Rev. Marietta T. Smith

November 2, 2003

Scripture: Revelation 7:9-12, Hebrews 12:1

This is a service of rejoicing, my friends—a service of rejoicing. We rejoiced at the 8:45 service and we rejoice now, and we will be rejoicing when we all get to heaven. I want to read from Hebrews Chapter 11 and a couple of verses of Chapter 12 and then from Revelation Chapter 7.

And from Revelation, Chapter 7

This is the Word of God for the people of God. Join me in saying, “Thanks be to God.”

I want to tell you a story, a joke maybe, you might call it. Perhaps something like this really happened at one time; we don’t really know. But it seems that two brothers who lived in a particular town where they were involved in corruption, deceit, and every manner of vice. It was rumored even that they were affiliated with some very famous families and they had accumulated great amounts of wealth through their dishonest means.

So, when the older brother died, there was very little grief, but the younger brother wanted to honor the older sibling and went all out in planning the funeral. The problem he had was, he needed to find a church where he could have the funeral and a minister who was willing to conduct the funeral.

So, knowing that one of the local churches was involved in a capital campaign to raise funds for much needed repairs, the younger brother called the minister in that church and said, “Minister, I know that my brother and I never attended your church. As a matter of fact, you’ve probably heard that we never attended any church. This being a small town and all, you hear things like that.” And he said, “But I’d like you to do my brother’s funeral, and if you’ll say that my brother was a saint, I’ll give you a check for fifty thousand dollars and that will go a long way toward fixing up your church.”

Well, the minister thought about it awhile and he finally agreed to do the service. But he had a condition himself.

He said, “I’ll do the service, but you have to give me the fifty thousand dollar check in advance.”

So, the brother agreed. The day of the service finally arrived and the church was crowded because curiosity seekers had come from all over town since they had heard that this notorious guy’s funeral was going to be held in this particular church. And so, the church was crowded with curiosity seekers who were certainly not there to honor the rich man. And the remainder of the crowd were the people they associated with—the mobsters and the women that the brothers associated with. And so the service began with the usual scriptures, and prayers, and hymns and then the homily began. The minister started out slowly, but gradually, step by step, he launched into a litany of the horrible things the rich man had done; about how he had been selfish, and greedy, and corrupt, caring about no one but himself, and carousing with women and drinking to excess, and on and on he went, with all the things the man had done. Well, the younger brother was sitting in the front row and he was beginning to get kinda hot under the collar because this wasn’t what he had asked the minister to say, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He didn’t want to jeopardize himself by grabbing the minister by the collar and saying, “Look a hear…” So, he sat there quietly and listened and finally the minister, after about ten minutes of outlining the rich man’s flaws, concluded his sermon in a booming crescendo proclaiming:

“Yes, my friends, this man was a no-good, dirty, rotten scoundrel. But compared to his brother, he was a saint.”

Now, some of you may have heard that story before. Some in the early service looked like they probably had heard it before.

When people think about saints, we most often think about St. Francis of Assisi, or St. Augustine, or St Teresa, or St. Patrick. In short, we think about those people the church has long declared to be saints—those people whose faith, and vision, and moral integrity has been thoroughly examined and widely known; those normally long dead folk who have been judged to advanced the cause of Christ notably in this world; those folk who have been deemed to be worthy of imitation and of praise both by church bureaucrats and by popular opinion.

Well, today is All Saints’ Sunday in our church. All Saints’ Sunday comes the day after All Saints’ Day. Makes sense, doesn’t it? All Saints’ Day is November 1st. It is the day which has been celebrated in the church for many centuries, particularly the Roman Catholic tradition, and the Orthodox and Anglican churches as well. Often in many traditions arising out of the Protestant Reformation there is not much said about All Saints’ Day except to explain that the night before— the night of witches and goblins and other things that go bump in the night that we should not pay attention to—received its name because it is on the eve of All Hallows’ Day, which is what All Saints’ Day is really supposed to be called. And there is where we get the word Halloween—All Hallows’ Eeen, which is the Eve of All Saints’ Day, just like Christmas Eve is the eve of Christmas Day.

But this Sunday has become a time in our church when we remember those in our membership who have gone on to their “heavenly home” since the first Sunday of November of last year. It is also a time when we remember those other “angel faces” that we have loved long since and lost awhile; those saints who have been pillars of this church and of this community who now rest from their labors.

Now, I didn’t mean for this service to be maudlin and sentimental so as to have everyone in tears—and that was obvious by the way we sang “Soon and Very Soon” a while ago—unless we have tears of joy for having known these saints, and tears of rejoicing that they are no longer bound by their humanity—but that they are free as never before, as we too one day shall be free of the shackles of this old worn out body. As we remember these saints and other saints who have influenced our lives, we are tempted to say that we cannot “hold a candle” to those people. We think of them as saints because they have gone to be with the Lord and they are no longer with us. I suppose the minister in the story I told at the beginning of this sermon did the best he could with what he had to do with. It helps greatly to have good subject matter in speaking at a memorial service such as John and I had to do last Sunday afternoon., and with others whose memorial services we have conducted throughout this year. But do you ever wonder about yourself and compare yourself and then just decide that you aren’t a saint?

