Good morning, and a blessed All Saints Day to you. This morning we’re going to look at what it means to be a saint and who gets to be one. It’s somebody who is perfect, right? Someone as close to being Jesus himself as a human can get, right?
Here’s what Grace Theological Seminary has to say about those questions:
Often when [we] hear the word saint, the first thing that comes to mind is a person who is especially holy or religious. For others it might be a person who has been officially recognized (the technical term is “canonized”) by the Roman Catholic church for their “heroic virtue” and evidence of at least one miracle performed in their lifetime. But as it is used in the Bible, the term “saint” has a different meaning.
In its most basic sense, a saint is a “holy one,” someone who is set apart for God’s special purposes. As a result, every follower of Jesus Christ is a saint.
With all respect to Grace Seminary, I would change that last sentence to read: “Everyone who does God’s work is a saint.”
There is a mystical Jewish belief that there are always 36 righteous individuals on earth whose task is to maintain and sustain life on earth by constantly doing God’s holy work. And they are called the 36 Righteous Ones. That number is the minimum, though. There may be more. No one knows who they are, not even themselves. These are the people whose presence and actions bless the poor in spirit, comfort the grieving, feed those who are hungry for righteousness. They are the merciful, the humble, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers.
They don’t look particularly special. They might be garbage collectors or nurses’ aides, or cashiers at your favorite breakfast place, or teachers. They might be Chinese or Somali or Peruvian or American. We might even have one or more right here with us. And because no one knows who they are, each of us is mandated to act as if we were one of them, by living in a holy and humble way and praying for others.
A long-time friend of mine—call her Mary—worked a lot of temp jobs in the mid-1980s. These involved dull, repetitive tasks, and at the end of the day, she was exhausted, bored, and cranky, and ready to go home and collapse. But she still had to face a hot, crowded bus ride, where she would stand shoulder to shoulder with other tired, crabby workers. Mary says she often disliked and resented her fellow riders—especially the lucky ones who had found seats.
Until one day, as Mary tells it, God sent her an unearned gift—which is the definition of Grace. That gift was a set of guidelines for a game she could play on the bus or in the offices she worked in. The rules were that she was actually surrounded by angels in disguise, and to “win” the game, she needed to look for the angelic attributes of the people who crowded against her in the bus aisle, and even in her supervisors in the offices.
Mary says playing this game changed her life. She still felt weary at the end of the day, but she found herself almost looking forward to the bus ride, where she would be able to exercise her “angel-finding” senses.
We can play that game as Mary did, by looking for angels—which means messengers from God—or we can substitute the word “saint,” so we can experience ourselves surrounded by saints.
There is an Episcopal church in San Francisco—Saint Gregory of Nyssa—which bears witness to the truth that we, each and all, can be saints. The walls and the domed ceiling of that church feature a magnificent mural of over 90 saints dancing round the walls in two long rows, with Jesus leading the dance. And those saints include both traditional Christian saints and people we might not expect to find in a church: Malcolm X. Eleanor Roosevelt. Charles Darwin. Gandhi. Black Elk. John Coltrane. Lady Godiva and her horse. Rumi. Anne Frank. Thurgood Marshall. And a bear, a cat, a tiger, and a wolf, to remind us that our non-human siblings also participate in God’s work of continual creation, and that many people experience God’s love in and through animals and other living beings.
And then comes the third row of dancers—which is the congregation, who join the painted saints in a dance as part of their church service.
The church’s website says this:
As the Bible sees it, saints and sinners are the same people. We celebrate those whose lives show God at work…Of course God works with more than Christians, and more than Christians are saints. …[E]very human can progress toward God, and all humanity shares God’s image, and shows it to the universe, so all people can move toward God together. That is what we are made for. Every aspect of human nature−our minds, our bodies, our virtues, our desires, our sexuality, even our mortality−God has made for this purpose. And so every human progressing toward goodness plays a part in the salvation of the world.
And that includes all those people crowded onto Mary’s bus. And it means, too, that this church, in person and online, this morning, is full of saints.
And just to be clear: being a saint does not mean you must be perfect, or must even be fixed on God’s work at all times. Someone once asked Joanne Rogers if her husband Fred was actually a saint. Joanne said, “No, he wasn’t.” She lived with him. She saw things, we didn’t see—his human frailties. She said, “People invariably say, ‘Well, I can't do that, but I sure do admire him. I would love to do it.’ Well,” she said, “you can do it. I'm convinced there are lots of Fred Rogerses out there.”
She was right, of course. But for the millions of children who heard from Mr. Rogers that he loved them just as they are, that the world is a better place because they are in it—of course Mr. Rogers was doing God’s work. And so was Joanne Rogers, firmly reminding us that we are all capable of sainthood.
So saints aren’t always perfect. Sometimes they’re crabby, or tired, or impatient. Jesus himself cursed a fig tree that wasn’t producing fruit when he was hungry. But saints show up to do the work behind the scenes and serve the people whom others don’t even see. Sometimes their work gets recognized for the gift it is. Often, their vital work goes unnoticed.
There is a moment in the movie Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood when Tom Hanks—as Mr. Rogers—looks directly into the camera and says “Just take a minute and think about all the people who loved you into being.” For today, we can amend that meditation, we can turn it into a time to think about all the saints we have encountered in our lives. I invite you to do that right now. You can close your eyes if you like. And at the end of the minute, you may call out one or more names if you choose.
[one minute of silence passes]
Thank you. And now this is the time to name some of the saints whose lives have crossed your own.
Loving, creative God, you have given each of us the potential to participate in your continual creation. Thank you for those who have shown us how.
Amen