Sermon: Saints

Grace Presbyterian Church

November 5, 2017, All Saints’ A

Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3

 

Saints

 

It is one of the quirks of the liturgical calendar that Reformation Day (which we marked last week) and All Saints’ Day fall on consecutive days, October 31 and November 1, respectively. They would seem in many ways to be quite different occasions, maybe even incompatible in the eyes of some. The Reformation of course marked, in the long term, a reaction against and ultimately departure from the larger church and many of its practices, and most (though not all) Protestant groups disposed of the practice of venerating saints in their attempts to distance themselves from the practices of that larger church. In other words, most Protestant church traditions don’t have “saints” in the formal sense.

But of course we do have “saints.” We may not use the title, but we most certainly do have “saints.” And you know of whom I am speaking.  We as a congregation have borne the departure of Art Schenk and John Welch from our fellowship since this time last year. I did not have the chance to meet either of them (although our paths may have crossed with John's many years ago, in Tallahassee),, but the roles they played in the life of this congregation will linger on in the memory of many of you.

The word “saint,” still, is intimidating to us. We might, at our imagination’s most vivid moments, conjure up a scene something like that found in a reading from Revelation that we heard a few weeks ago on World Communion Sunday, the “great multitude … from every nation” found exulting in the salvation of God while rejoicing and praising and worshiping constantly. It’s a glorious scene to be sure, but not necessarily one in which we see ourselves; as the one elder describes them as having come through the “great ordeal” (likely a reference to early examples of persecution finding its way to the early church), we realize that, generally, that’s not us – we don’t know persecution for our faith. 

As for the reading from Psalm 34 today, it can sound awfully intimidating, or perhaps more of a challenge than we feel ourselves ready to meet. How often do we feel like we could accurately quote just that first verse? Do we really "bless the Lord at all times"? Can any of us truthfully say that God's praise will "continually be in my mouth"? Sometimes these psalmists set an extremely high standard, and while we might be uplifted by the poetry and musicality of it all, we might also feel just a bit overwhelmed by it and end up feeling a long way from being any kind of "saint" even if the psalmist isn't using that word to describe the singer.

But that’s where the account from 1 John comes in. Written to a church that has apparently suffered not persecution but division, this letter focuses on getting through such trials as we do face, and doing so in a way that gives off visible evidence of being those who are “called children of God.” 

This very short passage still makes that point we need to hear; we really are children of God, even if the world doesn’t see it. But then, if the world doesn’t know what God looks like, how would it know what a child of God looks like? What we will be, we don’t know; but what we know is that on that day, whenever it may be, that God is at long last visible and revealed to us … “we will be like [God], for we will see [God] as [God] is.” This is the hope we have in us.

Of course we don’t get there by our own superhuman will. All that goes into becoming whatever we will become is a gift of God, as the Apostle Paul would jump in to remind us at about this point. 

So, we go forward. We “press on." One thing this reading reminds us is that, to borrow another popular phrase, “the best is yet to come.” 

The risk of an occasion like All Saints’ Day is that we get caught up in glorifying the past. That’s particularly a risk for a church like ours, where that list of those who have departed from us in past years can seem overwhelming and even crushing, and we are tempted to get caught in nostalgia for those days when those departed saints were filling pews all around the sanctuary.

But the “glory days” of the body of Christ are not back there. They’re not behind us; they are still ahead. Anything in this earthly life is not going to be “glory days,” folks. We may not know what the future of this congregation or any other congregation is going to be, but we know what the future – what the hope – of the body of Christ is.

And so, toward that hope, we press on, "saints" or otherwise. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #326, For All the Saints; #729, Lord, I Want to Be a Christian; #804, Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart!