Thursday, October 27, 2011

What is a Saint?



Pentecost 20, Year A, 2011
All Saints’ & All Souls’

Text: Daniel 7: 1-3, 15-18; Ephesians 1: 11-23; Luke 6: 20-31.

Let us bow our heads in prayer –
Loving God, by your example you surround us by a great cloud of witnesses. May we, encouraged by their example serve you through our lives. Amen.
___________________________
What is a saint? The Church has not always been particularly clever over the centuries at choosing saints. For example, the great clean-out that the Roman Catholic Church undertook a few years ago revealed that some saints, including favourites like St. George, had probably never actually existed.

And some real ones reveal a spirituality that can lack balance. Rose of Lima, for example was the first South American saint. She was born in 1586 in Peru, and from childhood practiced the severest of austerities. A vow of virginity and her strictness of life meant she was persecuted by friends and family, and suffered from a severe sense of desolation. She died at the age of 30 and was make a saint 50 years latter.

If I had been Rose’s parish Priest, I think I would have been happier to have seen her out playing net ball and going to the movies with the gang than that sort of unworldly and painful spirituality.

In an important sense, as St. Paul teaches, we are all saints, we have all been made hold, sanctified, by God, because God blesses and saves all those who turn to him or her. But there is another way we can understand saintliness: the saint is the one who lives as God would want us all to live.

Our best guide as to how to do that are a few pages in the New Testament, pages 880 to 883 of the Bibles in your pews: the Sermon on the Mount. It is in these three chapters, beginning with the Beatitudes that we have just heard, that Jesus tells us all we need to know about being a saint.

It is in the Sermon on the Mount that we are told to turn the other cheek if we are struck; to love our enemies; to give alms quietly and privately, without public show. It is in these pages that Jesus tells us that it is not enough to refrain from actual adultery; if we even think about it we are half way there. We are told that we cannot serve both God and money at the same time, that we are not to judge others if we wish not to be judged ourselves, and we are to do unto others as we would have them do to us.

But the Sermon on the Mount is not only about how to treat each other. It’s also about God. In those four short pages Jesus also gives us the Lord’s Prayer, and tells us that there is no need to worry about tomorrow – for if God looks after the sparrows, how much more will he look after us. He also tells us that if we have a need, then we are to ask God. If we, as human parents, give to our children when they ask, then surely how much more will God give to God’s children when they ask.

It is not surprising that these three chapters are the best known passages in the Bible; because in them we have the very heart of Jesus’ teaching.

In these four pages we discover how different Jesus was from the ordinary world: of everyone for him / herself, of power politics, of rule by the almighty dollar, of level playing fields; of worldly common sense. Jesus taught that there were two fundamental principles to follow to lead a saintly life:

First we are to trust and obey God absolutely, above all other loyalties. God is certainly to be put before anything like possessions: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but store up for yourselves treasures in heave… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

But God is even to be put ahead of one’s family. “Who are my mother and brothers?” Jesus asks. “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Mark 3; 35

The other principle that Jesus taught as necessary for a saintly life was, of course, that we must stop putting our own concerns first, as most of us do most of the time, and instead be foolishly loving in the way we treat others.

Imagine arriving at the Pearly Gates, and, blow me down, who should be standing there but Jesus himself. You pass the time of day pleasantly enough with him for a while, if one can pass the time of day when one is in eternity. Then Jesus, never being one to beat about the bush, pulls out his clip board and says: “Right, let’s check you out on the saintliness scale and see if you pass.”

You feel quietly confident, and say: “Oh, I did all right. I was reasonably generous – gave 5% of my income to Church and charity. I never cheated anyone or did anyone any harm. If someone asked for help, I was quite helpful and gave what I could afford at the time. And I gave a fair share of my time to working bees on a Saturday.”

To your dismay, Jesus frowns and put some heavy crosses on the paper on his clip board. “What’s this “reasonably generous, “quite helpful, and “fair share”? When I said “turn the other cheek”, I wasn’t asking you to be reasonable. When I said go the second mile, I wasn’t asking you to be quite helpful. When I told you to love your enemies, I wasn’t asking you to be fair.

“No,” he goes on, warming to his subject, and you get the feeling that he’s been through this once or twice before. “No, who cares about reasonable, quite and fair? I don’t. God doesn’t. “We’re up to here with sensible people doing safe, sensible things. We want loving people, who do silly things – people who give away what they can’t afford to give away, people who spend time with lonely people when they haven’t got the time to do it. People who put energy into good causes after they have run out of energy, people who care about others as much as… as… well, as much as God cares about you.”

With sinking heart, you turn around and start walking away.

“Oi!” Jesus says, “where do you think you’re going?”

“Downstairs. I obviously don’t pass the test for up here.”
Jesus looks upwards in exasperation. “Strike me dead,” he says. “What are you talking about?”

“Well,” you say, “on every count I fail. You don’t want me up here. I didn’t live up to what you wanted me to, so I guess you don’t want me around.”

“Can’t you see, you numb skull,” he says, “that that’s the very point I’m making. We don’t work like that up here. God has got this thing about being foolishly loving, and we’ve spent the last couple of thousand years trying to get that lot on earth to get on the same wavelength.

“Look”, he goes on, speaking slowly, “love is about accepting people whoever they are, however smelly, shifty or shirty, and bringing the best out of them. Love is not about saying: Go to hell, and come back when you’re easy to love. If God worked like that, he and I would be ratting around in here like Darby and Joan in a castle. Don’t the Churches do any teaching these days?”

“Hurry up and come inside before you catch a cold standing in that draught.”

Amen.