s love for us.
Have you heard the one about the physics professor's question about a sinking boat? The proposition is that a boat has a hole in its bottom and water is coming in. The boat will eventually sink. Why? Typically, people will say something about the weight of the water with which the boat is filling. Then the professor will ask if the problem is that the water is coming in? Most students say, “Yes.” It’s then that the professor smiles and says, “Wrong! The boat sinks because the air goes out!” It’s about pressures and forces, and determining just what’s going on with the boat can be quite complicated. The boat is already heavier than water or it couldn't possibly sink, even if it was filled to the brim. In simple language, boats are containers. As long as they and what they contain is lighter than what is beneath them they will float. Similarly, when individuals, groups or churches begin to think their ship is sinking, they often concentrate on the wrong things. Usually, the problem is not anything below, but a lack of what comes from above!
We have been consecrated by God. Trust the one who called you, and called me. That’s got to be a key aspect of the definition I’m working towards. Consecration comes first; calling comes first. That’s the thing about Ralph, Phyllis, Maud, Abraham, Bill, Cherry, Geoffrey, Olive, Tsidi, and the rest of them. They each had a calling – something they did or were in their very selves – that communicated the purposes of God to me. None of them thought or thinks of themselves as special – they were doing and being what they were called to do or be. The authenticity and profundity of their ways spoke, often without too many words: a good nurse, a good teacher, a loving Gran, an encouraging colleague, or a thoughtful friend. Words like ‘calling’ and ‘vocation’ probably didn’t come easily to their lips – but they’re still the right words.
Whenever a saint dies, I think about them the next time we come to the words in the Great Thanksgiving, “Therefore, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we proclaim your great and glorious name, for ever praising you and saying ...” Some liturgies put it this way: “with the saints on earth and all the saints of heaven ...” On All Saints' Sunday, my head fills with images of those who have gone before. Occasionally, my eyes burn and fill with tears, for I have known so many saints.
Who in the great company – the great cloud of witnesses – was most influential in the formation and fostering of your life of faith? Whose lives have touched yours because they gave themselves to living, to caring, to ideals, to determined effort, to a quiet or loud purposefulness? That’s got to be part of the definition of a saint. Called, consecrated, sanctified.
Yes, God is the first mover, but we are involved; we are created response-able – responsibly for the working out of that calling in our lives. “All who have this hope in them purify themselves, just as he is pure.” (1 John 3.3) We have to learn the ways of righteousness so that we may live them.
Remember those stern words from Revelation, those who are clothed in the white robes of saints “have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Thank God that we don’t have to endure the persecution and torture that I think lies behind those words – though we have to keep in mind that too many of our companions in faith do. Our ordeals are likely to be of a different order, but learning the ways of purity and righteousness amidst the ups and downs of living still often comes hard. Ralph, Phyllis, Maud, Abraham, Bill, Cherry, Geoffrey, Olive, and Tsidi would all have their own stories to tell: stories of hurt and loss and trouble and dismay. Experiences that moulded and shaped them – in pain or in joy – and somehow made them remarkable, yet ordinary, people.
“And this is the teaching [Jesus] gave:
Blessed are the poor in spirit;
Blessed are those who mourn;
Blessed are the meek;
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;
Blessed are the merciful;
Blessed are the pure in heart;
Blessed are the peacemakers;
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”
These are the standards by which the world, and the Church, will be judged. These are the standards by which those ordinary saints measured their actions – though only a few of them would have articulated what they attempted with words like that.
Many years ago, Norman Vincent Peale told this story:
“Air Stewardesses are supposed to be nice, but I was on a flight between Chicago and Dallas a few weeks ago where a stewardess was unusually friendly and helpful. I told her so and she was quite frank with me. She explained, ‘About five years ago I read in the paper about a waitress who was included in a will just because she was polite and courteous. “What in the world?” I thought. It might happen to me. So I started treating passengers like people. And it makes me feel so good that now I don't care if I never get a million dollars.’ It was a case of a low motive blossoming into a loftier one.”
We cannot, indeed ought not to try to work out the faith and motives of others. We need to feed our own calling, and try to upgrade our own purposes in the light of it. At the same time, purity of intention is not enough. A person who tries to bail a sinking boat with a leaky sieve may be well intentioned, but is also misguided. The boat will surely sink – in spite of all the good intentions to the contrary. We are saints, forgiven sinners, only through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By His grace, God has made us saints.
“After that I looked and saw a vast throng, which no one could count, from all races and tribes, nations and languages, standing before the throne and the Lamb.” (Revelation 7.9) Yes to be included in that vast throng we must pass through the ups and owns of life that constantly tests our hearts and wills.
During the civil war, Puritan Roundheads stormed into cathedrals, destroying religious symbols. In Winchester Cathedral they wrecked a huge stained glass window which dominated that majestic building. On the stone floor lay a host of fragments of the beautiful coloured glass. The shattered pieces, which once had shaped a Rembrandt-like scene, could not be restored to form the original picture. What could be done?
