All Saints
SUNDAY AFTER ALL SAINTS’ DAY November 7, 2004
(Ecclesiasticus 44:1-10, 13-14; Psalm 149; Revelation 7:2-4’ 9-17; Matthew 5:1-12)
In the Gospel according to Saint Matthew Jesus says, "You must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect."
That tall order would seem to be one of the starting points for the Christian concept of sainthood. Such a call to perfection was never a part of Judaism. In fact, it would probably have been considered blasphemous, an understanding expressed even by Jesus when he says, "no one is good but God alone."
The call to perfection was impossible to achieve, but like any impossible dream and unreachable star it provided a goal. If the goal of perfection "as of the Father" was too far to really grasp they had the Son. Like the early pioneers moving west toward the dream of California, you didn’t have to see California – just move toward the setting sun. Still impossible to reach, but at least visible – Emanuel – God with us.
But here is where a little twist comes in. Jesus comes to be seen as God with us, God bridging the gap between, holy being and human being, but by that very association with the divine begins himself to recede "to the west", beyond our reach, beyond our sight. A spiritual dusk sets in and we need another light a reflected light, perhaps. A scout for Jesus standing on the hill that blocks our view of the direct rays of the light of lights. And so the saints.
In the first five of six hundred years of the Church you see a steady push for a more and more divine understanding of Jesus. You see it in the new Testament moving from a Pauline understanding of Jesus as the New Adam, through Paul’s disciples writing the letter to the Colossians talking about Jesus as the "image of the invisible God," to Mark and his messianic secret, Matthew with the new Moses, Luke with his miracles, and on to John and the Word made flesh.
You see it in the development of the creeds. The Trinity, the two natures, divine and human, but with such an emphasis on the divine that by the 7th ecumenical council it was seen to be crucial that icons could be used to access the divine. Icons, sacraments, and saints. Outward and visible signs of an otherwise invisible and hard to see holiness. The dark ages, we’ve called them, lit only by these saints.
Now that changed some when the Greeks were rediscovered. And it changed even more with the coming of a more scientific than spiritual enlightenment. Saints came to be seen less as these intermediaries between God and ordinary people, and more as examples of the perfection of human virtue, the perfection of obedience, or the perfection of humility, or the perfection of compassion, or the perfection of rigor.
Still, "perfection" remained the mark. Every candidate for sainthood in the last thousand years or so has undergone extensive scrutiny as to the perfection of their life. The making of saints is referred to as "canonization", which comes from a word meaning "rod" or "measure". A panel is formed to see if the person in question measures up to this standard. A prosecuting attorney is appointed – known as the "devil’s advocate" – to try to find a flaw in the character, a moral lapse, an undeserved reverence. There have been major flaps recently in the Roman Catholic Church over whether or not certain candidates for sainthood, for example, may have collaborated with the Nazi’s or had illicit romantic relationships. (Generally they are harder on romantics than Nazis, but that is another issue.)
The unfortunate effect of this "moralizing" of perfection is to make people give up on perfection as a legitimate human goal at all. The saints become surrogates rather than models, and we are left to struggle hopelessly with sin. A crisis of moral dualism has arisen whereby people have either given in to that hopelessness, and given up on God, or else they project their own sin onto others in a claim of an already attained righteousness. (The Calvinistically saved and damned, the 144,000 only who are sealed, those who are latter day saints and those who are not. You are either with us or against us with no questions asked.)
But this is not what God intends. This is not what Jesus offers. This is not what St. Paul means when he addresses "all the saints."
You are all saints. And your sainthood is founded not in an external measure of moral perfection, but in your unique inner destiny and your unique spiritual journey in life toward the fulfillment of that call. God already has a Saint Francis and a Mother Teresa, God is making an Evelyn and a David and an Ann and a Martha and a Jeff.
We are not there yet. The word "perfect" has its origin in a word meaning "finished" or "complete", not in some kind of spotlessness or sinlessness. And as they say, "Be patient, God isn’t finished with us yet". But when God is finished with us, when we are complete, we will be perfect….a perfect Evelyn, a perfect David, a perfect Ann, a perfect Martha, a perfect Jeff. The parts we feel are spotted or sinful will be parts of that perfection. Even through the darkest parts of our soul, our sainthood will shine.
That is why the poor in spirit are blessed, and those who mourn are blessed, and the meek are blessed, and we are told to love our enemy. Not because Jesus came to "abolish the law and the prophets", to reverse the either/or of blessing and to set up an alternative law. He came to fulfill the law, to perfect the law, to make it whole, to make us whole, and in that wholeness make us holy.
There is a story that Scott Peck retells in his book The Different Drum, concerning
"a monastery that had fallen on hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti-monastic persecution in the 17th and 18th centuries and the rise of secularism in the 19th, all its branch houses were lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the Abbot and four others, all over seventy years in age. Clearly it was a dying order.
In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a Rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage.
Now through their many years of prayer and contemplation, the old monks had developed a kind of e.s.p about this Rabbi, so they could sense when he was in residence in the hermitage. "The Rabbi is in the woods, the Rabbi is in the words again," they would whisper to each other. And, as he agonized over the immanent death of his order, it occurred to the Abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the Rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.
The Rabbi welcomed the Abbot to his hut. But when the Abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the Rabbi could only commiserate with him. "I know how it is," he explained, "The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore."
So the old Abbot and the old Rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke about deep things. The time came when the Abbot had to leave, and they embraced each other. "It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years", the Abbot said, "But I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?"
"No, I’m sorry," the Rabbi responded. "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you."
When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask what the Rabbi had said. "He couldn’t help," the Abbot answered. "We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving, and it was something strange and cryptic – that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t really know what he meant by that."
In the days that followed the old monks thought about this and wondered whether there was any possible truth or significance to the Rabbi’s words. The Messiah one of us? Did he mean one of the monks at the monastery was the Messiah? If that were the case, which one would it be? Do you suppose he meant the Abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a very holy man. Everyone knows Thomas is a man of light. He couldn’t have meant brother Elred. Elred gets so crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in peoples’ sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. But surely not brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive he is almost invisible. But then he does have a gift of being there when you need him. He just magically appears at your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course, the Rabbi didn’t mean me. I’m just an ordinary person. But supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? God, not me. I couldn’t do that much for you, be that much – could I?
And as they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect as well.
Now because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its lawn, or wander some if its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. And as they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling about it. Hardly knowing why they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic and play and pray.
They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends. And then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the older monks. And after a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order, and thanks to the Rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the region."
In his hermitage in the woods, the Rabbi just smiled.
You are Saints – that is why all the angels and archangels have shown up here this morning.
God just smiles.
Thanks be to God.
