Advent Lutheran Church

"Living Saints"

            Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

            A little over a week ago our Chancel Choir and Pastor Susan participated in a remarkable worship service at St. Mark Lutheran Church in Kansas City.  It was a Rite of Reception for a pastor named Donna Simon.  Donna had graduated years ago from one of our Lutheran seminaries, but had been prevented from joining the field of candidates eligible for call to a congregation because she was a lesbian in a committed relationship.  Church rules prohibited her from moving beyond the status of seminary graduate.

            About a year and a half ago, though, the Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA changed its policy, and Donna was allowed to join the roster of pastors in the church.  So, on that Thursday night a week and a half ago, St. Mark held the Rite of Reception to welcome Donna; our choir sang and Pastor Susan preached, and I understand that it was a tremendous celebration.

            I was not able to be at that worship service – I was here leading Thursday night worship at Advent – but I have been to St. Mark before.  I was invited to preach there about a dozen years ago, and I’ll never forget that morning.  I arrived at the beautiful old German church at 38^th and Troost well before the time of the service, so I had plenty of time to wander the hallways of the historic building, getting a feel for the rich tradition of the place. 

At one point I found myself in a hallway that was lined with old black-and-white photos of the adult Sunday school classes of the 1940s and ‘50s.  You’ve probably seen photos like those: the women in floral print dresses, with big hats; the men in their dark suits, white shirts, and dark ties; everyone looking like you’d expect sturdy Lutherans of that day to look, somber, ready to sing “A Mighty Fortress” with passion and conviction.  Those people in those old photos were looking out into the future, and they were looking out on a church that, at that time, they could not even begin to imagine: a church that would one day find itself on the forefront of God’s expanding hospitality as it celebrated the Rite of Reception for Donna Simon.

            The people in those photos also were looking out at you and me, and they were looking at us with great anticipation and Godly expectation.  Yes, the past has Godly expectations of us, and those expectations are embedded in this Gospel lesson this morning.

            If you’ve ever wondered what Jesus really meant; if you’ve ever been confused by one of those mysterious parables that he told; if you’ve ever wanted to say to Jesus, “Would you just say what you mean and mean what you say!”, then this lesson is for you.  It is God’s very clear statement of reality, a statement of the way things are.

            They’re called the Beatitudes, or blessings.  But the lesson contains more than blessings; it also contains a list of woes, or curses.  You can line them up as direct opposites: Blessed are you who are poor, woe to you who are rich; blessed are you who are hungry, woe to you who are full; blessed are you who are weeping, woe to you who are laughing; blessed are you when people push you away, woe to you when everyone wants your autograph. 

By the way, these are not encouragements by God to be a certain way – God is not calling us to become poor, become hungry and all the rest – God is simply telling us that the poor, the hungry, the heartbroken, the rejected are already blessed by God simply because God says so.  In contrast, if your goal in life is the accumulation of wealth, you may well reach that goal, but you’ll have nothing else from God.  If physical satisfaction, victory over your opponents, and popular acclaim are your heart’s desire, you might experience it, but you’ll have nothing more from God.  And that, God says, is just the way it is.

It is fitting that we have this lesson, this statement of God’s values, on All Saints Sunday.  Originally, All Saints was created in the early days of the Christian movement in order to remember and give thanks for believers who had been killed because of their faith.  Later, the day was expanded to include all of those who had died in the faith, and now, in our practice here at Advent, we use the day to commemorate all of our loved ones who have died in the last year. 

It was in the Protestant Reformation of the early 1500s that the Church reclaimed the New Testament assertion that all people who had been baptized into the death and  Resurrection of Jesus Christ were saints, including those still alive.  And that is the Biblical truth that we believe and teach.  At our 9:30 service this morning we’re going to baptize three sisters in the Harrison family – Emily, Serenity and Cerise.  And when we do that, God is going to perform a miracle in this sanctuary: He is going to plant the seed of faith in each of those little girls, seeds of transformation that will grow throughout their lives and help them grow up more and more into the knowledge of Christ, as we heard in our second lesson today.  Those girls will look the same – they’ll be just normal kids growing up in Kansas – but God will be working within them on their evolving sainthood. 

