All Saints Day 01/11/11 B It’s good to remember people on a day who lived their lives, and in some cases gave their lives, in witness to the gospel. The drawback is, of course, that you eventually run out of days. There are 365 days most years; one more in leap years. But there are way, way more than 366 people who are considered saints. There are more than that whose lives and witnesses are worth remembering. That’s why there is All Saints. All Saints was celebrated to make sure that no one was overlooked, and to remind us that the communion of saints, that great cloud of witnesses are with us always. For centuries, All Saints was considered one of the holiest days of the year, second only to Easter. It was far more important and a much bigger deal, than Christmas. In some places, it even marked the start of the New Year. I asked my year 1’s and 2’s at Princes Hill Primary School when I was the Vicar of Brunswick teaching them religious education what was important about November the First, they replied The Melbourne Cup and Halloween of course! Today in a secular world, All Saints has become little more than the answer to a trivia question, celebrated by few, and understood by even fewer. In fact All Saints is usually characterised by lower attendance in churches in Melbourne as people go away for the “Cup Weekend”. All Saints however is a big deal because of who the saints are, and, more importantly, because of how they got to be so saintly. A saint is not a flawless person who does all the right things and says all the right things and never doubts and never wavers in the faith and never gives into temptation. If that was the standard, then there wouldn’t be any saints at all, not even the ones from the Scriptures. St Peter and Paul, impetuous, intemperate at times, full of mistakes and yet clearly Saints of the first order. A saint isn’t a superhero, square-jawed and steady, wearing a cape and a halo. Superheroes aren’t real. Saints are real. We get the word “saint” from the Latin sanctus, which means “holy one.” A saint is a holy person. But a saint’s holiness does not come from their iron will or their unimpeachable moral character, or their capacity of correctness. A saint’s holiness comes from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. A saint is a weak, flawed, normal person, who has made mistakes and who was dipped in, washed in, and lives in Jesus Christ. Saints are sinful people who God decides must be holy, because they are living in the love and forgiveness and righteousness of Jesus Christ. Jesus died and rose in order to make them his holy ones. What we are doing here today is reminding ourselves that a saintly life is a life spent in coming to grips with a holiness we did not create and with love and forgiveness we do not deserve. It’s not easy living the life of a saint. At its foundation, the ideas in the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter five teach a new way of giving. They show us that giving is as much about attitude as it is about what is actually given or done. Jesus turns the world’s ideas of what it means to be happy upside down. The very ones who the world has designated as poor and out, are the ones designated by Jesus as the rich! We all know deep down that how we live our lives always has an impact on those around us. That does not only mean family and friends, it means all those around you. When looked at that way, you begin to realize that you contain within you the gifts to help change the world! You can be a “saint” of the church just like those who have come before. That is phenomenal, is it not? There is always something deeper in what Jesus is teaching. In the Sermon on the Mount it is values. Jesus is teaching about values. He’s talking about priorities in the Beatitudes. !1
There is the story of vandals who broke into a hardware store and, for several hours in the early predawn morning, did their work. The doors opened the next morning at 7:30 a.m. as usual and, surprisingly, everything seemed to be in good order. No one knew that the vandals had been there until they went to purchase goods. The intruders had switched all the price tags. Hammers were $.07 apiece, and bolts were $6.95. Screws were $19.95 and screwdrivers were $0.95. Everything looked the same on the outside, but the value placed on items had been changed. It seems to me that the Beatitudes ask us to redo the price tags of our lives. Jesus teaches us that all of our old ideas about what we value are now being challenged. The fundamental value that we have placed on things in our lives and in the world around us has been switched. Jesus wants us to understand that values are what shape us, mold us, drive us, and define us. Today we live in a society that tells us on bumper stickers that, “He who dies with the most toys wins,” and that is a problem. People will say, sure I’d be a giver if I had something to give. We all have something to give. God has given us talents, God has blessed us, God has made us unique and we have gifts to give. The issue is not do we have anything to give — the issue is, “Do we have the right attitude”. For without it everything is diminished. Our nation has been built on encouraging people to stand on their own feet. You know, the whole notion of rugged individualism that has been fostered by so many for so long. Tick all the right boxes, don’t be seen to be making mistakes, don’t get caught, don’t own up to weakness. Needless to say, this societal value works against the sense of community that Jesus worked so hard to install in the disciples and through them to us. Christians are not to be rugged individualists but community-minded sisters and brothers in Christ. As Christians we are to be steeped in scriptural values, just like the ones outlined in Jesus’ action towards to the dead Lazarus from our Gospel today. We are to be people who give ourselves to communal accountability and discipline when needed, whilst at the same time being charitable to others, to seek the very best we can for the body of Christ, the church. We are to do this even at the expense of our own selves, whatever that may be. Christianity and Christian conduct emphasises what you do. Christianity is not a bunch of don’ts- the “we don’t do that here!” syndrome. The Pharisees were all about doing things according to the law. There were all kinds of things they would not do, did not do. Jesus says its not only what you wouldn’t or don’t do that matters, it is what you do that matters much more. You see, Jesus wants us to know that Christianity is leaving the past and doing something today. The Lord is talking about an unnatural way of living. He’s talking about us living in a place where we do more than what’s expected. See those Christians how they love one another. This is what grabs the world. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., was a millionaire at age 23. At the age of fifty, he was a billionaire. He was the richest man in the world, but he was a miserable, rich man. At the age of 53, he was eaten up with physical diseases and ulcers. He was a taker, not a giver. He was always trying to get more money and he was a greedy man. Greed had so consumed him, that at the age of 53, the doctors told him he had one year to live. Just one year. Here’s a billionaire, the richest man in the world, and all he could eat that year, all that his stomach could handle was milk and crackers. Milk and crackers. The man could go out and buy any restaurant in the world; he could have any food before him on the !2
table, but it wouldn’t do him much good. It was in that year, that Rockefeller began to look at his life. He said, “I have all these possessions and I’ve never been a giver.” That’s when he decided to become a giver. He gave to churches, to hospitals, to foundations, and to medical research. Many of the discoveries we’ve had in medicine have come from money provided by the Rockefeller Foundation. That man who had only one year to live at age 53, began to live, and began to give, and do you know what happened to him? He started releasing all of the internal negative things that were killing him. He got rid of his stress, his tension, and his ulcers, and he lived to the age of ninety, a saint to many. Have a good celebration of All Saints, and remember, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” It’s the saintly thing to do! Amen. Fr Robert Newton
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