I hate to burst your bubble, but despite the over
12,700 references on Google, there is no “St. Arbucks,” patron Saint of Coffee
(Think about it). Sorry.
Well today, I want to add a new name to your
list of Saints: Saint Samuel, our candidate for holy baptism today.
You may laugh, but I am not kidding.
When we talk about saints, we might talk
about what makes a saint, well, famous. What gets a college or city named after
one? We could talk about their sacrifices, their perfection, their witness, and
their selfless deeds. Last Friday, one of my spiritual heroes, Dorothy Day, got
the newest Staten Island Ferry named after her. How cool is that?
Today we hold up the “rank and file” saints, the
ones who don’t necessarily get a day set a aside for them. But like the more
famous capital “S” saints they all communicated Jesus to others, often one
relationship at a time. These saints exhibited Christ even when they didn’t
feel like it, know it, nor even understand it. Most of these saints don’t have
a name or a date, but I think you may know one or two.
Christianity is passed along by word of mouth, by
example, and through relationship. No one ever comes to faith entirely by
themselves. We are all brought to and sustained in our faith, because someone
or some people, brought us and nurtured us. These people were and are God’s
ambassadors of reconciliation—showing off Jesus—and inviting those around them
to come along.
Which is why Episcopalians, like a lot of other
Christians in other traditions, baptize babies like Samuel. We believe that
Christian households can and do raise up Christian children into active,
productive, friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.
One of the things that Samuel will learn is
that saints are by definition imperfect. They will have live breathing examples
of that, and probably in about twelve to fourteen years from now they will let
you know. But that’s okay. No one is totally pure and no one is above
corruption in thought, word and deed. Not one has ever completely put aside any
one or all of the seven deadly sins. If you talk to a person whom you or I
might consider saintly, they would probably be startled and think you were
making mountains out of molehills.
I’ve never met a firefighter who was a hero.
Not one. When you tell them they are heroic, which is especially fashionable
these days, they will deny it and tell you that they are only doing their job.
Most saints are just the same way.
Remember, in the early Church, “saint” was the
term used to describe all followers of Jesus. All of us who live attempting to
imitate Christ get the title “saint.” The first step to sainthood is to decide
to follow Jesus. The entry point is baptism.
At the same time, saints are made not just
born(-again!). Ask Saint Paul about the saints with whom he dealt through his
correspondences we call Epistles. The saints in Corinth were willful and
quarrelsome and others were sexually irresponsible. There were saints in
Philippi who used their position in church for purely selfish ends. Even
big-shots like Peter and Barnabas could act like hypocrites. And Paul himself
admitted to the saints in Rome that even he did not understand his own
actions—he did things he did not want to do, the very things he hated.
Sainthood should not be confused with being
“nice.” Even Mother Teresa was known not to be nice all the time. But that’s no
surprise because if you’re focused on caring for the poorest of the poor you
might end up ruffling a few feathers.
Living into our saintliness is not about
niceness but about newness. I remember a lesson from a priest when I was
a boy, who pointed to all the pictures of saints around my home parish rendered in
brightly colored stained glass. I remember him saying that we are all like those saints because saints are
people the Light shines through.
As we welcome young Samuel into the fellowship
of the Church and into the company of saints, I won’t need to tell experienced
parents like Kimberly and Garret that there will be days when your little saint
will seem like an angel, and days when he will be… well… won't. And that’s okay, because
you know that’s already true about yourselves and all the others of Jesus’
people in your life and in this parish community.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus describes what it
means to be blessed before God. He is also talking about what it means to be a
saint—to be a regular, ordinary, everyday follower, friend, and apprentice of
Jesus.
“Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says, “for yours is the kingdom of God.”
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.”
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.”
Being blessed, Jesus says, comes from finding
our focus just a bit more, day by day, on what God would have us be. And as we
listen to God’s voice, and respond to God’s grace, we find that walking the way
of Jesus touches lives in ways we can hardly imagine. The late pastor and
writer Frederick Buechner wrote:
As we move around this world and as we act with kindness perhaps, or with indifference or with hostility toward the people we meet, we are setting the great spider web atremble. The life I touch for good or ill will touch and other life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what place my touch will be felt.
You are here, and you have brought Samuel and his siblings with
you, because some place, somewhere, a saint touched you. Somewhere, sometime,
you have touched another human being with grace. Somewhere someone cut you a
break, told you the truth in love, or cared for you in a moment of crisis.
Somewhere someone showed you what it was like to be touched by God. And, having
been touched by the holy, you said “I want to do that, too” and that’s when you
took another step towards your own saintliness. And now you want to communicate
that ineffable quality and that eternal truth to your children and through them
to your children’s children. God’s love touched you. You became a follower of
Jesus. And you want that for your kids as well.
Saintliness is about newness--choosing to live
this one day in one new way--choosing compassion over selfishness, mercy over
revenge, kindness over disregard. Choosing just for this moment to serve God in
the people God gives us and to look right now for Christ in the people we
are given.
As Saints go, you may think we have a way to
go. When Samuel doesn’t pay attention to his feeding or sleeping schedule or as
he touches things, and plays with Olivia’s and Hunter’s things, or he discovers
new ways to go his own way, you may wonder about Samuel’s saintliness. But
you have brought him here anyway.
Well, welcome to the Club, Samuel… the
Communion of Saints, the fellowship of Christ’s body, the People of God. You
will discover that we Jesus People are a strange lot. We may at times be
quarrelsome, strident, short-sighted and at times ignorant or hypocritical,
that’s for sure.
It’s true. We are not perfect, we saints; but we
are everyday discovering newness. For all our foibles (and yours yet to be revealed)
we are together learning and doing the work of Jesus, and just like all those
other saints, we learning to let the light shine through.
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