Good morning, saints!
Good morning, sinners!
We're all here. And all that we are is here.
The month of September is still warm and green, even though late in the month autumn officially begins.
October is marked by cooler temperatures. But the shameless displays of gaudy, glorious colors dull the impact of the real changes that are creeping up on us.
November can no longer disguise the grey-on-grey that cloaks the Pacific Northwest. We are a part of the country that embodies the word "watershed." The western side of our Puget Sound, the Olympic Peninsula, is officially designated a rain forest, albeit a temperate, not a tropical wet wonderland. Water is everywhere – and eventually we'll drink it, generate electricity with it, run factories and manufacturing plants with it, and hopefully, grow lots of new baby salmon with it!
As gloomy and ceaseless as Northwest Novembers, Decembers, Januarys, and Februarys can seem, we can never forget that these dripping, drizzling, and sometimes deluging waters are literally life-giving.
Water is an everyday, down-the-drain miracle. It's available to all with the "thanks-be-to-God" innovation of indoor plumbing. Are there any parents out there who do not yet fully appreciate the almost universal solvency power of good old H2O? Mud, pasta sauce, the puppy and diaper stuff – that even more gross gunk that clogs up the bathroom sink – all of it magically, miraculously washes away with a little soap and water.
But water is mystical as well as miraculous. It is the one substance all of us are accustomed to seeing in three completely different physical states.
When we're taking a shower, filling the fishbowl, or making a pot of coffee, water is...water. Gushing, gurgling, there-to-be-guzzled water.
When we're hot and thirsty, clanking about in our glasses of soda are those wondrous, refreshing chunks of ice. When we entrust our bulk food to the freezer, that freshness-preserving power is ice. You know, just water.
And when you want to cook quickly but healthily; when you want to turn the turbines of a generator, even the turbines of a nuclear power plant, you use steam. Vaporized hot water can illuminate a city, or open your pores.
Liquid, ice, steam – it's all water. Transformed, reformed, regenerated, water.
On November 1, known as All Saints Day, we celebrate another miraculous transformation. This is the day we fragile, frail, and oh-so-fallible men and women are recognized as saints. Recall Paul's opening address to the church at Philippi: "To all the saints who are in Philippi." Every time the word "saint" is used in the new testament, it refers to all the members of the church.
For Christ the Son, and God the Father, the designation of saints is not reserved for a few Mother Teresa-types. The saints is an address that encompasses all members of the church. Today is ALL Saints Day, a day dedicated to remembering and remarking ALL the saints of the church – even those who have not been canonized by the church.
All Saints Day is NOT about recalling great spiritual leaders and teachers who have gone on ahead. All Saints Day is a day to dedicate ourselves anew to INCREASING the number of saints in our quakey, shakey churches. Through God's gift of grace, and through Christ's life-giving sacrifice, the watery faith of ordinary people is transformed into a mountainous glacier of witness and a steamy geyser of wonder.
We become the saints as we become, more genuinely, the church.
As usual, of course, the church has tried to take the easy way out on sainthood. First, we like to think that the designation saint refers only to a very small, select, elite group of individuals – thankfully all long dead – who accomplished stupendous healings and feats of faith far beyond the capabilities of us ordinary sit-in-the-pew folks.
This lets us off the sainthood-hook quite nicely. In fact, the church made these saints into such otherworldly beings that a whole side industry in reliquaries became hugely popular. A relic, of course, was something personally connected to a saint. Sometimes it was a piece of clothing, or an item of jewelry, or a treasured book. But far more often, relics were actual pieces of the saint's body – a bone, a lock of hair, dried blood in a vial, a finger or toe. At England's Eton College, for example, there is a collection of holy relics which includes a supposed piece of Our Lady's thumb. At Drew University's United Methodist Archives, there is displayed the thumb of the great 18th-century revivalist George Whitefield.
Theses small scraps of humanity's holy ones were supposedly able to mantle us in some sort of post-mortem saintliness. Unfortunately, less-than-saintly behavior often surrounded these treasured relics. Collectors fought battles over these bits of petrified bone and flesh. Relics have been used to bless wars, cure illnesses, absolve guilt, and most often, bilk people out of money and support.
Of course, none of us today would behave so ridiculously and shamelessly. Would we?
