A
Reflection for the Sunday after All Saints
All Saints’ Church,
Southern Shores, NC
November 3, 2013
Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Today
we remember the Saints in this, the church of All Saints. So what is
a saint?
I
asked several people to tell me what the word “saint” means to
them. One person said that her mother was a saint because she was the
best person that she had ever known; she stands out from the rest of
the people she has met in her lifetime. Her mother was different and
that is the core of the meaning of the word saint. It comes from the
Hebrew word for a person, place, or thing that has been set aside to
be different - to be different as God is different - to belong to the
Lord, to be holy. For instance, in the creation story, one day of
seven was set aside to be different, to belong to the Lord, to be a
Holy Day. In the same way, when Jacob has a dream, he wakes up and
sets up a remembrance on the holy ground. When Moses approaches the
burning bush, he has to take off his shoes for he is on “holy
ground.” When the people set up an altar and a temple, that altar,
the temple, the furnishings, the people, and the priests are set
apart to be different because they belong to God.
Later
in the Hebrew Testament book of Leviticus, there is a section known
as the Holiness Code which has a refrain, “You shall be Holy
(different) as the Lord God is Holy (different)”. The Holiness
Codes were assembled when the people of Israel were in exile in
Babylon, and they were in danger of losing their identity in that
strange land. They were told that they were not to fit in but,
instead, stand out as different because they had a relationship with
God. We see this in the Hebrew Testament lesson from Daniel for today
as he has a dream which was interpreted to mean that those who stayed
in relationship with the God that was different, the God of Israel,
and were loyal to this God, would inherit the Kingdom of the Most
High.
Daniel
is in exile, and the God of Israel seems so far away since the
outward trappings of “Holiness”, like the Temple and its
services, were so far away. But Daniel calls on the people to
continue to be Holy, different in their lives, as God is Holy. Saints
live lives that are different because they “believe” that God is
working in this life, but it is “belief” in the old version of
that word. We tend to think that “belief” means an intellectual
assent to a proposition; however, intellectual assent is not what
belief really means. The word belief developed from the old English
word “beloef” which meant to hold something dear.
As
we began our worship today using the Service of the Word, listening
to scripture and preaching, we sang the “Shema”, the ancient
Hebrew song of loyalty: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the LORD
is one.” It continues “Love the LORD your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your strength”. We listen
because it is the first step in living into loyalty to our God and
responding to the love which has been given to us by loving our
neighbor and ourselves.
In
the New Testament the Greek word for the one who is set apart is
Hagios,
and Paul, in the letter to the Ephesians, refers not to especially
good people but to people who live their lives differently from the
rest of the world; they live their lives in the light of the
resurrection of the Risen Lord Christ. They live their lives as if
the spirit of the Risen Lord is right there in the midst of them.
Jesus tells us in the Beatitudes from Luke for today that there is a
different concept of happiness for those who live lives in the
different reality of the Kingdom of God in this world.
In
the Roman Catholic tradition, a capital “S” Saint is one of
exceptional piety and purity through whose auspices and intercession
exceptional miracles are performed. But we in the Episcopal
tradition tend to see that saints are regular people, people who are
working - some days with more success than others - but working
nonetheless on having a different way of living in the world, a world
in which there are everyday miracles happening all the time. These
dog- faced people see the miracles that others dismiss as interesting
events.
Saints
are those who know that God accepts them where they are but are
actively working, with God’s help, to move themselves deeper into
the journey with God. Like any relationship, it either grows when we
work at it or it decays when it is ignored.
A
Saint is one who does not pretend to be perfect but can face her/his
own defects. As Thomas Merton wrote in No
Man is an Island:
But
the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be
wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of
God's love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be
sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his own
illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God.
A
Saint is one who works each day on improving relationships with God,
self, and neighbor. Therefore, a Saint is one who works on listening
deeper to God by continuing to study scripture. We believe that
Scripture cannot just be read on the surface but must be approached
through prayer and daily study.
A
Saint is one who goes deeper into her/himself and, because there is a
natural human tendency to self-deception and blindness, is open and
honest with fellow saints on the shared journey. Saints are never
loners; they might be hermits, as Thomas Merton was, but they are
always connected to others. Merton, a Trappist Monk, in his
Conjectures
of A Guilty Bystander,
wrote about a time in 1958 when he left the hermitage and went into
town to the corner of 4th
and Walnut in the business district of Louisville, where he had an
epiphany:
I have the immense
joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became
incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition
could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only
everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no
way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like
the sun.
This changes nothing
in the sense and value of my solitude, for it is in fact the function
of solitude to make one realize such things with a clarity that would
be impossible to anyone completely immersed in the other cares, the
other illusions, and all the automatisms of a tightly collective
existence. My solitude, however, is not my own, for I see now how
much it belongs to them — and that I have a responsibility for it
in their regard, not just in my own. It is because I am one with them
that I owe it to them to be alone, and when I am alone, they are not
“they” but my own self. There are no strangers!
Then it was as if I
suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their
hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the
core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes.
If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we
could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more
war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…I suppose the
big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.
But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a
peculiar gift.
A Saint is one who
each day asks for help from a power greater than him/herself. A Saint
lives in the spiritual reality where prayer is as necessary as
breath, and indeed it is God’s breath flowing in and out of us. A
Saint takes prayer seriously. When I thought about the saints in my
life, I immediately remembered Bill Wienhauer, who died six years
ago, who was my Bishop before and during the time I went to seminary.
One day in Seminary, I decided I wanted to suck up to him since he
would be the final voice of my ordination, so I faked sincerity and
asked him to pray for a particular issue. He agreed but he said that
he would not be able to add me to his list until next week on
Thursday. His prayer list was full but he had an opening then. He
explained about how he saw intercessory prayer as a participation in
a three-way dialogue with God. I came to realize that, when he prayed
for me, he entered into my heart, my soul, and my brokenness and took
them on himself, carrying the shared burden to God’s Holy, Healing
Spirit. To pray for others is not to add a name to a list, but an act
of creative imagination on a spiritual plane.
A Saint is one who
commits time, energy, soul, spirit, treasure, and life to the
relationship with God and God’s world and God’s people.
Saints are all over
the place, and I can still see them even when they have crossed the
bar. I look over at the choir and, in my mind, I still see Lillian
Oswald and she sings to me about the value of the choir, not in its
performance but as it leads worship. I still see Jack Mann who, in
this life, kept showing us how to care for the poor and who in the
next life is still urging us to care for those outside ourselves.
One of the things we
do on All Saints Day is to thank God for all the Saints in our lives
and to give thanks for the saints who have gone before, who are now
doing intercessory prayers for us, but on another shore, in another
plane of existence in God’s loving universe of being. To use 19th
century British novelist George Eliot’s phrase, they are part of
the “Choir Invisible”, those she remembers who have shaped her
life but are now dead, but to whom she is still connected and who are
still shaping her life. The first stanza of her poem goes:
O may I join the
choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
Of miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men’s minds
To vaster issues.
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
Of miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men’s minds
To vaster issues.
Today we remember
the Choir Invisible and Visible, the choir of all Saints both living
and dead who sing the same song to lead us in our worship of God. In
this church, the choir is the whole congregation who choose to sing,
not just with their voices, but with their hearts and lives in order
to live different lives and to participate in a different and Blessed
reality.
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