Sidney UMC - All Saints Sunday - 11/05/23 - Sermon - “Do You Really Want To Be A Saint?”

                                   Sunday 11/05/23 - Sidney UMC

Sermon Title: “Do You Really Want To Be A Saint!”

Old Testament Scripture: Psalm 34:1-10, 22                                    

New Testament Scripture: Revelation 7:9-17

Gospel Lesson: Matthew 5:1-12

          For some of us, All Saints Sunday, might be a new worship experience. For some of us, maybe we have experienced many All Saints Services. This is not a service that we are required to have by Holy Scripture. It is true to say though that special recognition of saints has developed through the tradition of the church. This celebration of All Saints Sunday does not violate Holy Scripture, and thus gives us an opportunity to remember those who have gone before us.

          In some church denominations a “saint” is a special designated title for those folks that are seen as great lights of the Christian faith. For example, Mother Theresa, was formally made a Roman Catholic Saint in 2016, and is now titled “Saint Mother Theresa of Calcutta” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa). We maybe have heard names like “Saint Francis Xavier,” “Saint Augustine,” Saint Thomas Aquinas,” etc. The idea of being a “saint” is to be holy and set apart. In the United Methodist Church, we celebrate all the great lights of our two-thousand-year Christian faith. Yet, we also consider all believers, all Christians, to be saints.

          While all who follow Christ are called to be holy and set apart, we are still becoming holier and more righteous as we walk with Christ daily. Even though we who believe in Christ, are saints, we are called to continue to be perfected in Christ. In fact, in the founder of the Methodist Movement, John Wesley’s sermon called “On Perfection,” Wesley encouraged us all to “Go on unto perfection”

(https://wordsofwesley.com/libtext.cfm?srm=76#:~:text=The%20whole%20sentence%20runs%20thus,meat%20fit%20for%20babes%2C%22%20for).

          The Methodist doctrine of “Christian Perfection” is not about salvation and eternity, which are free gifts if we repent of our sin and turn to Christ, but rather it is about sanctification. Sanctification is the process of becoming holier and more righteous than you are right now. So, are we saints? Yes, I would say so, but we hopefully are also becoming even greater and holier saints. It is human nature therefore, to cite these bright lights of our faith. People like Billy Graham, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther, etc. All people in Christ are saints, and those that have went before us, are part of that great cloud of witnesses that we hear about in the scripture. Today we read some of the names of this great cloud of witnesses, and we will join them one day with Christ.

          The mentioning of the world saint is also very fairly common in the Bible. There are references to saints in both the Old and New Testaments. The Apostle Paul, in my opinion, had a particular talent of referring to saints. For example, in his final three versus to the church in Phillipi or the Philippians, this is what the Apostle Paul says in Philippians 4:21-23:

²¹ Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers and sisters who are with me greet you. ²² All the saints greet you, especially those of the emperor’s household. ²³ The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit (Phil. 4:21-23, NRSV). 

          All Christians are saints then, but we have certain bright lights that we have all lifted throughout the centuries. We also are still becoming holier and more righteous. For all of these reasons, my sermon title for this morning is called, “Do You Really Want To Be A Saint? This sermon title has a dual meaning. On the one hand if know Christ, and if we have chosen Christ as our Lord and Savior, then hopefully and very clearly, we want to be saint! I don’t think that the Christian faith is a competition, but do we want to go deeper in our walk with Christ? I am sure that John Wesley, Martin Luther, Bill Graham, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, etc. were not trying to become famous in the Christian faith, and in general. Yet, while we are all saints, who are new creations in Christ, do we truly have a desire to go deeper?

          Are we willing as living saints to live more sacrificially, love more deeply, and to get out of comfort zones more that we serve Christ by serving others? Are willing to risk a lot for Christ? The one question that I have loved to asked for years on All Saints Sunday is this, by a show of hands how many of you admire the life, faith, and work, of Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta? Please keep your hands up for a moment. For those that don’t know who Mother Teresa was, she worked with the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India. She saw and experienced human suffering in ways many of us never will. Given this, if we are still holding our hands up, here is a second question that I ask often on All Saints Sunday, how many of us want to live the life that Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta lived?

          Everyone who is in Christ is a saint, we read and heard the names, once again, of many of them this morning. Even though being great in Christ is not a competition, how many of us want to go even deeper? How many of us are willing to sacrifice more, and live more boldly for Jesus? How many of us are willing to serve more, and love deeper? This is the bigger reason why my sermon on All Saints Sunday, 2023 is called “Do You Really Want To Be A Saint?” We are saints, but I want to got deeper. I want to pursue Christ more, and love others more deeply.