That growing sainthood is what we see in the pages of the New Testament.  In Paul’s letter to the congregation in Corinth, for example, he criticizes them for a series of moral offenses that they’ve committed and tolerated within their church.  And in the same letter, he also praises them as saints.  Martin Luther used that same sentiment when he observed that people who have been baptized into Christ are both “saint and sinner at the same time.”

It’s important to note that saints are declared to be so by God and not by themselves.  If I were to ask for a show of hands this morning of all of you who considered yourselves to be saints, or to be living saintly lives, I doubt that many hands would go up.  And if you did raise your hand, I’d wager that during coffee hour in the narthex you’d be drinking your coffee all by yourself.  People who think of themselves as saints, after all, aren’t really much fun to be around.  You know the type: squinty eyes, deep frown, upset at the idea that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time.  We used to call them Fundamentalists.  Their favorite word is “no.”  No drinking, no smoking, no sex, no dancing, no Democrats. 

Saints, however, are proclaimed to be so by God, and they’re usually the last ones to claim the title for themselves.  It is this mixed bag of saint and sinner that God sends out into the world to live his values.

A few weeks ago I had an appointment in downtown Kansas City.  I took I-35 up to that exit that leads to Union Station, KU Medical Center, and so on.  I drove down to the bottom of the exit ramp, took a sharp right and there I was at the stoplight.  I was about four cars back from the red light, in the outside lane; and I noticed a homeless man standing in the median, holding a sign that said, “Hungry Veteran.”  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I wondered if I had enough time to reach into my pocket for my wallet, and wondering if I even should do that at all, when the light changed and – relief! – I was off the hook for that decision.

I went through the intersection, but then realized that I was in the wrong lane – I needed to turn left instead of right, so I had to double back in a big square, which put me right back at the same intersection, same red light, only this time I was the first car at the intersection, in the inside lane, and the homeless guy was standing right next to my fender.  Looking at me.  I said to the Lord, “OK, I get it!  I get it!”  I lowered the window and gave him some money, and before I could say anything to him, he said to me: “God bless you.”  I raised the window back up, and in the back of my mind I could hear the refrain, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

I went through the intersection again, and then the questions started: “I wonder what he’s going to use the money for.  Is he going to buy alcohol?  Maybe drugs?  Or maybe food?  Why isn’t he at a shelter?  Did he try to get into one and they wouldn’t let him in?  Does he really not have a job, or is this his full-time employment?  And is it my job to know any of that anyway?  Where exactly does my responsibility start and stop?”

You know the questions.  They come from the same frustration: How in God’s name do you make holy choices in an unholy world?  Sometimes God does not give us total clarity, and we have to act nonetheless.  So we step out in faith, lead with grace and trust that God will use our best intentions and our best efforts ultimately for his glory and for the benefit of his people.  And as we do that, we take our place in the grand sweep of the saints of God. 

A saint is not someone who has all the answers, not someone who has it all figured out.  A saint is someone who trusts that God has made us and equipped us in the waters of baptism to live a particular life, one that very different from the kind of life we see lived around us.

We see the contours and the substance of that life when Jesus tells us: Love your enemies; when someone curses you, return a blessing; be vulnerable; live generously.  Live this way, Jesus says, because it is God’s way.  Live this way because the saints of the past expect it of us, especially now that they live fully in the presence of God and have total clarity about God’s purposes in the world.  They form a great cloud of witnesses that encourages us to keep on when we step out in faith and lead with grace in order to be of service in God’s name in the world.  Live this way, Jesus says, because this is the way that blessed, saintly people live in the real world.

And if that sounds like giving up your life, it is.  It’s giving it up to this One who gave his life so that you could have as a gift what you could never achieve on your own: full life now, and eternal life with the God of unconditional love, the God who creates saints, the God who created you.  Amen.