With love and care, local people picked up the pieces. Long before the time of abstract art, they leaded the broken glass together with hope and returned it to the round window. Today, these 350 and more years later, the same sun shines through the same beautiful colours of fine stained glass, a kaleidoscope of pieces, rearranged in a different and even more meaningful way.
This is what a saint’s life is like, we may be broken in our own lives and in our churches, but God calls, God anoints, God sanctifies. Somehow with the help of the Spirit, we are picking up the pieces, putting them back together. And maybe God’s light in Christ is still shining somehow through us: saints with broken halos.
Not one of those people who names I’ve mentioned would have claimed in any sense to be special – indeed all of them only too conscious of their shortcomings, but each and every one did something that enabled me to see God’s purpose, in actions beautiful and clear they lived the difference that the call makes. They let the light shine through.
Christian, you are a saint. Not because of any good works you have done, but for what you are, consecrated, anointed, called by God to do. Go live your calling.
And my definition?
‘Saints are people who make it easier for others to believe in God; in your own kitchen or anywhere.’
I can’t recall where I got that story from, but I like it. ‘It’s almost impossible to be a saint in your own kitchen,’ but isn’t that exactly what God wants of us? I think God wants saints in the kitchen; in fact God wants saints everywhere.
This morning I want to present a particular definition of a saint. Let me mention a few - Ralph Eustace, Phyllis Santer, Maud Price, Abraham Madiwa, Bill Hemming, Cherry Carter, Geoffrey Grant, Olive Rolls, Tsidi Moloabi, Solomon Salins, Richard Cain - all saints in my definition. You don’t recognise them? Well, they are all people who’ve played a significant, although sometimes very brief role in my life. Each of them, in very different ways, taught me something of God’s ways with people. Amongst them - a nurse, a teacher, a grandmother, a social worker and teacher, a church warden, a yogi, a vicar, an ordinand, a Church of South India pastor, a crazy chaplain. It’s amongst these people that my definition must start. They are people rather like you or me.
Very few of us, I imagine, would consider ourselves saints. Partly this is due to the idea of being "perfectly good" which the world has attached to the concept of saint. The number of conversations I’ve had in which someone can’t do something or other because they are not worthy. Low self-esteem seems to me to be an all too common trait. Now, of course, none of us can claim perfection in any let, alone all, of the virtues. But that isn’t the measure of saintliness. Indeed if we persist in that thought, everything about ourselves appears tainted, or even ultimately worthless. Not worthy we may be, but we are not worthless in comparison with the saints. Jesus considers us to be worth dying for; he didn’t go to the cross only for the virtuous. If we think of saints only as those who achieve perfection, we’ve got it wrong.
The Psalmist would have us think quite differently. “Fear the LORD, you that are his saints” it says in Psalm 34 (v 9). The word is literally “God’s consecrated ones.” It’s not our good behaviour, our good works, our faithfulness nor even our endurance to the end that makes us saints. Rather, we are saints because of what God has done; we have been consecrated by YHWH. Our good works and our faithfulness are the result of God's work in us. It is God who decides, God who makes the first move, God who calls, and God who consecrates. Christian, you are a saint, because of what God has done.
The writer of John’s letter agrees with the Psalmist, reading from verse 27 of the chapter before the reading set for today (1 John 2.27):
27 As for you, the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and so you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in him.
We are called ‘children of God’ because of the love the Father has given us. This anointing is God’s work of grace active in us; it is not the result of what we have achieved or indeed what we have decided to believe. It has been accomplished solely in accordance with God’s will for us, God’s love for us.
Have you heard the one about the physics professor's question about a sinking boat? The proposition is that a boat has a hole in its bottom and water is coming in. The boat will eventually sink. Why? Typically, people will say something about the weight of the water with which the boat is filling. Then the professor will ask if the problem is that the water is coming in? Most students say, “Yes.” It’s then that the professor smiles and says, “Wrong! The boat sinks because the air goes out!” It’s about pressures and forces, and determining just what’s going on with the boat can be quite complicated. The boat is already heavier than water or it couldn't possibly sink, even if it was filled to the brim. In simple language, boats are containers. As long as they and what they contain is lighter than what is beneath them they will float. Similarly, when individuals, groups or churches begin to think their ship is sinking, they often concentrate on the wrong things. Usually, the problem is not anything below, but a lack of what comes from above!
We have been consecrated by God. Trust the one who called you, and called me. That’s got to be a key aspect of the definition I’m working towards. Consecration comes first; calling comes first. That’s the thing about Ralph, Phyllis, Maud, Abraham, Bill, Cherry, Geoffrey, Olive, Tsidi, and the rest of them. They each had a calling – something they did or were in their very selves – that communicated the purposes of God to me. None of them thought or thinks of themselves as special – they were doing and being what they were called to do or be. The authenticity and profundity of their ways spoke, often without too many words: a good nurse, a good teacher, a loving Gran, an encouraging colleague, or a thoughtful friend. Words like ‘calling’ and ‘vocation’ probably didn’t come easily to their lips – but they’re still the right words.
