How
to Become a Saint
Ephesians 1.11-23; Luke 6.20-31
If the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is to be believed, it is
really rather difficult to become a saint. There are several
requirements. First, one must be dead, which does tends to dampen
the ambitions of many a popular preacher! Second, one must have
lived a very virtuous and holy life. Not necessarily from birth,
but certainly from the time when a person first began to follow Christ
in earnest. Third, one must have produced at least two
‘miracles’, that is, unusual phenomena that may not, after careful
investigation, be accounted for by reference to the normal processes of
what is ‘natural’. It is quite permissible, as it happens, to
produce a miracle after you are dead. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne,
for example, was exhumed from his grave several times over a period of
three hundred years, and his body had not decayed in the way that
bodies should. To the Roman authorities, that kind of thing will
boost your sainthood score enormously.
Of course, sainthood was not always so. In the New Testament a
saint is simply a disciple, a person who has heard the gracious call of
Christ to follow, and chosen to obey that call out of a fundamental
faith and trust in God. At once level, then, sainthood should
never be understood as something one may ‘earn’ through a life of
exemplary virtue or heroic deeds. For sainthood is a gift—the
give of God’s love and forgiveness in Christ. It is also true,
nevertheless, there are those who really believe and trust in
this love of God, living their lives out of its power, and there are
those who don’t. In the passage from Ephesians that we read a
moment ago, the writer prays earnestly that his hearers will live out
of the enormous power of God, demonstrated in the works God wrought in
Christ for our salvation. Note well, the power is God’s, not
ours. Yet the writer still feels the need to pray that such power
may become the most important fact in his hearer’s lives, which implies
that they are not yet the people God has called them to be.
It is in this sense, then, that I can see some point to all the Roman
posturing about sainthood. Underneath all the rules and
procedures, under all that detritus of centuries, what the canon-law of
saints really says is this: that saints are people who shine with
faith and trust—not in themselves, their own virtues or
achievements—but in the virtues and achievements of Christ on their
behalf.
This, then, is the paradox of Sainthood or, if you prefer,
discipleship. Disciples live from a power, a virtue, a miracle
which they have not generated for themselves. They depend,
utterly, upon Christ. Yet, it is precisely that attitude of
dependent faith which makes them radiate with goodness, care and
compassion. Think about it. If we have died to ourselves in
baptism, if we have been crucified to the basic values of this world,
then the life we live in faith is not our own life at all. It is
God’s. It is the divine life that was made human in
Jesus. We rise from the waters to live the life of Christ:
to imitate and repeat his life in our own. In this perspective,
the amazing faith of the saints is nothing more that a grace that is
actually believed in and received, rather than considered but then put
aside when it really counts.
What is the difference, then, between a Martin Luther King Jr. and your
average church attendee? From God’s perspective, not a great
deal! God loves both of them. God forgives both of
them. God calls both of them to die, to take up their cross and
follow Christ into a quality of life and love that the world cannot
give. Yet one of them chooses to live from the power of this
gracious call, to trust in its power, and the other (one suspects) does
not. One chooses to love as Christ loved, loving the neighbour
even to the point of great personal sacrifice, which the other perhaps
chooses to put faith aside when the going gets tough or when there is
money or status at stake. One really believes that Christ’s life,
no matter how difficult, is the only life worth living. The other
suspects that Christianity is impractical, a set of admirable ideals
mind you, but not to be lived too literally.
This morning you and I are called to be Martin Luther King Jrs.
To let go of all our hungers for health, wealth, family and security—to
surrender such things into the hands of God—and to hunger instead for
the commonwealth of peace and justice that Christ will bring. A
hunger for the kingdom is exactly like the hunger for food. If
you are starving, if you have nothing to eat, you will do almost
anything to find nourishment. You will travel hundreds of
kilometres over rough and dangerous terrain, like the refugees of South
Sudan, in search of the one thing you need to sustain life. So it
is with the desire for God’s kingdom. It is a desire that
consumes all else, a desire which comes to us as a painful longing that
the world might be different than it is, a desire which drives and
motivates us as though it came from a place other than ourselves.
And so it does, for it is the desire of God!
The saint is not one who gets everything right, who is always
successful and admirable. The saint is one who trusts in God, who
believes God’s promises, even when the chips are down and there seems
little foundation for faith. The saint is one who, in a sense,
becomes who he or she is because he or she is first able to allow God
to be who God is, and this in
the midst of a body and soul given over to God to do with as he
wills. This is a calling not simply for the especially
intelligent or gifted or capable. It is a calling for us all,
because in the end sainthood is not about self-generated achievement or
sanctity. It is about trusting that Christ will complete his work
in us, even when our sin looms large. It is about believing that
we will get there because Christ
has promised to get us there.
Garry
J. Deverell
All Saints 2004
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