Sunday
11/06/16 Freeville/Homer Avenue UMC’s
Sermon Title: “What it means to be a saint”
Old Testament
Scripture: Psalm 149
New Testament
Scripture: Ephesians 1:11-23
Gospel Lesson:
Luke 6:20-31
My friends, my sisters and brothers, welcome again on this
our All Saint’s Sunday, and this the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. This
Sunday that is twenty-five Sundays after the Holy Spirit moved in Jerusalem on
the day of Pentecost, and the Christian Church was born.
This past Tuesday, November 1st, was also All
Saint’s Day. On November 1st every year, many Western Christian
Churches honor the great men and women who have gone on before us, and who have
served God and the church. Since we don’t usually have a church service on a
Tuesdays though, we have taken All Saint’s Day and turned it into All Saint’s
Sunday.
This means that the scriptures that we have for this
morning are the All Saint’s Day scriptures from Tuesday November 1st,
and this worship service then, has largely been planned around All Saint’s Day.
So once again, what is All Saint’s Day, and why do we
celebrate it? Well here is one definition of All Saint’s Day that I used in my
November newsletter article: “All Saints' Day, also known as All Hallows'
Day, Hallowmas, Feast of All Saints, or Solemnity of All Saints, is a Christian festival celebrated
in honour of all the saints, known and unknown. In Western Christianity, it is celebrated on
1 November by the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Methodist
Church, the Lutheran
Church, and other Protestant churches. The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Eastern Catholic churches celebrate
it on the first Sunday after Pentecost”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints%27_Day).
So All Saint’s Day, and All Saint’s Sunday, is a day that
we celebrate all of the saints of the church. Given this, what I want to talk
about this morning, is “what it means to be a saint”.
Now to begin this, I am not talking about a professional
football team that is in New Orleans. I can imagine that the requirements to be
a New Orleans Saints Football player are a little bit different than what I am
talking about this morning.
So what is a Saint?
What does it mean to be a Saint? In the Roman Catholic Church, sainthood is
title conferred by a Pope. This title is conferred after miracles are reported
to have occurred around that exemplary person’s name.
A general way to look at what a saint is though, is someone
who serves Jesus Christ, the church, and who did everything they could to
spread the gospel and to make the world better.
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a saint
can be defined as:
1.
One officially recognized especially through canonization as preeminent for
holiness.
2a: One
of the spirits of the departed in heaven: angel.
3a: One
of God's chosen and usually Christian people.
3b:
A member of any of various Christian bodies.
4:
One eminent for piety or virtue.
5:
An illustrious predecessor.
So we have a lot of definitions of what a saint is on this
All Saint’s Sunday. Generally speaking as I said though, anyone that loved
Jesus Christ and served the church, is in our church honored this day. In fact,
we honor some people who have passed on to be with God within the past few
years this morning, by having read their names aloud to organ chimes. Some of
us might know many of the names that were read, but some might not.
Today is also a day that we get to remember those first
disciples of Jesus Christ, most of which according to church tradition were
brutally killed for living and professing the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is a
special holiday that we remember the first recorded Christian Martyr, Stephen,
who was stoned to death in the Book of Acts. Today we remember the Apostle
Paul, and the many other Godly men and women recorded in the Bible.
Today we remember the many men and women throughout history
that loved Jesus, and love him still. Men and women who sacrificed so much, so
that people would know Jesus, so that this very church would be here today, and
so that the world would be better. I think of many of the great saints of the
church today, such as Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint
Lawrence, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Saint Mother Theresa, and Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.
You see in the United Methodist Church, we don’t grant
formal titles of sainthood, but we acknowledge all people who have lived, sacrificed,
suffered, and have worked to build the world that Jesus Christ envisioned.
So many of these saints’ names and their stories however, have
been lost to history. Some of these saints have no know burial plots or no headstones.
Their names have been forgotten, and they are not recorded in any history
books. These many, are people that gave all they had, loved boldly, served the
sick, served the hungry, and served the less fortunate. Some of these many were
brutally killed, and some of them are still being brutally killed today. These
are the saints who are nameless to history, but faithful for eternity. People
who boldly proclaimed and lived the gospel of Jesus Christ, and some of them
died for doing so.
For some of us though, becoming like
Jesus Christ, being sanctified, being purified, and being made into the image
of God is born through suffering, hardship, and struggle.
What I am trying to say my brothers
and sisters, is that I fear that some versions of modern day Christianity in
Western culture do not teach the full reality of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It
would seem that some churches teach of the great joy of Jesus Christ, the love
of the church, and the power of our Christian faith. All of these things are
great things, and we should teach them. Yet are we teaching people that our
faith might actually cost us something?
