The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
All Saints Sunday
On the 75h Anniversary of the Parish
The classic Episcopal song for All Saints Day gives us an important aspiration: “The saints of God are folks just like me, and I mean to be one too.” Sainthood, so often, gets painted as super-human. To be perfect. And so we often think we can’t be a saint. We’re aware that we’re far from perfect.
We can even list all the saintly perfections we don’t have: We don’t have perfect patience that never wears thin. We don’t have perfect prayerfulness that never gets distracted. We don’t have perfect wisdom to know what is always right in every situation. We don’t have perfect faith that moves mountains and never gets discouraged and absolutely never gets anxious. We don’t have perfect speech that can always say everything in just the right way that everyone else is convinced and no one is ever offended (Oh, how I pray for that gift!). We don’t have perfect anything.
On a good day, we’re aware of our own stuff, and we’re aware of how we can try to be a little bit more on track than the day before; on many other days, our imperfections, our wounds, our human messiness gets the upper hand and we make more of a mess of things.
So, sure, I may be called to be a saint, but are the saints folks like me? Can I really hope to be one, too?
One of the problems is that we keep putting saints on pedestals and statues and enshrining them in stained glass. We elevate them so high that we forget that they are human, human in the best sense of the word. We want to focus on the virtues that they embodied and we forget they are human, that failure is not the antithesis of holiness; sometimes it is precisely through failure that the saints can model what God’s grace looks like in practice. We fail, and we keep striving.
And the saints are not perfect, floating, disembodied hearts that radiate pure sunshine at all times. Look at the Biblical saints: St Peter was not known for being the most courageous or smart disciple when Jesus was walking around Galilee, but he sure learned what it was like to be forgiven and to keep trying.
St Paul – he goes from persecuting followers of Jesus to being one of the first pastors and missionaries in the tradition, and his letters are the earliest discussions of what it means to follow Jesus as a community and communion of believers.
And let’s not get into the very human reality of the saints throughout the Old Testament – if you spend any time reading the Old Testament, you’re sure to find countless examples of people trying and messing it up really badly, so badly that sometimes we moderns aren’t sure what to do with them.
And then through Christian history: Some saints like Jerome were cranky and absolutely impossible to live with, so we’re glad when he spent time as a hermit. Or St Gregory the Great, who was probably one of the wisest of the early pastoral theologians but who preached a sermon that left St Mary Magdalene unfairly labeled a prostitute for centuries!
And speaking of female saints: so many of the early female saints were recognized as unmarried virgins that the emphasis on “purity” overshadowed what was the sign of their saintliness. These early women refused to play the game of being valued only for being married and having kids. These early women wanted to be their own person, to have their own lives. They refused to be married not because of some idea of “purity” but because they were called by God to prayer, to works of compassion, to sharing the Gospel. The culture of their day (and frankly, we still live in the shadow of that culture), the culture of their day could not accept this freedom in Christ. Saint Agnes of Rome and Saint Agatha of Sicily as holy rebels and blessed martyrs who embraced the fullness of freedom in Christ to the point that they rejected the expectation that they’d be quiet, get married, have kids, and stay out of the picture. No, St Agnes and St Agatha, they charted their own course. And we should remember, too, that many early martyrs were also married and were mothers – Saints Perpetua and Felicity of Carthage had children and were martyred for their faith anyway. They refused to submit to the ways of the world, they refused to accept the shackles that others would impose on them, they refused to accept anything less than fullness of life in Christ Jesus.
Being a saint, then, is not about being a pious, goody two-shoes who never upsets anyone and always gets it right. A saint is someone whose zeal for the life and love of Christ pours forth in their lives. A saint is someone transformed by God’s grace – not to be superhuman but to be fully human, to embody their humanity, their own particular way of being human with the life and love of Christ. A saint is someone who, flaws and all, offers the fullness of themselves into the light of Christ.
So how will you become a saint, how will you be a saint?
It’s not by outperforming some other saint’s deeds. It’s not by being smarter, wiser, holier, more generous, more energetic, more charitable, more passionate than someone else. That’s just competition.
How will you be a saint? That is for you and Christ to figure out together. To continually be open to the love, the grace, the light and life of Christ in your life – to heal your wounds, to cast light on your shadows, to grant you the gifts of grace to do what you are called to do.
So how will you figure it out?
I don’t think the answer will be surprising: prayer. It’s prayer. It’s time you spend in prayer with Christ throughout your days, each day. It’s time you spend alone, and it’s time you spend in community with your fellow disciples. It’s prayer, it’s reflecting, it’s contemplating the big things and the little things together with God.
As we celebrate 75 years as a parish, I want to turn us to prayer that we can share. Daily prayer that connects us to one another, that gives us language to share the Good News and encourage one another. It’s a big messy world – and saints are not superhuman superheroes who go it alone because they don’t need other people; saints go it together because they know that humans are strongest when they live out values of humility, compassion, discernment, and solidarity with one another.
I made some prayer cards to help us be reflective in prayer together not just on Sundays and holy days, but every day. To reflect on the meaning of the Gospel in our daily lives. Some of us have advanced degrees in theological matters, and some of us are still in the baby steps of our faith. Some of us have decades of quiet contemplation, and some of us have decades of service, and some of us are just beginning what we’re called to do. But you know what we’re all beginners in? Prayer. From the child learning to say prayers and talk with God, to the elder who is still approaching the altar for bread and wine, the Body and Blood of Christ and wondering, “how is it that this sacrament fills me with such life?” and walks away with praise and thanksgiving – we’re all beginners in prayer, right where we need to be. And as we pray, day after day, we walk with Christ who is our life, our light, our salvation, and our love.
And day by day, that prayer is woven into our very being – not to be superhuman, but to be fully human, a lifetime, however long or short, a lifetime of prayer given a body, prayer given a heart, prayer given a soul and mind. For the saints of God are just folks like us: and God will help us to be one, too. Amen.