You Are A Saint
All Saints Sunday
November 4, 2007
Stewardship Sunday
Luke 6:20-31
By Pastor Tom Kadel
There’s a great Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy is chiding Charlie Brown. “I’ve just examined my character and I find it to be without flaw. What I am going to do is hold a ceremony and give myself a medal and then I’m going to give a wonderful speech. I am going to receive myself and congratulate myself in the receiving line.” Then in the final frame, Lucy gets that Lucy look on her face and says, “You know, when you are a saint you have to do everything by yourself.”
Not so fast, Lucy! Today, on this All Saints Sunday, you’re going to discover that it’s just the other way around for the saints.
Good morning, brothers and sisters in Christ. Or, today may I say, Good morning you saints of God!
Did you know that you are a saint? Maybe not in the way that Lucy thinks she’s a saint – a person without a flaw, as she says. You’ve probably got flaws and if you don’t, there’s some water I want to see you walk on. Of course, you’ve got flaws. We’ve all got flaws.
But it’s not being flawless that makes you a saint. It’s water -- the water of your baptism. The water that opened the door between you and God, the water that flowed over you with a promise from God that nothing can ever drive God away from you. And if you’ve got God, you are a saint because God makes you one every time you seek forgiveness, every time you humble yourself before God, every time you let God’s Spirit move you into action to care for someone else God loves just as much. You are a saint alright – not a Lucy-saint, but a Christ-saint.
Now, Lucy was dead wrong about something else, too. She said, “You know, when you’re a saint you have to do everything by yourself.” Nope, it’s exactly the opposite. By ourselves we really can’t do much, can we? My gifts to world hunger or even to the Shepherd’s Shelf wouldn’t make much of a dent in hunger around the world or here in our community. My volunteer time wouldn’t make much of a difference, either. I could give away all my money and do nothing but volunteer and I still wouldn’t make much of a difference. And that’s why God invented the church instead of sending each of us saints out to minister to the world all by ourselves.
When we think of church, we often think of crawling out of bed on a Sunday morning to get here for worship. And worship is vital and as far as I’m concerned, I would be lost without it. But worship is just one thing the church does together. And even if you add in Sunday School and the Christian education it provides our children and adults, that’s only two of the things the church does together. Church is much bigger than that.
First of all, properly understood, the church includes everyone who has ever followed Christ in any place and in any time. That’s what All Saints Sunday is really about – thanking God for all those saints who have gone before us and have passed this incredible faith on to us. Some of those saints I’ve known – like my Mom and Dad. Most, I won’t meet until the kingdom comes fully and I get to meet martyrs who died in Rome’s Coliseum or died on crosses all over the place or who gave their lives willingly to save the lives of others and on and on.
Some of the saints we thank God for today lived big public lives like Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa and people like that. Most of the saints lived much smaller lives, but found their own ways to pass on the faith.
But all of the saints were part of this thing we call the church. Lucy couldn’t have been more wrong when she said, “when you are a saint you have to do everything by yourself.” Actually, when you are a saint, you do nothing at all by yourself. We do together what we cannot do alone.
And that pretty much brings us to the second emphasis of this Sunday – our financial giving. I’ve got to tell you that months ago, when I realized that we had scheduled Commitment Sunday on All Saints Sunday, I thought to myself, “How in the world am I going to link those two things?” I struggled with that until I came across that very Peanuts cartoon I’ve been referring to. When Lucy said, “When you are a saint you have to do everything by yourself,” she, in her negative and self-absorbed kind of way pointed me in the right direction.
When you are a saint you don’t do anything by yourself. Your ministry and your giving are practically nothing all by themselves. But together with the ministry and giving of others, you are really part of something incredibly powerful. But maybe you don’t know about that because you don’t see it all.
There’s a story told about a truly Godly man, a man so Godly that even the angels rejoiced at the sight of him. But the man himself had no notion that he was holy. He just went about his days diffusing goodness the way flowers unselfconsciously diffuse their fragrance. His holiness lay in the fact that he saw each person as beloved of God and served them because God loved them. He saw nothing extraordinary in that.
One day an angel said to him, “I have been sent to you by God. Ask for anything you wish and it will be given to you. Would you wish to have the gift of healing?” “No,” said the man, “I’d rather God did the healing himself.” “Well,” continued the angel, “would you want to bring sinners back to the path of righteousness?” “Oh no,” said the man, “it’s not for me to touch human hearts. That is the work of Christ.” “Okay,” the angel went on, “would you like to be such a model of virtue that people will be drawn to imitate you?” “No,” the man answered quickly, “that would make me the center of attention.”
“Hmmm,” said the angel, “I’ve got my orders. You get a wish. Tell me one or I’ll have to force one on you.” “Well, then,” the man said after a long pause, “I shall ask for this: let good be done through me without my being aware of it.” So it was decreed that the holy man’s shadow would be endowed with miraculous properties whenever it fell behind him. So everywhere his shadow fell behind him, the sick were healed, justice was restored, the land became fertile to grow food, those weighed down by sorrows would know joy. But the man knew nothing of it because these things always happened out of his sight.
Your Commitment Card casts a big shadow. The money you commit through it will join with the money committed by so many others and miracles happed here at CLC and around the world – you just may never see them. You send doctors to primitive parts of the world to heal the sick. You work for justice for the periphery people here and around the world. You make arid lands fertile all over the world so that crops can be grown and starving people can eat. You provide ministries of all sorts here at CLC and around the world to bring joy to those weighed down by sorrow.
Now maybe you don’t see these things, but they happen because of you and your gifts. Saints combine their generosity with that of others and miracles happen again and again and again. Commitment Cards are not a fundraising gimmick, they are miracle-makers.
So, rise up, you saints of God! Move your commitment up just one step and the miracles will multiply. Move your commitment up to a tithe and God can really get to work here at CLC and around the whole world. Rise up, you saints of God! Let’s make some miracles! Because when you’re a saint you never have to do anything by yourself.
Amen
The peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
