For All the Saints

That's what  All Saint's Sunday is about –
to set aside a Sunday each year to remember and to thank God for all those saints down through the
ages,
whose names may not be recorded in the church history books,
but whose names are certainly written in the Book of Life,
and whose names and faces are recorded in our hearts and our memories.
Again I ask the question, What about you?
What kind of obituary or eulogy are you writing for yourself?
How will you be remembered?


Isaiah 25:6-9
Hebrews 11:1-3, 12:1-2a

All Saints Sunday

O.K., here’s a little test:
As you know, every year Time Magazine picks a “Man of the Year” – it’s a pretty big deal, the face is printed on the cover and articles are written to justify why the editors think this person is “Man of the Year.” 
So, can you name the last five people who were chosen “Man of the Year”?
(Can you name any five?”

Each year the Nobel peace prize is awarded to an individual with world-wide attention.
Can you name the last winners of the Nobel peace prize?  (Any 5?)

Each year a Miss America is chosen and we all watch eagerly rooting on our favorites and anticipating the judges decision to pick the most perfect, the most talented, the most poised,
the most beautiful young women from the whole pool of thousands all across the country.
So, can you name the last 5 Miss Americas?

Millions of Americans watch and follow college football in the fall – and each year the most outstanding offensive player in the country is awarded a Heisman Trophy.
Can you name the last 5 winners of the Heisman Trophy?

Can you name the last 5 MVP’s from the NFL?
Can you name the last 5 MVP’s from the NBA?
Can you name the last 5 MVP’s from the NHL?
Can you name the last 5 MVP’s from the National Baseball League?
Can you name the winners of the last five World Series?

Can you name the five wealthiest people in the world?
Can you name the five wealthiest people in the country?

A while back, researchers at PBS came up with a list of religious figures who have most influenced Americans in the twentieth century.
Can you name five people who might be on such a list?

Some of the people on the PBS list included:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor murdered by the Nazis;
Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science;
Mohandas Ghandi, the Indian spiritual leader;
Billy Graham, the American evangelist;
Pope John XXIII, who started Vatican 2;
Martin Luther King, Jr, the pastor and civil rights activist; and
Mother Teresa, who worked among the poor in Calcutta.
(According to PBS , these men and women have influenced our faith and shaped our beliefs as Christians in our lifetime;
but, I wonder if any of those people would be your own personal list.)

Today, along with churches all over the world, we celebrate what we call All Saints Sunday –
a time for us to remember and to hold up those people who have influenced our faith.  

While the world bombards us with messages about what is important – wealth, beauty, influence, business acumen, sports stars –
and for the most part, we think we buy into those messages and ideas –
when it comes right down to it, we have a difficult time identifying specific people as “stars” in those fields, don’t we?

But, when I ask you to think about specifically who has influenced your faith – who has helped you to believe what you believe today, you know who would be on that list, don’t you?

And the persons you and I think of will not likely to be on any PBS television special, are they?
But, they have helped us to be believers.
They have enabled us to be persons of faith ourselves.
They are our personal saints.
And, we all have them.
Timothy had his mother, Eunice, and his grandmother, Lois, and his good friend, Paul.

It is good for us to take time to recall and to remember and to “celebrate” those who have influenced us personally in our faith.

Most of the folks that we remember will never be in any church history book.
There will never be any days of commemoration in the church calendar set aside to honor and remember them.
No,  they are really, just ordinary folks like you and me, aren’t they? –
but in the course of seeking to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ,
in striving to love the Lord with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind,
they ended up touching our lives in ways that changed us and had a profound effect on who we are today.

I may not remember any one thing in particular that they taught me, but I do remember them.
Somehow, by their example and witness and faithfulness to the love and grace of God, they made an indelible mark on me.

And what about you?
Who are the ones you remember?
Who are the saints in your life who brought you to this place today so that here you are in church this morning to worship and praise God,
to hear God's word,
and to celebrate God's love?!

That's what this All Saint's Sunday is about –
to set aside a Sunday each year to remember and to thank God for all those saints down through the
ages,
whose names may not be recorded in the church history books,
but whose names are certainly written in the Book of Life,
and whose names and faces are recorded in our hearts and our memories.

Some of them are long gone and long forgotten,
others are more recently departed whom we remember today,
and some of them are still alive and still play a part in our lives.

But the one thing that all these saints have in common is their love for the Lord,
and their willingness to allow God to use them in reaching out to and ministering to others,
allowing the grace, love, compassion, and
generosity of God to shine through them and flow out from them to us and to those around us.

Like a stained glass window depicting the saints of times past,
what makes them a saint is that the light shines through.

And, on this All Saints' Sunday, as we remember the special people in our lives, the question that each one of us must face is,
"Will anyone remember me?
Will I be remembered with fondness and gratitude and thanksgiving on some All Saints' Day 10, 20, 40 years from now?"