Is there anyone who isn't a collector of something? We collect everything, from Beanie Babies to Barbies to moon machines. Sotheby's recently auctioned off a Soviet lunar vehicle left behind on the moon in 1999. Unfortunately its $68,500 price tag did not include delivery charges. Amazing. Some people collect items they can never lay their hands on. I know someone who collects stickers from fruit.
My favorite TV program is the Antiques Road Show. Can I get a witness? I believe this church could keep the Antiques Road Show staff busy for an entire afternoon assessing all our various collections. (Why don't you engage your people in a karaoke moment where they talk about their collections).
Collecting is a kind of updated form of religious relics. We still buy into the idea that someone's energy can be transferred to an object. But while the medieval churches housed the actual body parts of saints, today's celebrity body parts take a (slightly) more respectable form. Instead of fingernails and bones, we create Plexiglas shrines for signed baseballs and basketballs, signed books, baseball cards, furniture used by our ancestors, and so on. Aren't we still looking to tap into those saints whose energy lingers and transforms?
There is a second kind of saint we are comfortable with remembering and honoring on this All Saints Sunday. These are those deceased who faithfully attended, regularly and generously gave their contributions of time and money, and whose membership in the church eternal is without question. Why is it that we only want to bestow the role of saint on those men and women of faith who have died? Could it be that...
To live above with the saints we love, that would be glory,
But to dwell below, with the ones we know, not that's a different story.
– Joseph L. Garlington's paraphrase of the old hymn as found in Right or Reconciled? God's Heart for Reconciliation
Many of those we celebrate today as saints were known to us in life as friends, spouses, siblings, parents, children. We know that physical death doesn't magically transform ordinary people into saints. Only the death-destroying power of God's grace and goodness, the love and sacrifice of Christ, that is capable of transforming sinners into saints. Our power, our life, our transformation from sinfulness to saintliness, comes from Christ alone. It's only as we respond to Christ's call with faith and follow-through with Christ-directed action that we take our place among all the saints.
In today's text Jesus calls out to a tree-perching publican, "Zacchaeus, come down." When the rich tax collector follows the directive of Jesus, and clambers down that sycamore, he climbs back into his skin as a "son of Abraham. All it takes to transform Zacchaeus from sinner to saint is to "come down."
When Jesus first spied Simon Peter and Andrew, and then James and John as they were fiddling with fishing nets, he called out to them, "Follow me!" All it took to transform these simple fishermen from saint to sinner was for them to stop their business-as-usual lives and begin in fumbling, fallible ways to follow Jesus.
Even when it seemed too late, when Jesus' best friend had been in his tomb three full days, Jesus cried "Lazarus, come out." All it took to transform Lazarus from death to life was obedience, as he rose up and went from darkness to light.
Today we recall and remember, reflect and respect those who have joined the church eternal. But it's ALL Saints Day. This is also a day for all of us to claim our calling as saints and to reclaim and maybe even rename the Great Commission. When Jesus gave us our mission statement, he declared "Go and make disciples." In other words, "Go and make saints."
ALL Saints Day means this is our day too. WE are the saints of Christ's church. Forgiven and filled by Christ's indwelling love, we are called to outflowing service. Right now, however, the church has an unemployment problem. We have too many saints not being employed and deployed in ministry. There is not enough outflowing from our indwelling.
Let's count how many different ministry opportunities are available in our church. I know one church that has 52, and still offers to help people develop their own ministries as well as the one's listed. What action will you take as you take on your role as saint? What can you do to increase the number of saints that walk upon the surface of this earth?
Most of us probably think of smoky, smoldering night clubs when we think about the history of the great jazz tradition. Hardly a place we might think of as very "saintly." John Coltrane is a name that dominates that history of jazz. His name also needs to grace the history of the church. In fact, there's even The Church of Saint John's, where the saint is Saint John Coltrane.
[If you can, get a copy of the Coltrane recording "A Love Supreme" and play it while you focus your a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD. I would like to tell you that NO MATTER WHAT . . . IT IS WITH GOD. HE IS GRACIOUS AND MERCIFUL. HIS WAY IS IN LOVE, THROUGH WHICH WE ALL ARE. IT IS TRULY – A LOVE SUPREME."
He called this album a "THANK YOU GOD" album. And signed it John Coltrane-December 1964.
What is your saintly calling? What steps can start to take today, All Saints Day, to begin bringing that call into action? It's time to make some saints today, church. Or as Jesus put it, "Go and make saints." He did it with Zacchaeus. He did it with you. He can do it with anyone.