St. Paul's United Methodist Church, Helena, MT
Friday, May 18, 2012
A Christian Community in the Heart of Helena, grounded in hospitality, growing in faith, giving in service and going in mission.
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Blessed to be a BlessingMatthew 5: 1-12 Marianne Niesen November 6, 2011 Every year, on the first Sunday of November, all Christians are invited to celebrate All Saints Day. For Protestants, this is an optional feast. For Catholics, it’s a command performance. But for all of us it is an invitation to reflect on and to celebrate sainthood. But what does that mean? As a child growing up Catholic, I remember knowing that Catholics had saints and (mostly) Protestants did not. I didn’t know why but I knew it was a big disagreement. Still, saints are not really the sole property of Catholics. For the early Christians, saints referred to all believers, anyone who followed Jesus. Pretty simple. But things never stay simple.
Eventually, for Catholics, saint became a term used to refer primarily to dead people who had led exemplary Christian lives. A process was developed to determine just when a good life crossed over into the exemplary category and so into sainthood. Protestants have tended to look suspiciously at the long saint process - and decided somewhere along the line to honor as saints just the people whose exemplary lives are mentioned in the Bible. Thus, a Saint Paul (for whom our church is named) or a Saint Peter. But even Protestants have been more selective than we’d like to admit. Church powers have shied away from affirming Biblical women as saints. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of a Saint Mary United Methodist Church - have you? So who are the saints? Are they really good dead people whose lives have stood the scrutiny of a saint committee? Are they really good but selectively chosen Biblical figures? Obviously, it depends on who you ask. That’s what makes it so interesting that, in spite of our lack of clarity about this whole subject, we have an All Saints Day. Which brings me - you knew I’d get here eventually - to our scripture text for today. Long before denominations debated these things, long before churches needed names, Jesus shared a glimpse into the ‘making’ of saints. In Matthew’s gospel, it happened on a hillside. Listen to Matthew 5: 1-12 from The Message Bible:
When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:
"Not only that - count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens - give a cheer, even! - for though they don't like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.
Who are the saints? They are people who’ve seen and done all that stuff Jesus mentions – people who have faced challenge and change and chaos and grace and been willing to claim the blessing, learn the lessons needed, to grow through it all. I heard the story about a child who was apparently looking at a stained glass window one day when the sun was especially bright. Colors filled the room and this child said I get it! Saints are people the sun shines through! Indeed! Saints are people who allow the grace and the warmth and the light of God to work in them and through them. They’re human - ordinary people whose main claim to extraordinariness is that they let God shine through them. If we claim that definition, then even we Protestants can have saints!They are the people who help us see and claim our blessing.
In the book A Prayer for Owen Meany, [1] John Irving begins like this: "I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew . . . but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany." That sentence is the core of the book's story and it is at the heart of our story as well. All of us believe in God because of someone. Christ haunts us in the face of someone. We see God in the walk, word, deed or dare of someone. We believe in God, or we keep believing in God, or decide to give God another chance - because of someone. I doubt that Jesus ever envisioned statues and stained glass windows but I’m sure he knew that no one could make it through life with integrity and faith without inspiration in human form. Without people about whom we could say blessed are they! Of course we still need that personal relationship with God. But we also need, every so often, to see a life of faith lived in the flesh. Made real. Saints don’t replace our need for a personal relationship with the Divine - they just help keep our vision clear so we can see how we’ve been blessed. And when we’re going through dark times, saints let the sun shine through - often quite colorfully!
One of my ‘big’ saints is Clare of Assisi who believed in what God was asking of her and her sisters. When the human authority in her life, the Pope, refused to allow them to live absolute poverty as her friend Francis did (because they were only women, after all, and not strong enough), she took the Pope on and, just before her death, won. When, as a Catholic nun, I was struggling with my call to ordination, one sister wrote to me and suggested I should consider the life of Clare and be more obedient and accepting of the way things are. More patient. Unfortunately, this was the part of Clare’s story I remembered – the Clare of defiant obedience and creative docility. That Clare gave me the courage to do what needed to be done.
I also have some not-so-famous saints in my life. There was Sr. Emmanuel. She died 9 years ago at age 102. She was the dean at the college I attended for my undergraduate work. She was also my teacher of Franciscan studies in my first year in the convent. She’s the one who first told me the story of Clare the ‘feisty Franciscan.’ Sr. Emmanuel was one of the first women to earn a doctorate from Yale University and was the only woman chosen as a translator for the New American Bible. In her retirement, she continued writing and lecturing and in her spare time she volunteered as a creative writing instructor at the local federal prison. One of her student inmates was the televangelist Jimmy Baker. My last visit with her was just before I left the Franciscans on my road to ordination in the United Methodist Church. I told her what I was planning to do. She listened quietly, didn't like it, but finally said: "There are many ways God leads us that we don't understand. If you’re going to be a Methodist pastor, be a good one. And, you have my blessing."
There was my Aunt Helen. She was my godmother. I last saw her in September of the year the Pope was visiting San Francisco. I had gone to that area to explore seminaries in Berkeley and to see her. She was dying of cancer. We sat together in the living room of her home and, at one point, watched one of the Pope's masses being held in the city. She looked at me as we watched the festivities and out of the blue asked "Will they ever ordain women priests?" "Yes," I replied, "someday, but not soon enough for me." She nodded. "Well, then, when I get up there I'm going to start working on it right away!" That was the last time I saw Helen. She died the following January, but not before she knew that I would come to have her funeral. Her daughter, my cousin Debbie, had called me the night she was dying to let me know and to ask if I would be willing to come and do a memorial service. Because of divorce and some other things, Helen had not been active in any church for a while but Debbie knew that many people needed to have some way to say goodbye. Debbie also knew that many of Helen’s friends did not feel welcome in a church - they were members of the gay and lesbian community. Some had AIDS. In her work in Human Resources for a large health insurance company, Helen had touched a diverse community. Hers was the first ‘official’ memorial service I ever did. I couldn’t help but remember her words I’ll start working on it right away! She who had lost her own church home, helped give me the courage to find a new one.
Who are your saints? Today is the day to remember and be grateful. To tell each other stories of the people who have touched our lives. Living and dead. Those we’ve met. Those about whom we’ve heard tell. Those who, for us, the sun has shone through. Maya Angelou wrote a poem about such things. She refers especially to the deceased saints of our lives but her words speak about all of those whose lives empower or bless us:
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid, promised walks never taken . . .
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed. [2]
And that’s why we remember the saints. We can be and be better. The memories of those who have blessed us are God’s way of empowering, challenging, and prodding us onto our own paths to blessedness. We’re all running for sainthood! That’s why it is entirely appropriate that on All Saints Day, we celebrate our Stewardship Consecration Sunday. As I hope we have all learned, stewardship is about far more than money. It is about how we relate – even in hard times - to the blessings we’ve received by blessing in return. It is about how we order our lives so that we live from blessing rather than fear, filled with gratitude rather than anxiety. May this Consecration-All-Saints-Sunday bring each of us a little closer to becoming the saints God has called us to be. Blessed to be a blessing.
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