Just what is a saint? What is this sainthood business all about anyway? If we look in a secular dictionary, we find that a saint is a holy person, a person officially recognized as being entitled to public veneration and capable of interceding for people on earth; a person who has died and gone to heaven. Islam and Judaism define a saint as an extraordinarily righteous person enjoying a special relationship with God. A further definition is that a saint is an extremely virtuous person.

If we look in a Bible dictionary at the word saint, we find that the word comes from a Greek work HAGIOS, which means HOLY. Psalm 85:8 uses the word saint to describe the people of God. And in the Old Testament a person was a saint, not based on character, but on relationship to the covenant people of Israel.

In the New Testament, saint is the most common term used to describe on who believes in Christ. The saints, then, are the Church. You and I are saints right now! Say it with me: “I am one of God’s Saints.” Say it like you believe it: “I am one of God’s Saints.” We are all of us saints of God and “I mean to be one too,” like the song we sang said. We don’t have to be dead for a couple of centuries to have this classification applied to us. We are saints of God, right now, not because of who we are or what we are, but because of whose we are.

If we look at those definitions that I gave you, none of us can live up to them by our own efforts. And the good news is: we don’t have to in order to be classified a saint. Now, mind you, I didn’t say that we didn’t have to try to live up to them. It’s just that we don’t have to worry if we fall short of the mark once in a while, for there is a far greater wideness in God’s mercy than most people would care to admit.

But my friends, we are saints. We who believe in Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior are saints. Some of us are more saintly than others. Some of us may be rather salty saints, but we are all saints, nevertheless, because of our faith in Christ Jesus.

The Great Hall of Fame of Faith in Hebrews 11 includes a long list of saints, most of whom were anything but saintly sometimes. But they are listed there because of their faith in God, their belief and trust in his promises, and their obedience to His will.

Noah was obedient when God told him to build the ark . But later on, he got into the corn squeezings and created problems for his sons.

Abraham believed God and it was accounted unto him for righteousness. He obediently packed his family and his possessions and struck out for wherever God was going to lead him, all the while trusting God for the outcome. But he had gotten into trouble earlier in Egypt by lying to save his own skin by saying that Sarah was his sister and not his wife.

Moses was subject to fits of temper when the Hebrew children tried his patience, and it cost him dearly. Read on down in the Hall of Fame of Faith and you find, of all people, Rahab the harlot, a woman of ill repute who helped the spies Joshua sent out to view Jericho and was saved by God’s grace.

Solomon was given the charge of building God’s temple and did so, with great flourish. But he got the big head and compromised his life by marrying the foreign wives and acquiescing to their pagan worship practices, and yet he is listed in the Hall of Fame of Faith.

King David was described as a “man after God’s own heart” but he committed adultery and murder. He repented of those sins, yes, he did. He paid the price of those sins in the lives of his children and grandchildren. But he is listed in the Hall of Fame as a hero of faith.

Come down to the New Testament and look at the men and women Jesus associated with during his time on earth. Peter was a fisherman whose habit of swearing reared its ugly head that night in the courtyard of Chaiphas’ house.

Peter and the rest of the disciples ran when the Roman soldiers came to arrest Jesus; and yet, they are called saints, many of them venerated and canonized by the Catholic Church.

Paul, in his New Testament writings to the churches, refers those he addresses as saints: to the saints at Ephesus, to the saints at Colassae, to the saints at Corinth. And Paul, himself, is referred to as St. Paul, even though he was a Christian basher before God zapped him with the Holy Spirit and mad him become a Christian maker, a founder of churches, and a fearless preacher of the gospel message he had tried earlier to destroy. We know from studying his writings that the people to whom he wrote were anything but saintly. They were human beings, subject to human frailty and yet Paul called them Saints because they were followers of Christ Jesus. They were believers in Him. Their sainthood was guaranteed by the cross. Remember, I said we are saints, not because of WHO we are but WHOSE we are, and therein lies the difference.

Saints of God are those people who, because of their faith, engage in living in the Kingdom of God in the here and now. They live in responsible, loving relationships with their fellow men and sister women. These are they whose efforts at doing the gospel are the building blocks of God’s kingdom on this earth.

Eugene Peterson has a paraphrase of the bible he calls The Message, and he describes this saintly life in his paraphrase of the “blesseds” of the Sermon on the Mount. Listen to what he says:

Today’s saints are the people Peterson describes, aren't they? Not just the Gandhis and the Mother Teresas, but the faithful, imperfect as we are. Barbara Brown Taylor captures this, as she writes of the Feast of the Communion of Saints as a sort of “family reunion.” Listen to what she says:

And Oh, what a day of rejoicing that will be when we all get to Heaven to join that great crowd around the throne of God and to sing his praises. Amen and Hallelujah!