One
of the reasons why I preach, and one of the reasons why you listen is
an inescapable yearning, a search within each of us, among all of us.
You might think of ity as unfinished business. Christianity, the
church, you see, is in the business of producing saints.
Does
that statement make you nervous? I can almost feel you squirm in your
seats when I say that. But it's true. The church is the "saints,"
those ordinary people who have been called by Jesus Christ to live
lives of service, lives of witness, sanctified lives, lives of
self-giving that are so caught up in the plans of God that they are
called the lives of saints. November 1st was All Saints' Day-- when
the church gives thanks
for
all the saints, even for us.
Retired
Bishop William Willimon writes of a conversation with a friend who
was a pastoral counselor. His friend counsels people at a counseling
center which is affiliated with a congregation in South Carolina. The
Bishop said something about how good it was for the church to be in
the counseling business, offering the services of a trained person
like him to help people in need. He was surprised to hear his friend
reply,
"More
important than counseling is the week-in, week-out worship of the
church gathered. How many troubled , or at least timid, souls find
life-giving sustenance and nourishment each week in the worship of
the church. There are many folk out there who couldn't make it if it
were not for what they receive on a Sunday morning at church."
Those
words remind me, a preacher, of the importance of the work we do
here. Today I'm thinking that one of the most important things we do
here is to provide that ordinary equipment we each receive to be
those whose lives are caught up in God' s work in the world -saints.
When you hear the word saint, you're too quick to think of Mother
Teresa
or Saint Francis. But I want you to think today in a more mundane,
ordinary, everyday sense of saint. I'm talking about you-- I'm
talking about us.
Kierkegaard
said that a saint is someone whose life manages to be a "cranny
through which the infinite peeps." But
there's more to it.
The
saint is someone who somehow manages to live in two worlds. The
saint's faith has enabled him or her to release some of the tight
grip by which most people hold on to this world and then is
paradoxically able to receive this world as a gift.
Eyes
on the infinite, the saint manages to be thoroughly involved in the
finite. The saint manages to chart his or her life by the stars, but
walks on thoroughly solid earth.
In
my experience, and I'll bet in yours, the saints are best known
through seemingly small, earthly gestures, deeds of love and mercy
made all the more holy because they are so earthly.
A
man named Reynolds Price wrote a moving account of his struggle with
cancer of the spine and beyond. Lying on his back, in great pain and
fear in Duke University Hospital, Price discovered the great
difference between the efficient "medical professional" and
the everyday "saint."
He
contrasts the behavior of his world-renowned cancer specialist –who
could barely carry on a conversation with him about his condition,
who popped into his room, examined him with lightning speed, then
sped on his way to another person in pain - with the actions and care
of those "calm black women who'd answer my calls in the predawn
hours of this painful stay."
Those
nurses and nurse assistants did more to care for Price in his
sickness, than the doctors who were being paid so much more. Price
said he didn't ask for much, just a bit of human concern, and human
kindness, thoroughly earthly, mundane transactions. Yet those women
were so much more adept at such practices than the doctor. He said
these nurses
"blend their professional code with the oldest natural code of
all - mere human connection, the simple looks and words that award a
suffering creature his
or
her dignity."
Such
activity is the mark and the work of "practical saints."
Let me not speak of the cheerful word, the kind touch, the
sympathetic ear, the patient disposition as if these were easily
available virtues. I can understand why that harried Oncologist had
no time, no strength left to spend time with a troubled patient like
Price.
The
world easily wears some people down. You are exposed so frequently to
pain that you just can't bear any more exposure to people in pain.
I've seen this happen to clergy and I've felt it myself at times. I
can readily believe that it happens to physicians.
But
don't you see that makes it all the more amazing that in a place like
a hospital you can still find these practical saints, folk whose
faith has enabled them not to be worn down by the cares of life, not
to avoid those who are in need, not to steel themselves against the
feeling and responding to some of the hurt and the sorrow of others?
On
this All Saints' Sunday, I give thanks to God for the saints, all of
them, including you. It is no small achievement - whether one is in a
hospital ward, or a hardware store, a neighborhood, or a classroom -
to live like a saint. Amid the cares of everyday life, somehow to
keep your eyes fixed on the things of God, to reach out in compassion
to others, to testify to God's coming Realm in the middle of our
petty day to day realms and their demands—just by the way we live-
this is no small spiritual achievement.
I
hope that here on Sunday you receive the gifts you need to keep at
it. I hope that here you receive the encouragement, the equipment,
the grace needed to keep on keeping on.
Years
ago, a great teacher of preachers, said that, "
the one great preacher is the church. And the first business of the
individual preacher is to enable the church to preach."
I
believe that. You are the only word from the Lord that many folk will
ever hear. So go ahead and be God's word in a troubled, hurting,
confused world. Speak that word. Embody that word in all that you do.
All
of you-- all of us saints.
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