Text: Luke 6.20-31 Title: Will All the Saints Please Come in?

Preached: November 1, 1998

Who here has ever seen a Saint? I don't mean those plaster cast replicas you can buy in a Botanica. And I don't mean a New Orleans Saint either. I mean a real live flesh and blood Saint Saint. Has anyone seen a Saint? Are there any Saints in Oakland? Are there any Saints in this sanctuary, right here, right now? I guess it all depends on how you define sainthood.

My little Doubleday dictionary says a saint is a holy, sanctified person -- especially a holy, sanctified person who has been canonized by certain churches, notably the Roman Catholic Church. The Westminster dictionary of Christian Theology says that saints are "people venerated for their participation in the life of Christ" -- they live, in other words, as if Christ is in them and they in Christ -- "their lives are imitated as true images of that life." It is important to note that in the New Testament, Paul, in particular, is fast and loose with the term. Just about anyone who is an active Christian believer is one of the Saints.

Yet, I really do believe that, in our minds, we define Saints in a simpler way. I think we have two definitions for who Saints are. Number one is those holy people from long ago who lived such pure, stellar lives that we can only aspire to being a little like them. Occasionally one of these kinds of saints breaks into our world and is due all the veneration we can offer -- like Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The other way we see saints is like the secondary dictionary definition: a saint is someone we know who has extreme unselfishness, forbearance and patience, as in: "You should see her with those ruffian kids; my goodness, she's a saint..."

The common ground between the two definitions is that we will never be saints like that. We'll never be able to make the sacrifices necessary either to be as patient, kind, or understanding as saints we know personally; nor will we ever be able to force ourselves into the enormous sacrifices necessary to perform the world-changing ministries of those really big saints. I wonder, however, if we might be better able to grasp onto a picture of ourselves as saints, if we changed our definition a little. I wonder if a better definition of who is a Saint is to say that a Saint is someone who has begun to really live their lives by the values shown by Jesus in the Gospels -- someone who lives as a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

We know the beatitudes, most of us know the beatitudes. There that section from Matthew chapter 5 that our Sunday School teachers and assorted grandparents made us memorize: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted... and so on. For those who really know those beatitudes, today's reading from Luke should have felt a bit strange. For the Jesus of Luke's gospel tells a different group of beatitudes. {Read verses 20b-23}

Please notice, instead of the poor in spirit who are blessed in Matthew, here it is those who are poor in everything -- the just plain poor. And here, instead of those hungry for righteousness being blessed, it is those who are hungry for, well, food. And then, just to make sure that we get the point, that Jesus really means the poor and the starving, he adds a set of "negative" beatitudes: {Read verses 24-26}. Luke's Jesus really does mean that, somehow, the poor are blessed and the rich are rejected -- that, somehow, the hungry should be happy and the stuffed full should be worried.

One of the dynamics in western modern society is a dynamic of possession beyond need. In our society, most people have more than they need of everything they could possibly need -- not all, but most. Most of us have more than enough shelter, clothing, food, clean water, energy for heat, light and transportation. Beyond "enough" we continue to acquire "more." If we define Saints as people who live by the values of God's Realm, then they are the ones who have begun to say enough is enough: they find their happiness in simplicity rather than possession.

At this point, you might be thinking of Mother Teresa, living poor on the streets of Calcutta, seeing in every unfortunate soul the living image of Jesus Christ. I admit I envision her as holding the values of Luke's beatitudes, finding her happiness within poverty. Yet I also hear the voices of Lloyd Williams and James King, people I met at my old Bronx church, who grew up in Jamaica and Antigua, with parents scratching a living out of subsistence farming and long hard factory work.

I remember hearing Lloyd and James talk about fruitcake and mangoes. They reminisced about how when they were very young had very little, the occasional special desert tasted so much better; it was a true treat which brought them incredible joy. They talked about feeling sad for their grand-children who have been seduced by the preponderance of action figures, computer games, beanie babies and designer sneakers, who always seem to need some new bauble.

Reflect, for a moment on the parts of your life that truly make you happy, in a satisfied way: family connections? good time with loved ones? appreciation of the beauty of God's earth?

The chase after more and better stuff requires surrender of all these good parts of life -- for to have more, you must work longer, harder, more often. Saints are people who have begun to make the "sacrifices" to live simply. And, incidently, when we personally acquire less, there is more to go around for others, perhaps even those who need it. I wonder what it might mean for our lives if we began to re-order them around the principles taught and lived by Jesus within the gospels.

What would it mean for us if, instead of seeking our own comfort and security, we sought to provide comfort and security for others? We would have to work for peace across the world, so that others might experience the security we take for granted. We would have to push for government policies that encourage equity and resource sharing, and personally be better stewards of the abundance we've been given. We might have to give time, energy and money to ministries that provide comfort and security for the poor throughout the world. We would have to be ready to welcome the poor into our midst as equal partners in the gospel.

What would it mean for us if, instead of seeking fame, wealth and status right here and right now, we shunned them, trusting God to provide the fame, wealth and status we truly need? We would have to offer places of honor to others. We would have to fully appreciate the efforts and hard work that others do. We would have to accept defamation, and scorn from a society which does not accept the same values. We would have to discover community among those who God gives us, instead of earning a higher-status clique along the ladder of success. And we would have to re-define success for ourselves to be something other than promoting ourselves. Our prayer would become, "Lord preserve me from the selfish desire of becoming great." This afternoon, members of First Baptist Church will be privileged to take communion over to Piedmont Gardens [An American Baptist retirement community in Oakland]. It is a privilege, because there, joining us, will be so very many who chose early in their lives to live by the values of the gospel. They left the plenty of North America for other places, where they lived in voluntary simplicity, sharing with the people who are blessed according to the Lukan beatitudes: the poor, the hungry, the weeping. Today we are privileged, indeed, blessed to share a communion with the saints.

Yet, as we share communion today, we are reminded that the gospel always is a call to new life. And even as we celebrate those we have known who were saints to us, we recognize that we too are called to walk among the saints -- to grow ever toward the values of God's Realm, however difficult those values might be. Let our resolution be to move ever closer to those who have lived as saints, and to continue to read the Gospel seriously; for our journey is continuing, and the road is long. And as we share communion today, we remember that we share it as well with the many who have walked that road, who have gone before and have discovered holiness. They have shown that the journey is possible. May God bless us as we endeavor to follow.