Whenever a saint dies, I think about them the next time we come to the words in the Great Thanksgiving, “Therefore, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we proclaim your great and glorious name, for ever praising you and saying ...” Some liturgies put it this way: “with the saints on earth and all the saints of heaven ...” On All Saints' Sunday, my head fills with images of those who have gone before. Occasionally, my eyes burn and fill with tears, for I have known so many saints.
Who in the great company – the great cloud of witnesses – was most influential in the formation and fostering of your life of faith? Whose lives have touched yours because they gave themselves to living, to caring, to ideals, to determined effort, to a quiet or loud purposefulness? That’s got to be part of the definition of a saint. Called, consecrated, sanctified.
Yes, God is the first mover, but we are involved; we are created response-able – responsibly for the working out of that calling in our lives. “All who have this hope in them purify themselves, just as he is pure.” (1 John 3.3) We have to learn the ways of righteousness so that we may live them.
Remember those stern words from Revelation, those who are clothed in the white robes of saints “have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Thank God that we don’t have to endure the persecution and torture that I think lies behind those words – though we have to keep in mind that too many of our companions in faith do. Our ordeals are likely to be of a different order, but learning the ways of purity and righteousness amidst the ups and downs of living still often comes hard. Ralph, Phyllis, Maud, Abraham, Bill, Cherry, Geoffrey, Olive, and Tsidi would all have their own stories to tell: stories of hurt and loss and trouble and dismay. Experiences that moulded and shaped them – in pain or in joy – and somehow made them remarkable, yet ordinary, people.
“And this is the teaching [Jesus] gave:
Blessed are the poor in spirit;
Blessed are those who mourn;
Blessed are the meek;
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;
Blessed are the merciful;
Blessed are the pure in heart;
Blessed are the peacemakers;
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”
These are the standards by which the world, and the Church, will be judged. These are the standards by which those ordinary saints measured their actions – though only a few of them would have articulated what they attempted with words like that.
Many years ago, Norman Vincent Peale told this story:
“Air Stewardesses are supposed to be nice, but I was on a flight between Chicago and Dallas a few weeks ago where a stewardess was unusually friendly and helpful. I told her so and she was quite frank with me. She explained, ‘About five years ago I read in the paper about a waitress who was included in a will just because she was polite and courteous. “What in the world?” I thought. It might happen to me. So I started treating passengers like people. And it makes me feel so good that now I don't care if I never get a million dollars.’ It was a case of a low motive blossoming into a loftier one.”
We cannot, indeed ought not to try to work out the faith and motives of others. We need to feed our own calling, and try to upgrade our own purposes in the light of it. At the same time, purity of intention is not enough. A person who tries to bail a sinking boat with a leaky sieve may be well intentioned, but is also misguided. The boat will surely sink – in spite of all the good intentions to the contrary. We are saints, forgiven sinners, only through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By His grace, God has made us saints.
“After that I looked and saw a vast throng, which no one could count, from all races and tribes, nations and languages, standing before the throne and the Lamb.” (Revelation 7.9) Yes to be included in that vast throng we must pass through the ups and owns of life that constantly tests our hearts and wills.
During the civil war, Puritan Roundheads stormed into cathedrals, destroying religious symbols. In Winchester Cathedral they wrecked a huge stained glass window which dominated that majestic building. On the stone floor lay a host of fragments of the beautiful coloured glass. The shattered pieces, which once had shaped a Rembrandt-like scene, could not be restored to form the original picture. What could be done?
With love and care, local people picked up the pieces. Long before the time of abstract art, they leaded the broken glass together with hope and returned it to the round window. Today, these 350 and more years later, the same sun shines through the same beautiful colours of fine stained glass, a kaleidoscope of pieces, rearranged in a different and even more meaningful way.
This is what a saint’s life is like, we may be broken in our own lives and in our churches, but God calls, God anoints, God sanctifies. Somehow with the help of the Spirit, we are picking up the pieces, putting them back together. And maybe God’s light in Christ is still shining somehow through us: saints with broken halos.
Not one of those people who names I’ve mentioned would have claimed in any sense to be special – indeed all of them only too conscious of their shortcomings, but each and every one did something that enabled me to see God’s purpose, in actions beautiful and clear they lived the difference that the call makes. They let the light shine through.
Christian, you are a saint. Not because of any good works you have done, but for what you are, consecrated, anointed, called by God to do. Go live your calling.
And my definition?
‘Saints are people who make it easier for others to believe in God; in your own kitchen or anywhere.’