Good morning. I am going to start this morning with a confession. I’m not a real fan of All Saints Day. Well, that’s probably not the best way to put it. I have an issue with the way we, as Christians, often portray saints. Too often when I hear a story of a saint, I immediately think “super hero.” They are people who lived lives that were so exemplary that it becomes nearly impossible, for me at least, to identify with them. I do like All Souls day though. Typically All Saints is reserved for the members of the Christian Hall of Fame… you know, those who lived lives that place them in this group that we call “the great Cloud of Witnesses.” The big ones are in there. Francis, Augustine, Xavier, Mary, John and so on. They spent their lives in prayer and performing good works. Some of them were martyrs. Others founded religious orders. Others had visions or performed miracles. . . . I don’t know about you but the way these folks are often described makes me feel like a little league player, suddenly thrust onto a baseball field during the World Series. I am not thinking about hitting a homerun, throwing a strike or even coaxing a walk… I am just trying to get out alive. There is absolutely no way that I deserve to be on the same field as a Carlos Correa, Jose Altuva, Michael Brantley, Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker…. All these people some of you have never even heard of… but trust me, they’re studs. They are big time. I think I will just take my ball, bat, glove and head home.
All Souls, typically remembered on the day after All Saints, that would be November 2, is my type of day. These are the saints, the souls, of people we know. If we know them well, we understand they aren’t perfect and few of them probably never got close to performing a miracle. And yet they lived lives worthy of imitation. They maybe will never have a book written about them. I bet most won’t even have a sentence in a book about them, yet we recognize something in them that is unique, different, worthy. My grandma is one of those. The priest who sent me to seminary, Bob Shahan, is one of those. I had a mentor in Illinois, Bob Myers, he’s another. I’m sure that just mentioning such people creates images in your head this morning. Visions of the moments you spent with them. The difference they made in your life. All Souls Day is a gift to us to acknowledge those who have helped us along the path of life, helping us understand the presence of God and God’s love.
But maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe I need to reexamine the Major League Saints that we tend to lump together under the category, “I’ll never be one of those” or “what good are people that are too good.” I mean, it doesn’t take me long to look for my ball glove and head home.
You have to go to the beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount to find where Jesus describes what a Saint looks like. There are a a lot blessed ares and we tend to make this list into a descriptive set of behaviors that we have to do better in order to become a saint. It’s not what is being said but our tendency is to roll up our sleeves and go to work. To be a saint is to work hard. So, just think about it a second, if you want to be a major league saint, then you have to try harder. [More was said about this and I suggest you go online to my website or the church’s for a replay of the video]
Are you familiar with the NFL Combine? This takes place every year before the National Football League drafts college players. You must be good enough to be invited to the combine, but once you’re there, they start measuring you. I am not just talking about the size of your biceps. I mean things like how fast you run a 40-yard dash; how high you jump; if you’re a quarterback, how long does it take you to release the ball when you pass it. That sort of thing. Your measurables are compared to others but also, they are placed alongside historical numbers… so if you are a running back, you’re compared to others who have come before.
We do that with the beatitudes. Somehow, we insert a few words in the Sermon that Jesus preached that he never said. Things like “should,” “ought,” or thou shalt.” It is just like us to make Jesus incredible sermon into some sort of transactional process. “If you do this, then you’ll be like that.” But look at it. There’s nothing like that in the words at all. No commandments. No moral injunctions.
Rather, what Jesus does is simply describe reality. As in, “Here are the facts. Here is how the world works. Here is an accurate description of life.” In other words, here is “normal,” God’s normal.
Wait a second. If this is true, this changes everything. And maybe even the way we look at those Heavy-weight Saints who’s busts surely reside in the Hall of Fame.
One of the reasons those Saints usually recalled on All Saints Day seem so out of reach is that we usually don’t hear the whole story. They were not perfect. Nor did they somehow live life in such a way that they forced God’s hand. You know, they earned it all by doing stuff the rest of us simply can’t or won’t. The way we usually set it up is to think that they simply worked harder than we do and somehow earned God’s blessings.
So, I want to suggest something to you this morning. What if in our rush to canonize these larger-than-life people, we missed the point. Perhaps we have an ulterior motive in removing the saints from our everyday understanding of how reality works in order to keep ourselves protected from having to change. Or at least keep us at arm’s length to the way God is present among us.
