"Saints in the Making"
Sermon Presented November 4, 2007
All Saints Day
Luke 6:20-31
This morning we are remembering Roundy's recently deceased saints. They weren't perfect people - just as you and I aren't perfect, but they blessed us in all of their humanity. However, the criterion for sainthood isn't perfect faith or perfect theology or perfect love, or perfect actions. Christian saints are ones who follow Jesus in our own imperfect ways. We are saints in the making! A saint is one who gives us a glimpse of the face of God in a human face. A saint offers us a taste of the possibilities of greatness in ourselves, and those we remembered this morning fit that criterion.
The famous German theologian Karl Barth said that a person should read the Bible in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other. If Barth lived today, television and the Internet would also be included! Saints live in this world - and yet are guided by God's Spirit, by Scripture, and by life as we experience it or view it. Saints see suffering and respond lovingly to those who suffer.
Our text from Luke gives guidance to saints - to Jesus' followers. It's taken from what is called the Sermon on the Plain in Luke's gospel and the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. This teaching comes during the early part of Jesus' ministry and it follows Jesus' first sermon where he quotes Isaiah and then says that he has come to fulfill that prophecy of preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives. If you recall, after this teaching, Jesus was run out of town. Now he continues to teach his followers about our obligations to the poor and to living a godly life. I'm reading from Luke 6:20-31.
Let's begin by looking at Mother Teresa, a woman who is on the fast track to sainthood in the Catholic Church. But Mother Teresa struggled for 50 years among the poorest of the poor in India without sensing the presence of God. For FIFTY YEARS! John of the Cross calls this absence of God "the dark night of the soul" and most of us have experienced it at some time in our lives. Mother Teresa struggled with her faith because God seemed absent. But she didn't give up! She trusted God's call on her life, and continued her selfless and loving work with the poor.
I used to think of saints as dead perfect Christians. Doesn't the Catholic Church confer sainthood on special Christians after they die? Well, saints aren't necessarily dead nor are they perfect. The Bible speaks of all Christians as saints. Our text provides us with a roadmap for growth in sainthood.
For those who follow him, Jesus promises both blessings and woes - blessings for the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, and those hated because of their allegiance to Jesus, and woes for the rich, the full, the laughing, and those who are lauded. And we in all of our humanity want to reply: "Just skip the blessings, Lord! I would rather be wealthy, loved, included and praised! How can I leap for joy when the world around me is crumbling?" But when we follow Jesus, we experience times of blessings and times of woes. Even when saints don't sense God's presence, they keep on doing good - as did Mother Teresa.
The great Christian writer, Frederick Buechner wrote of a dinner he attended where he was seated next to a woman he greatly admired but had a strained relationship with - and one he had dreamed about two days earlier. He decided to share his dream with her. In the dream he was seated next to her at a dinner party - much as he was now doing - and he suddenly said to her: "I love you!" When he shared the dream, he knew that what he said to her in the dream was true, and he said so. The strain between them melted and healing and kindness took its place. The peace that they both wanted became reality. (Christian Century, July 17-24, 1996, p. 721) Loving our enemies is a quality of kingdom living - a quality of sainthood.
People hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be at peace in our own skins. We hunger to be fed - and to feed others - to love and be loved - to forgive and be forgiven. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, it's not just for our neighbors' sake but for our own sakes. Finding ways to feed starving children or help the grieving or love the unlovable or forgive those who have hurt us deeply or help those who have little, helps us as much as it helps them. Jesus doesn't give us these guidelines so we can claim sainthood, but so that we have a brighter pathway to follow him.
Saints are NOT perfect! We aren't called to be PERFECT. When we try for perfection, we fail and we either keep struggling condemning ourselves all the way, or we give up and chuck the journey. Christians are called to keep on keeping on. We are called to plod through the desert of spiritual and emotional dryness knowing that even though we don't sense God's presence, God is there for us.
Ed Hays, the man who started the retreat center Shantivanum in Easton, KS that I attended while living in Kansas, said that "The challenge of the saints of the twenty-first century is to begin again to comprehend the sacred in the ten thousand things of our world; to reverence what we have come to view as ordinary and devoid of spirit" (Secular Sanctity). We need to see the sacred in God's creation - including God's people that we have written off as losers.
God's saints are of every sort imaginable, and we aren't to judge who is and isn't included. God looks on the heart and not on our spoken theology. God looks at the way we live the words of our text. When our world is crumbling, we are called to keep on doing good toward others!
The beatitudes are blessings and not demands. "Blessed are you who are poor" not "You must be poor to be blessed." Jesus assures those that are hungry, mourning and experiencing persecutions that God is with them. He tells us what it means to live in the Kingdom of God. He invites us to live a life that looks very different from worldly success.
Saints are known for their self-giving. They offer healing to others - not necessarily physical healing but emotional and spiritual healing as they walk along side the poor, the disenfranchised, the addict, the ill, and the grieving; and they do it without fanfare. Sometimes they get recognition - but they don't seek recognition. Saints are compassionate, kind, giving, misunderstood, and loving toward those who hate in return. As Mother Teresa espoused, we should "be extremely patient with each other's faults and failures."
Paul said in his letter to the Romans: "I don't do the good I want, but the evil I don't want is what I do." That is a summary of the inner battles all saints fight. But even though we have to struggle to do the right thing, Jesus' goal must be our guide. We are called to be the hands and feet and voice of Jesus to a hurting world. When the problems we see appear overwhelming, let's seek to discover the small acts of love that God wants us to extend, and then do them!
In Weston, MO, there was a young mother named Tammy whose husband drowned, leaving her with two children and another on the way. This family was as poor as any I have known personally, but the community took them under our wings. I most remember Tammy's son Brian, who as a bright 4-year-old, stood on a stool in my kitchen and helped me make Christmas candy and cookies. Eventually the family moved and so did I, and I lost track of them.
One morning, when I was living in Marysville, Tammy called me and reminded me that I had always told her that Brian was special, and now as a junior in high school, he was an outstanding athlete and scholar, and a Christian who had rededicated his life to follow Jesus that summer. Now Brian's life was in crisis because the youth minister at his church told him he couldn't come back until he dropped his friends whom the minister determined were a bad influence on him. Brian was angry! Tammy was hoping I would be able to encourage Brian again at this fragile time of his life. I did go to visit, but don't know where Brian is now. We never know the results an act of love will bring, but the fact that it is offered is most important.
Jesus speaks to us in this Sermon on the Plain and says: "But I say to you that listen, (Are we listening?) Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Vs. 27-31)
That's a tall order, but it's something we can live into. It's the pathway to sainthood!