          We hear this morning, in our Psalm 34:1-10, 22 reading, in 34:1, once again:

¹ I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth    (Ps. 34:1, NRSV).

          I would hope that every Christian, every saint, would aspire to bless and praising God continually. Even though we believe in Christ, and are saints now, we can continue to become even better saints. Why would want to do this though? Other than it’s the mission of the church, the mandate of gospel, and that it makes the world better, I can’t think of a reason! It is because of the hope that we have in Christ. We see this very clearly in our reading for this morning from Revelation 7:9-17. In this scripture, Christians who have just come out of the tribulation, a short period of time that scripture tells us will be horrible. In this time the Anti-Christ will run the earth, Christians will be slaughtered, and anyone does have “The Mark of the Beast” or “666” on their hand or forehead will not be able to buy or sell goods. It will be a time of great suffering, deception, and evil.

          Some Christians believe in the idea of “Dispensationalism” or what many of us commonly call “The Rapture”. In this belief, it is believed that all Christians will vanish from this earth and be taken up into heaven, before this 7-year tribulation of great suffering, evil, and deception occurs. Some Christians believe though that all Christians will live through part or all of this terrible time of tribulation, depending on their reading of the Book of Revelation.

          What is clear though is this, Christians during this time of tribulation will suffer like never before. The Book or Revelation bring us closer to the place where the devil, the anti-Christ, and the false prophet, or the unholy trinity will soon be stopped forever. Christ will return soon, and all evil and suffering will end forever. The righteous will be rewards and the wicked and unrepentant will be judged. The Book of Revelation is certainly a tough and even cutting book of scripture.

          All this being said, we have a beautiful scene of the Book of Revelation playing out in our scripture from Revelation 7:9-17 for this morning, once again. Starting in 7:9 it says, once again:

⁹ After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰ They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!” ¹¹ And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, (Rev. 7:9-11, NRSV).

          The people who remain in Christ, even through the terrible time of tribulation to come will be rewarded. Jesus, the Lamb of God, called Lamb will soon return. The “great multitude” in the scripture is “robed in white,” which is one of the reasons that some Christian clergy wear white robes and other robes. It’s sign of reverence, and sign of holiness in Christ. The great multitude in this scene in Revelation 7:9-11 also fall on there faces before Christ and worship God. This worship picks up in Revelation 7:12 saying:

¹² singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” ¹³ Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” ¹⁴ I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. ¹⁵ For this reason they are before the throne of God and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. ¹⁶ They will hunger no more and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat, ¹⁷ for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes”              (Rev. 7:12-17, NRSV).

          Beautiful words that say that in the end, all those in Christ will never experience suffering, pain, cruelty, hurt, etc. ever again. A beautiful scene of being with Christ for eternity. I love the idea of no hunger, no scorching heat, and Jesus wiping away our tears. Or to put it another way, there will be no Food Bank or Thanksgiving Baskets in heaven. Sorry Carol. We won’t need them, as we will all have everything that we need and more.

          Beyond this, Jesus this morning gives us one of the best examples of how we live as saints, and grow as saints.  In our scripture, from Matthew 5:1-12, once again, often called “The Sermon on the Mount,” or the “Beatitudes”. In this sermon Jesus tells us about holiness, and who is blessed for God. In this scripture starting in Matthew 5:1-12, it says starting in 5:1, once again:

5 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. ² And he began to speak and taught them, saying: ³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. ⁵ “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. ⁶ “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. ⁷ “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy (Mt. 5:1-7, NRSV).

          Jesus tells us blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Continuing on, Jesus concludes, once again saying in 5:8-12:

⁸ “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. ⁹ “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. ¹⁰ “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ¹¹ “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Mt. 5:8-12, NRSV).

          Jesus tells us that blessed are the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, that we are blessed in being persecuted for our faith, and we will be eternally reward for our faith and our righteousness.

          The scriptures tell us that one day will come a time of great suffering all over the earth. While all who are in Christ are saints, how far and how deep are we willing to go for Christ, the gospel, and for salvation and well being of the world? The scriptures tell us that Christ will return one day, so what do we do between now and then? We can be focused on the time of suffering to come, or we can focus on Christ, discipleship, and serving each other, until Christ returns. So, to ask the question again to us, including myself, “Do You Really Want To Be A Saint”? Amen.