For example, if you felt God calling
you to illegally enter the country of North Korea to spread the gospel and
serve the people, would you do it? Would you risk your life, and everything you
had, if you felt called by God to do that?
While all people who have passed on to
be with the Lord are celebrated by us this day as saints, how far are we
willing to go?
In the Roman Catholic Church, the goal
of every layperson is to become a saint. In the United Methodist Church
tradition, we would say that the goal of our lives is become like God, like
Jesus. We call this becoming “Entirely Sanctified”, purified, and made righteous,
as to be in the full image of God. This is the fullness, the maximum extent of
what it means to be a saint. This means that when people look upon a person
like this, they see holiness, love, righteousness, and a saintly person.
For so many of the great saints of the
church though, there path to this sainthood or this “Entire Sanctification” was
one of incredible suffering. According to church tradition all but one of the
original twelve disciples died brutal deaths. Most of them were under heavy
persecution to stop preaching the gospel, and to stop living it. Christian men
and women in the Roman Empire were fed to lions, killed in the gladiator coliseum,
and sometimes publically executed. The Apostle Paul wrote some of his best
epistles or letters from the New Testament, while in jail in Rome.
You see for some of us, “what is means
to be a saint,” is to put our very life on the line, believing we are doing
what God has called us to.
In briefly looking at our gospel of
Luke reading from this morning, Jesus gives us what is commonly known as, the “Sermon
on the Plain”. The “Sermon on the Plain” is a shorter version of the famous “Sermon
on the Mount” in the Gospel of Mathew.
In this “Sermon on the Plain,” Jesus
tells us who is blessed by God, and how we are supposed to live. Jesus tell us
that the poor are blessed, that the hungry are blessed, that those who weep are
blessed, and that blessed are those stand firm to teaching and living the
gospel” (Lk. 6:20-22, NRSV).
Jesus then says woe to the rich, to
the full, to the laughing, and woe to those who speak falsely (Lk. 6:24-26,
NRSV). Jesus is saying here, if you have wealth, if you have extra, then take
care of the poor, the suffering, and the weak, for we are called by God to do
this. Jesus said, no excuses, I am calling you to help those who are less fortunate.
Jesus then tells us to “love your
enemies, do good for those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for
those who abuse you” (Lk. 6:27-28, NRSV).
Jesus goes on to say, “If anyone
strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away
your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you;
and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as
you have them do to you” (Lk. 6:29-31, NRSV).
Friends these are tough and
challenging words that Jesus gives us in this “Sermon on the Plain,” and we are
all called to do our best over our lifetimes to do all that Jesus taught us.
This is the road to a deeper saintliness, to “Entire Sanctification”.
Of the many saints of the church that
I admire, one of my biggest heroes is a Lutheran pastor and theologian named
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived in Germany during the World War
II era. Bonhoeffer opposed immediately Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime.
Bonhoeffer opposed what Hitler and the Nazis stood for, and especially opposed
the mass murder of Jews and others in the Holocaust camps. Bonhoeffer said that
he was a follower of Jesus Christ, and as such, we don’t mass murder people,
and we certainly don’t do the things that Hitler did. Bonhoeffer took a stand
for the oppressed, and stood for justice.
In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book “”The Cost of Discipleship,” he
talks about two types of grace from God. Bonhoeffer talks about “Cheap Grace”,
grace from God that we are all offered freely and abundantly. Bonhoeffer tells us
that the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ is available to anyone who
repents and accepts this gift.
Bonhoeffer then tell us that while we all offered “Cheap
Grace,” that often to follow Jesus Christ more deeply, means pursuing “Costly
Grace”. You see for standing against Adolph Hitler and the oppressive Nazi
Regime, Bonhoeffer was hung and killed. He was martyred for holding to the gospel.
Today he is remembered as a great hero of the Christian faith, and there entire
seminary classes are offered on him and his teachings.
To illustrate this difference between “Cheap Grace”, and “Costly
Grace”, Bonhoeffer said that “Costly Grace” is grace that can be said like
this: “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).
While
on this All Saints Sunday we honor all of the men and women of God that have
went before us, some of us are called to have great burdens, hardships, and
sufferings, for Jesus Christ. Are we willing then to be open to God’s “Costly
Grace”, or are we just open to God’s “Cheap Grace”. For some of us becoming a saint
means that we risk it all, that we give it all, and that we might meet a bitter
end for promoting and living the gospel of Jesus Christ, the hope of the world.
So friends, brothers and sisters, let us this day remember
all of the men and women throughout the centuries that have served God, loved
Jesus, and made the church what it is today. Today remember, for some we speak their
names, believing that we will see them again one day on glory. I bring this
message to you in the name of Jesus, and the in the remembrance of all of the
saints of the church. Amen.
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