Sunday 11/7 Reflection

In the sermon and service, I wanted to reflect on just who we call Saint. We don’t talk a lot about saints in the presbyterian church, so I hoped to shed some light on how we might see saints at Madison Square.

The traditional way of choosing a saint, involves a very extensive process that includes proof of miracles and canonization by the Pope. Oh yes, one must be Catholic. The reformation brought some changes in interpretation. Luther strongly opposed the Catholic understanding of saint (see my previous post). For Luther, all Christians were saints. For me though, this still seems limiting. If a saint is someone that God’s light and love shines through, then who are we to say who God uses. A buddhist saint? Why not. An athiest saint? I’m sure. How about the lowly, the poor, those who weep, those who hunger? Yes, I am sure of it.

I especially loved the music this Sunday. The songs chosen by the choir were a beautiful reflection on saints. And I loved the hymn we sang to end out service, I Sing a Song of the Saints of God, what a strange little ditty.

With lines like:

            And one was a soldier and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce wild beast!

Who was slain by a fierce wild beast??? I wanna know!

But I do love the last line of each verse that says:

            For the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.

Notes from my sermons: Un Dia de Los Santos

Last Sunday, was Halloween-All Hollow’s Eve. Hallows means Saints. Makes sense then that November 1^st is All Saint’s Day…a day to remember all saints known and unknown…Which in some religious circles doesn’t include you and me.

So November 2^nd was named All Souls Day for the rest of us.

In our Presbyterian church calendar you will find that All Souls Day is not celebrated…since we are a little more open to whom we call the saints of the church.

Maybe that is the reason I love Dia de los Muertos, the Latin American version of this time that mushes together the celebrations of All Saints and All Souls. Dia de los Muertos celebrates that there is a little bit of the santo and sinner, holy and muerto in each of us.

Un Dia de los Santos…the incredible truth of All Santos Day is that every one of us is a saint in the eyes of God. We do not have to pass some sanctification test to be a saint in the eyes of God.  God choose us, God claims us, to be vessels through whom the light shines.

When I began my study on the scripture for this Sunday, my mind went to Saint John.

When I was a 9 or 10, John was not a particularly holy man.

Not an ardent defender of the poor. Not a figure of deep wisdom.

He was just another odd friend of my older brother, who seemed to gather around him a strange group of

freaks and geeks, jocks and glee clubers that had nothing in common except that my brother was their friend.

John was not what we called back then “cool”, his clothes were not hip or modern, they looked more like he picked them from a pile with no care for color or pattern, wrinkle or stain. His eyes were bad, so bad that he wore thick glasses that were always oily and dirty.

I am embarrassed to admit that my sister and I found it fun to laugh at John…to make fun of the way he talked and dressed, his lack of intelligence and social skill.

That is…until my brother caught us one time, and explained that John didn’t have any other friends at school and was regularly picked on.

He said that John had a very tough family life.

That’s why he liked being with our mom and family.

That’s why John ate a lot of dinners at our house and spent so much time at our house.

But my brother also said, for all his shortcomings, John was the most loyal friend anyone could have.

That he would do anything for any of us. And maybe we should think of all that before we thought to make fun of him.

It is an All Saints miracle, that somehow, John showed me something about God.

What I learned through my adolescence, high school and college years, as John became part of our families life.

Is that, for all his lowly behavior, John simply cared.  He cared for people, no matter how they responded or reacted to him. And he seemed to care for a wide range of people.

I learned that to speak with the lowly John Jeffries was to experience a freedom from pretension or anxiety.

There was no need to impress him, or to brag, or even to complain or ask for things.

His emptiness provided a safe place for me to know myself, to know life, and, indeed, to know God.

The first verse of the Beatitudes, according to Luke says: "Blessed are you who are poor; for yours is the reign of God." I thought about John when I heard this verse. He was poor materially…during his early life with his father there wasn’t much to go around and he struggled financially in his adult life after high school when he was on his own. Later in his life, he was often poor spiritually. He was truly low…depressed, although we didn’t know it. Those last 10 years of his life we didn’t see him much, but when we did you could tell his spirit had been crushed….that he was poor and alone. Come on by and say hi, my parents would encourage when we bumped into him. I will, I will…he would say.

Biblical scholars have long pointed out the curious difference between the Beatitudes according to Luke, and the Beatitudes according to Matthew. Most of us recite Matthew's version: "Blessed are the poor in spirit."

Luke's version, the one we read today, is starker and more bare; there we read, "Blessed are the poor." Period.

Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the poor in spirit. A saint will be someone who knows emptiness.

Someone who needs no pretense or deceit. So today I remember Saint John. 

Some of you may be uncomfortable with my naming a saint that has taken his own life.

But let me simply remind you of the faith statement from scripture that is central to my faith in God…Romans 8

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor anything else, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is not just the radiantly holy and the astoundingly wise who are saints.

Not just the pure in heart and those with 100% church attendance.

Saints are the people God’s light shines through.

Blessed are the saints.

Blessed are you who are poor, said Jesus.

Blessed are you who hunger and thirst,

Blessed are you who weep.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Saints that are not just the stars, not just those whose works have outshone rest.

But most of us are not superstar saints.

We are those who mourn and weep, who are hungry and thirsty for things.

The saints I have known, whether poor or rich, weeping or laughing, hungry or full, have somehow pointed me to God in whatever they have been experiencing.

The saints are those, in every generation, who show us God's love affair with humanity.

Here at Madison Square, we've known a lot more saints than just the famous ones. We have known the non-descript, the bumbling, and the inept ones. The justly proud and the overly humble.  The wonderfully capable and the woefully decrepit. We've known the poor in spirit, those who are empty enough to show us God.

At some point, each of them has provided a space for us to know God.

We have known Saint John, over and over again.