Copyright: Kerra Becker English
November 3, 2013
(All Saints’ Sunday worship)
Ephesians 1:11-23
Oscar Wilde once said, “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that
every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” Today is our day to remember the saints of
the past so that we might be strengthened in our faith for the future. In Presbyterian-land, we
aren’t expected to learn much about the saints– at least not in the same way as some other, older
Christian traditions do. If you grew up Roman Catholic, or Orthodox, or possibly even
Episcopalian, you might have learned more about the monastic fathers and mothers who carried
the faith. You might have read stories about the martyrs, or simply delved more deeply into the
lives of biblical characters. Though we like to claim the importance of scripture in our tradition,
we do not spend much time wondering about how the great cloud of witnesses continues to shape
faith in the present, let alone for the future.
So what exactly is it that makes a saint a saint? Paul uses this word in his letter to the
Ephesians long before there were St. Jude candles in the grocery store and even before there
were churches everywhere bearing the titles of the many Christian matriarchs and patriarchs. We
usually get the sense that the saints were somehow set apart – more holy than the rest of us. The
saints could look through the window to God and see things regular people could not see.
Therefore, we could learn from them and they could pray great prayers of intercession for us.
Perhaps that’s one way of seeing it. Looking back through the tradition to identify the saints, the
ones who actually have been conferred that title, reveals an interesting cast of characters. Yes,
Oscar Wilde was right, every saint has a past, sometimes a past that would easily make us cringe
or blush at the things they did. Many of the saints were truly odd birds – doing things we
wouldn’t think about doing – and yet their strength of faith persists from one generation to the
next – that is, if we continue to tell those stories.
Paul commended the church at Ephesus for their ability to put their faith in Jesus and
direct their love toward the saints. He thanks God for them repeatedly because he entrusted them
to be the thoughtful ones, the storytellers, the bearers of the tradition for future generations. He
knew that they would be able to communicate the love of God in Jesus and the saints because
they, like Paul, found it to be so powerful and so true. The prayers that Paul prays for his church
are not unlike prayers that I pray for you. He prayed for their wisdom. He prayed for them to
confidently know Jesus because he wanted them to demonstrate God’s love they had learned
through his life and teachings. He prayed that the “eyes of their hearts would be enlightened.” He
prayed for them to have hope, to know their calling, and to feel the immeasurable greatness of
God’s power. He wanted them to befriend the saints so that they would know the mystical
presence, the great union that can be found with the Spirit of God – at least I think that’s what
Paul wanted for his church – because it’s also my deep desire for you. I want you not just to
learn about God, I want you to experience God’s immense love in your lives.
This past week at Union Presbyterian Seminary, I spent time praying with some of the
saints – Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm, and Saint Catherine. It was amazing how relevant their
writings still are a thousand years later! Their written prayers were the basis of the class I took
with Rebecca Weaver, who was my professor of early Church history just a short 20 years ago.
However, I can also say that I prayed this week with Saint Rebecca and the saints of my
graduating class, and the other saints present in the room as we did our work together. I don’t
think the saints are limited to the apostles and martyrs of long ago. I’m sure there are saints that
you know – the people that have inspired or continue to inspire you to go further and deeper on
your own journey of faith. Playing off of Paul’s language, I think the saints are the ones who
have the “eyes of their hearts enlightened.”
My guess is that you know who those people are even if you can’t quite exactly say how
that light from their hearts becomes so apparent. I dare say that we can find glimpses of
saintliness in a whole lot of people that we know even if it’s sometimes buried underneath a
bunch of other stuff. In fact, there’s a story I’ve heard more than once about two brothers who
had been the pain in the pastor’s side for years. They represented everything that a pastor doesn’t
want in a church member. They were greedy, back-stabbing, difficult people. One day the pastor
got a call that one of the brothers had died. He was going to have to do the funeral. What would
he say? How could he authentically talk about this person without getting himself in trouble?
Well, just as he was about to start the memorial service, the other brother came to him, and told
him that he better say that his brother had been a saint. Well, the service began, and after a prayer
and a song, the pastor began his message. He said, “I hate to do this, but I have to tell you that
this person we’re burying today was rotten to the core, greedy, awful to everyone, and I’m glad
to no longer have to be working with him. But compared to his brother, he was a saint.”
Of course there are the saints that have been given recognition and who truly stand out in
our minds as deserving of emulation, but there are also many, many quiet saints, those that
worship in small churches like this one, and those that go out of their way to help a friend in
trouble. You know the type. What may set these saints apart is the willingness to put their
complete trust in God for the journey. It’s not that compared to their brother, they are a little bit
better; it’s that in and of themselves, loving God and loving others have become the central
tenets of their lives. They have taken the interior journey, the one that has allowed them to heal
past wounds and make peace with whatever the future may bring. As Saint Augustine taught, the
saints follow the rule of love. And that rule states that whether we are measuring the truth of
scripture or the balance of our lives – we are to weigh our thoughts and actions against Jesus’
two great commandments. Does this allow us to love God with all our heart and mind and
strength, and does it demonstrate that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves? Then as we
seek to create lives of love, I trust that the eyes of our hearts will be enlightened, and we shall
begin to see the world at least in part as God sees it.
I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints. When you
become the echo of this Ephesian lifestyle, it is OK to be a very staunchly traditional church –
because we’re talking WAY BACK traditional now – and not just “I remember when the church
was full on Sunday” nostalgia. This WAY BACK traditionalism puts us in conversation with the
saints of the past, whether they be biblical, historical, or those amazing Christians who have
lived in our own time frame. It honors the importance of living our lives fully immersed in God’s
love rather than considering Christianity as something we add on as an activity. Those lives
mattered. They matter still.
As this rumination about the lives of the saints comes to a close, I want to invite you to
pray with me one of Saint Anselm’s prayers. As a monastic of the high middle ages, his goal in
prayer was always union with God, for he believed the true taste of salvation might be available
to us, right here, right now in our lives. He believed that the presence of God could be close at
hand, and that we could pray for the ability to have that connection. I will offer his prayer and a
few moments for our own meditation and reflection so that we can move one step closer today to
becoming a part of the saints in the light.
Come now, turn aside for awhile from your daily employment,
Escape for a moment from the tumult of your thoughts.
Put aside your weighty cares,
Let your burdensome distractions wait,
Free yourself awhile for God and rest awhile in him.
Enter the inner chamber of your soul,
Shut out everything except God
And that which can help you in seeking him,
And when you have shut the door, seek him.
Now, my whole heart, say to God,
“I seek your face, Lord, it is your face I seek.”