Think about this for a minute:
We have encountered lots and lots of people in our lives, haven’t we?
–  relatives, friends, colleagues, teachers, neighbors –
lots of people.
Why is it that some of them stand out in our memories,
while so many others are just there?
What makes the difference in how we remember someone?

Matthew gives us a clue:
“The greatest one among you must be your servant. . . . whoever humbles himself will be made great.”

Once again, I’m afraid the church has been so works centered throughout history, that we tend to
associate holiness with achievement.
But when I read in Genesis that we are created in God’s image,
and that God looked upon all God created
and was very pleased,
I don’t see anything there that any of us achieved to gain such favor, do you?
It was simply God s choosing, and that is why Jesus can say so boldly in the Gospel of John:
“You did not choose me, I chose you."

Likewise, we are not removed from sainthood because of anything we might have done against God.
As someone once wrote,
There are no saints without a past,
and there are no sinners without a future.
You see, sinner is NOT the opposite of Saint,
rather they go hand in hand,
and that goes for St. Peter, and St. Paul, and all the saints in Drexel Hill and every where else in the world!
We are not saints because of what we do or don't do. . .
We are not saints because of what we believe or disbelieve. . .
We are saints because God has chosen to take us as part of God's own self.

As the famous Jesuit philosopher,
 Tielhard de Chardin once said:
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

If Jesus stands for anything, he stands for the undeniable fact that God has willfully and purposefully
chosen and hallowed the human condition.

An old Zen Master once said,
Before I was enlightened, I chopped wood and carried water,
but now that I m enlightened, I chop wood and carry water. (1)

There is another story about a master who announced to the brothers in the order that a young monk had reached an advanced state of enlightenment.
The news caused a stir in the monastery.
Some of the members found the young monk and asked:
Is it true that you have reached enlightenment?

The young monk replied. “It is.”
They asked, “And how do you feel now?”
The young monk replied, “As miserable as ever.”

I guess you could say, "Saints are people too."

Sainthood does not deny our humanity,
it acknowledges our humanity.
It isn’t what you achieve,
it’s what God has achieved in you that sanctifies you and makes you holy.

Now having said all this, it's also true that we need only watch  Fox News or CNN for a few minutes to know that we are fully capable of denying this holiness within us.
We can abuse it and profane it,
we can obscure God s presence within us to where it nearly invisible,
but we cannot make it go away!

The people that I remember, the saints in my life, were people like that!
And I suspect that the people that you remember on this All Saints' Sunday share those same qualities and characteristics.

And so once again we get back to that question, Will I be remembered?
Will you be remembered in the years to come?
And, how will we be remembered?

Doesn't it seem to make sense that if we want to be remembered in the same way that we remember with gratitude and thanksgiving the saints in our lives,
then we need to be developing those same traits and qualities and characteristics that Jesus holds out before us today?

We are called to be loving, kind, compassionate, generous, faithful people.

This is the way God created us to be,
and when we are anything less than that,
we diminish our own lives,
and we diminish the lives of those around us.

But when we live according to God's will,
we end up experiencing life to it's fullest,
and we bring joy and happiness to those around us.

And those are the kind of people that we remember!

I continue to be fascinated by the history of this congregation.

85 years ago some 26 people met to begin a new church here in this new community of Drexel Hill.
They had no way of knowing that in two or three years the bottom would fall out of the economy.

And yet, those folks continued to come together, continued to envision a church –
teaching and practicing the faith in the community.

In the midst of the depression, they continued to dream and to plan –
and within ten years, they acted on their dream by agreeing to finance and build a new building.

What faith that took!

Again, they had no way of knowing that just as construction began the country would begin engagement in a world war that profoundly affected what would happen here over not only the next five years, but over the next twenty as well.

Those folks had to be generous people of vision, faith, commitment, obedience, and dedication to Jesus Christ to do something like that so many years ago.

They were people who were looking not only at the present, but to the future as well.

These are the saints that we remember today.
And some of them are still sitting right here among us!

Again I ask the question, What about you?

What kind of obituary or eulogy are you writing for yourself?

How will you be remembered?

And please don't say, "Maybe next year –  then I'll become involved and be more generous and more compassionate."
No, it's either now or never.
The habits of a lifetime do not change overnight.
They are developed and molded every day of our lives.

How do you want to be remembered?
Do you want to be remembered in the same way that we remember those special saints in our own lives?
Well, then, begin living today in a way that puts into practice what Jesus teaches, in a way that follows the example of those special people in our lives.

Let love, compassion, mercy, peace, humility, generosity, graciousness characterize your life.
Take a serious look at yourself and see if you are becoming the person you want to be,
the person God made you to be.

Strive for the qualities that you admire and respect in others so that you, too,
might be numbered among the saints that we honor and thank God for today.

Amen.

The congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, heard this sermon as a part of their worship service October 30, 2011.