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Calvary Episcopal Cathedral |
Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10, 22
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12
The Collect of the Day
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:1-12)
Saints of the Body
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop, Rector
Several years ago, after my Dad’s mother passed away, my parents caught a serious disease. This disease caused them to drive hundreds of miles from the family home in Oregon to Salt Lake City where I lived at the time. They weren’t seeking medical treatment there, and sometimes I wasn’t all that convinced that they had come to visit me either. You see, the disease they had contracted was “genealogical fever,” and they came to Salt Lake to drink of the waters of the Mormon Genealogical Library located there.
My Dad had a really bad case of the fever, because he had been unable to trace his maternal lineage. In fact, he had not been able to even find the birth or census record of his own mother! Convinced she hadn’t just sprung forth from the earth, he came to the Mecca of Genealogical Research for proof of her birth.
With the help of one of the exceptional librarians, he loaded a roll of microfilm onto the machine, and began to scroll through thousands of census records. I stood next to the viewer where I could see his face and the screen, and watched as his anticipation mounted. “Wait!” he shouted. “There’s grandpa and grandma!” And on the screen was a card showing his grandparents and their children. “I am sure these are my grandparents, but where’s Ruth. Where’s my mom?” His shoulders dropped, and slumped like he had been hit in the stomach. I summoned the librarian, and she looked at my Dad, wilted in the chair, his disappointment illuminated by the glow from the viewer. “Just a minute.” She said quietly. When she returned, she brought another roll of microfilm, and sat down at the viewer next to my father. As she turned the crank we all craned to see what was on her screen. It was essentially blank! As she cranked, she explained that the census takers were supposed to only write names down on the front side of the cards, but that sometimes they got lazy or ran out of cards. Knowing this, the technicians who were sent to photograph the census data also photographed the back sides of the original cards. And so there we were, looking at the reverse sides of thousands of cards – nearly all of them blank.
As her cranking slowed, we all leaned forward. Slowly, she matched the numbered index to what my Dad had on his screen. And when she stopped, there was a moment of Holy Silence. Sitting straight in his chair and smiling from ear to ear, my Dad, completely overcome whispered, “Ruthie. That’s my Mom.”
The Feast of All Saints Day that we celebrate today is when we remember people who have passed on, and it is the only feast in the Church Calendar that can be celebrated twice in a given year: On both November 1 and on the closest Sunday. That it itself tells us something about how important this day is. To the early Church, All Saints was a day to remember the Christian martyrs, whose lives and oftentimes cruelly horrific deaths served as strong witnesses of the power of faith. In more modern times, as our understanding of faith has grown and our understanding of how the incarnational presence of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit are at work in all of our lives has become richer, All Saints has become a time to celebrate the lives of all the faithful living and dead. But it is especially a time to remember family members and close friends who have died. We remember with thanksgiving and victory our grandmas and grandpas, our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, our aunts and uncles, our friends and neighbors – all those who touched us in deep and profound ways and who have preceded us in death.
On this day, I especially remember my parents and grandparents, because they helped me begin to understand God’s love for me and for all of creation and how we are all bound together in God. They taught me not in words, but by the very lives that they lived, the sacrifices that they made, and their generosity of spirit. From teaching me to leave a campsite in better condition than it was found, to giving to charities, to picking up other people’s trash, to unconditionally offering help to those who needed it, my elders taught me about what St. Paul described so simply, and yet so profoundly, as The Body of Christ. And the first thing I would like to share with you this morning is how saintliness is very much a part of The Body of Christ.
I think when most of us think of a “Saint” we recall someone like St. Francis or perhaps one of the martyred Apostles – people who lived almost mythical lives, did impossibly inconceivable things, and died in unbelievably heroic ways. While there is much to be learned from the lives of saints like these, sometimes I think it is hard to identify with such extraordinary, legendary people. We are, after all, merely human.
When the New Testament refers to saints, it is always in the plural, hagio; the singular noun is never used.[1] The Bible does not use or have a concept of a Saint John or a Saint Matthew. The word “saint” means “holy ones.” And all of us, because we are created in the image of God and belong to God are holy: We are holy people of God, and we are bound together in God and by God into one Body. To be sure, we are all different beings, like the cells of the organs of the human body are different. But like the cells that work in concert to form tissues and organs, we holy people of God are called to live and work together in what Paul termed the Body of Christ. And that means that we holy people are called to carry on the work of transforming this world into the Kingdom of God that Jesus so fervently preached about and prayed for, and died for. As members of The Body of Christ, we are called to fulfill our Baptismal vows to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being. Living up to those promises is saintly work indeed!
But there is another aspect of saintliness I would like to speak to this morning. And that is the saintliness of persistence.
If we look in more modern times for people who exemplify saintliness, one person who might come to mind is Mother Teresa.[2] Led by a series of visions she experienced in 1946, she ministered tirelessly to the poor and desperately ill until her death in 1997. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 19 October 2003. She is a graphic and very real example of someone who showed us what it means to live as a member of The Body of Christ. But saintly behavior such as hers can seem just as unattainable as the lives of the martyrs; unreachable, an ideal to which no one can possibly measure up. Despite her outward appearance of God-inspired faith, recent information reveals that Mother Teresa suffered tremendous spiritual pain.
