Sunday after All Saints
(Revised after a sermon originally given in 2001)
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St. Patrick's Worship
And I Mean to Be One, Too
There are three hymns that I associate with All Saints’ Day. One comes from my very earliest days in the church as a young girl. Another is much more recent for me—I came to know it during my ministry in Houston; since then it’s become deeply woven into my own experience of All Saints’ Day. And the third is somewhere in between.
The one in between is the one we sang as our opening hymn this morning. It speaks of those saints whom we probably think of first and foremost when we think of the saints of the church. Those brave soldiers of the faith… Large figures from the past whose lives we remember and whose stories we tell… Stories that often ended in martyrdom.
For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be for ever blessed.Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might:
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, the one true Light. Alleluia!
The lives and sacrifices of these saints are part of what we remember and celebrate on All Saints’ Day.
Another hymn that’s important to me, but may not be as well known to you comes from the English church. It appears in Hymns Ancient and Modern, the great hymnal of the Church of England. Listen to the words.
In our day of thanksgiving one psalm let us offer
For the saints who before us have found their reward;
When the shadow of death fell upon them, we sorrowed,
But now we rejoice that they rest in the Lord.In the morning of life, and at noon, and at even,
He called them away from our worship below;
But not till his love, at the font and the altar,
Had girt them with grace for the way they should go.These stones that have echoed their praises are holy,
And dear is the ground where their feet have once trod;
Yet here they confessed they were strangers and pilgrims,
And still they were seeking the city of God.Sing praise, the, for all who here sought and here found Him,
Whose journey is ended, who perils are past;
They believed in the Light; and its glory is round them,
Where the clouds of earth’s sorrow are lifted at last.
These are the saints who have sat next to us here in the pews of St. Patrick’s… the faithful departed whose names may not be remembered in the annals of church history, but whose lives and faith were no less significant in God’s eyes. We remember these saints also on All Saints’ Day. We will name many of them in just a few moments in our prayers.
I expect most of you can guess what my third All Saints’ Day hymn is. We sang it as the sequence this morning. "I sing a song of the saints of God…" I can’t imagine an All Saints’ Day without out. Not just for my own tradition’s sake, but because this hymn reminds us of living saints.
They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still,
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
And I mean to be one, too!
I mean to be one too. But how? What does it really take to be a saint? I think I have shared this definition of a saint with you before, but it bears repeating. A saint is a person who helps God take care of the world.
Saints are people who help God take care of the world. A simple definition, but profound if you think about it. When we use the word "saint" in our daily speech, we tend to use it to mean much too little, or, on the other hand, too much. Remember the definition: a saint is a person who helps God take care of the world. Yet we often use the word more lightly. We say someone is a saint if she is patient. Or we call a man a saint if he is brave. Anyone whom we think is admirable becomes a saint. How often have you heard a woman described as a saint (it seems it’s usually a woman), because she puts up with a challenging spouse? Or on a more serious note, we often refer to those who do difficult work as saints… those who teach, those who care for the mentally ill, those who nurture a parent with Alzheimer’s.
These people may be saints. But to automatically equate bravery, patience, or generosity alone with sainthood is to demean the lives of true saints. It takes more than patience to be a saint. It takes God. God is at the heart of the lives of saints. Saints are those people who, by their bravery, patience, or generosity, help God take care of the world. Not every hero is a saint. Not every philanthropist is a saint. It is not our place to judge whether an individual’s life and work is saintly or not. But it is our responsibility as Christians to hang on to the true meaning of the word. If we casually refer to every good or noble person as a saint, we have robbed true saints of their godliness. And we have robbed ourselves of a world in which godliness is the quality we should aspire to. To show reverence for the real definition of a saint is to show reverence for God and, at the very least, it is to remind ourselves of God’s presence and care for the world. Saints are those people who help God take care of the world.
This definition of a saint also reminds us, though, that saints are not only the famous martyrs of the past. If we, in our minds, confer sainthood only on those individuals who are known throughout history as people who gave their lives for the faith, we miss the meaning of sainthood in the other direction. We ask the word to mean too much; we set the bar too high. If we think of saints as only those individuals who were larger than life in the history of the church, then we remove the saints from our own everyday lives. Saints are all people, in any time and place, who help God take care of the world. Saints are those who honor God’s call to respect the dignity of every human being. Saints are all of those parents and children who nurture one another in the Lord. Saints are those people who stop to help any of the least of God’s children in need. Saints are people who work to improve human stewardship of creation because it is God’s sacred creation.
Saints are more than just good human beings. Yet saints are not superhuman either. Saints are everyone who helps God take care of the world.
The words to I Sing a Song of the Saints of God were written by someone whom we now would call a stay-at-home Mom. She has said that they were written "not for publication, but for use in our own nursery, as an expression of the faith we were trying to give the children." That’s the work of a saint—passing on the faith to children. She continues that this hymn was meant for use "on Saints’ days, to impress the fact that sainthood is a living possibility today." Remember the final line… "the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too."
And I mean to be one, too. And you can be a saint, too. All of us can be saints. If we want to. All we have to do is help God take care of the world. No more, no less. But remember, we just have to help. We don’t have to save the world all by ourselves. (God’s already done that.) And God will be with us to help us see what it is in particular that we are called to do to help God take care of the world. Each of us has some gift that is useful to God’s purpose. It may not always be easy, but God will give us whatever it is we need to do our part as a saint. God will give us patience, strength, courage, wisdom, a sense of humor, whatever it is we need…
The hymn reminds us that sainthood is a living possibility today. It also reminds us that the saints of God "followed the right for Jesus’ sake;" they "toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew." Saints do not just help the world; they help God take care of the world. These are the saints of God.
And I mean to be one too…
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