It is in the Sermon on the mount that Jesus makes some audacious claims. He says that “the poor, the mournful, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure-hearted, the peaceful, and the persecuted are “blessed.” They are the fortunate ones. The lucky ones. The ones whose lives are aligned with the heart and character of God. They are the ones who will experience comfort, inherit the earth, be filled, receive mercy, see God, and be called the children of God.”(Debie Thomas)
In other words, these are the real saints. We often lose sight of this because it’s a bit uncomfortable to know that the way reality is, stands in stark contrast to how we often hope that it is or act like it is. And sometimes the very people we reject are the ones who most closely reflect this reality.
What I see, what you see, is not the same thing that God sees. We “live in a world where the loudest, strongest, wealthiest, and most privileged people prey on the “less fortunate.” We live in a world where greed and selfishness pay huge dividends, while meekness, mercy, and humility earn little more than disdain. Too often, my comfort and security have the last say, despite how that might affect others.
And notice that there is a right now and a future in all of this… “Blessed are…for they will be.” That’s a hope for all of us who live in the “not yet” part of existence. It’s not yet, but it will be.
Sometimes we just don’t even try. The payoff is too far away so we know what we want and we go after it, living in a place where the payoff may never come. But there are some among us who understand that living amid the not-yet is all we have. We can try to fake it until we make it, but that never works.
Peter Rollins shares a story in his book Insurrection: To believe is human, to doubt divine that underscores the nonsense of playing at our faith. It seems that:
Every Sunday the pastor would stand at the front of his Church and with a booming voice finish his rousing sermon with a plea: “Each week I go to a nearby town and serve the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden; what do you do? How do you show your compassion to those in need?” People would applaud the minister’s closing remarks and everyone would wave him off at the end of the service as he hurried away in his little car. The truth, however, was that each week he would go to a golf course and play a leisurely eighteen holes away from his congregation, family, and friends. This deception had been going on for years, but eventually it came to the attention of some angels. They were furious at his lies and reported the situation directly to God. After a little consideration, God said to the angels, “I will visit with this minister on Sunday and teach him a lesson he’ll never forget.” Sure enough, next Sunday, God showed up at the Church. Yet again, the minister informed his congregation that he was going to go serve the poor before leaving for the golf course. This time however, God intervened. When the minister took his first shot, the ball took off, flew through the air, bounced onto the green, and dropped into the hole. The minister was amazed. At the second hole the same thing happened. And the third. And the fourth. Right through to the last hole. With his last stroke, the minister sliced the ball badly, but still it curved around and, like all the others, found the hole in one. All the while the angels in heaven watched what took place in utter disbelief. By the time God returned they shouted, “I thought you were going to punish the minister for all his lies, but instead you gave him the perfect round of golf!” “That may be true,” replied God with a smile, “but ask yourself this: Who is he going to tell?”
It all comes down to this. Our experience of God makes all the difference. But it’s easy to reshape the reality and truth of God into more of a slot machine, or one of those Genie’s that you might find at a Carnival. Insert your request here, and wait for your answer. Remember the eight ball that used to be popular. You ask it a question, turn it upside down and your answer appears. A lot of fun, right? But that’s not God.
I was recently reading that “near the end of his life, the theologian and activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer became concerned that the Christian understanding of God had been largely reduced to the status of a psychological crutch. He described this understanding of God as deus ex machina. This phrase, which literally means “God out of the machine,” originally was used by second rate Greek playwrights who, after finding a difficult place in their play that they wanted to resolve, simply threw a second rate god into the play and everything was resolved. .
Rollins, Peter. Insurrection: To Believe Is Human To Doubt, Divine (pp. 13-14). Howard Books. Kindle Edition.
[More was said about this and I suggest you go online to my website or the church’s for a replay of the video]
And that’s what we do with saints. God is not in the business of justifying our make-believe understanding of how we should live our lives or what makes a saint a saint. And those perfect saints serve as horrible examples because they are sort of “make believe perfect.” Until we understand how reality works, that the blessed are the poor in spirit and the children of God are peacemakers, then we’re just spinning our wheels.
And to arrive at a place where we live our lives, not expecting easy answers to all of what life brings us, with the understanding that God is here, busily shaping and forming us, through both triumphs and tragedies, is to arrive in a place where we discover the truth and reality of a God, who is busily forming us into saints.
Not perfect but open to the truth and reality of a God who loves us. Not a Deus ex Machina, but a God who suffers with us. And that, as it turns out, is how saints are made. We share in God’s own suffering, and God in ours, so that we can share in his resurrection. Saints aren’t perfect but they don’t look to God as a celestial slot machine. That kind of God can’t make saints because that God doesn’t exist. The One that does exist is found in our suffering, our losses and, indeed, in our humanity. An unlikely God, making you and me into unlikely saints. [My conclusion here differs from the one I preached and recommend that if you’re interested you either go online to my website or the church’s for the exact words].