In a collection of letters and diaries published in 2002, Brent Morrison writes that as early as 1958 Mother Teresa wrote “My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains.” Because of her perpetual good cheer, she felt others believed “[her] faith, [her] hope and [her] love were overflowing and that [her] intimacy with God and union with his will filled [her] heart.” It was not so. In fact, Mother Teresa often felt completely disconnected from The Body of Christ, and even wondered if God existed at all. “The damned of hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God.” She wrote. “In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss … I can’t tell you how dark it is, how painful, how terrible – I feel like refusing God.” “I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.” “Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. “Love,” she wrote, “means nothing.”
Morrison, who spent time with Mother Teresa during the last year of her life wrote, “Such thoughts are not in keeping with Mother Teresa’s impossibly perfect image, yet nothing comes between believers and belief like the word ‘why.’ Why do bad things happen? Why does suffering befall the good and the innocent? If there is a God, why doesn’t [God] end it with a wave of [God’s] hand or a passing thought?”
But, even when she was lost wandering in a terribly arid spiritual desert, filled with doubts that fed on doubt until there as little room for faith, she nonetheless continued to walk her journey, putting one foot in front of the other. Whether she felt strengthened by her faith, or separated from it, she continued to serve and love the poor of Calcutta; to serve the Body of Christ. Her perseverance, in spite of her profound disconnect, was part of Teresa’s saintly character.
Big stuff can happen to us too that can shake our faith right down to its roots. A child is killed. A parent dies suddenly. A job we love is taken from us. Our life partner is unfaithful. Our child whom we had longed so long for is born with a physical or mental disability. Our home is destroyed by fire. Times like these perhaps make us wonder, “How could a loving God let things like this happen?” And maybe none of us has what Teresa had that enabled her to get up each morning and continue her ministry. But what we do have is the knowledge that we are part of The Body of Christ. And if we can remember that, then all we have to do is reach out to a fellow member; to call that elder or that friend who has the saintly heart to listen, who will offer a loving ear and not words of judgment. But sometimes even reaching out is beyond our capability in those times of deep crisis. That is the time for the rest of the Body to become the saints that we can be, to transform the words of Beatitudes we heard in the Gospel lesson today into action, and come to the aid of the member who is wounded or angry. It is also a time to try to remember that even in the depths of our despair, God is with us, even when we can’t feel God or are so mad at God that all we want to do is slam the door in the face of God.
Fortunately, most of us do not spend the majority of our time in such deep despair. Most of us spend our time doing the stuff of life. We get up each morning, get dressed, get frustrated when we have to eat dry cereal because we forgot to buy milk the night before, we wonder whether we turned off the coffee pot before we left the house, we forget to return that important phone call at work, we are late to pick up our child at school, and we get home only to realize once again that we forgot to buy milk. We come to church sometimes praying that the sermon will be short and hoping that we won’t sing but three of the verses to the hymns because we know we have eight people coming to the house to watch the playoffs, and kickoff is at noon. And it is in the ordinariness of life that we need to remember the saints in the Body of Christ: The friend who offers to pick up your child from school, and the spouse who unexpectedly brings home a carton of milk, and puts his arm around you and asks about your day. These are the saints that surround us every day of our lives. The friends who will lend that ear when you need to vent and yell at God, and the people who love and care for us in all of the little things too.
Today we remember them all: the martyrs, the giants of faith, the loved ones who framed us, and the ones who love and care for us still. And for them I say, “Thanks be to God!”
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Psalm 34:1-10, 22 Benedicam Dominum
1 I will bless the LORD at all times; *
his praise shall ever be in my mouth.
2 I will glory in the LORD; *
let the humble hear and rejoice.
3 Proclaim with me the greatness of the LORD; *
let us exalt his Name together.
4 I sought the LORD, and he answered me *
and delivered me out of all my terror.
5 Look upon him and be radiant, *
and let not your faces be ashamed.
6 I called in my affliction and the LORD heard me *
and saved me from all my troubles.
7 The angel of the LORD encompasses those who fear him, *
and he will deliver them.
8 Taste and see that the LORD is good; *
happy are they who trust in him!
9 Fear the LORD, you that are his saints, *
for those who fear him lack nothing.
10 The young lions lack and suffer hunger, *
but those who seek the LORD lack nothing that is good.
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
[1] In the NRSV translation the word “saint” appears in Phil 4:21, but in Greek the English word “saint” is “brothers.”
[2] Information about Mother Teresa is adapted from Brent Morrison. “Mother Teresa’s Doubts: Newly Released Writings Reveal Secrets” accessed 30 October 2008 at http://www.brentmorrison.com/021202Mother_Teresas_Faith.htm
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Copyright © 2008, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
30 October 2008
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