For All the Saints

I enjoy reading about the saints. Even the legends that have grown up around them appeal to me. For instance, in Benjamin Britten’s “St. Nicholas Cantata” we hear that Nicholas leaped from his mother’s arms into the baptismal fount and cried “God be glorified.”

However there is a risk in such stories, a risk that we will see sanctity as something extraordinary, something that few can achieve.

However, I think that sanctity has more to do with God at work in our lives. We see this in the way Paul opens many of this letters. Paul addresses his letter to “all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints.” And to the Corinthians, that church community torn by dissention, he writes his first letter to “those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints,” and his second to “to the church of God that is at Corinth, including all the saints throughout Achaia.” He writes also “to the saints who are in Ephesus,” “to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi,” “to the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae.”

Paul is aware of the shortcomings of his readers. But he is even more aware of the grace of God at work in the churches that he founded. His thinking is in keeping with the Jewish tradition that gave us the Old Testament.

Look at the heroes of the Old Testament. Noah, with whom God made a covenant in the clouds, lay naked in a drunken stupor. Abraham was a polygamist. Jacob, with the connivance of this mother, cheated his brother out of his birthright. Joseph “made slaves of them (the people of Egypt) from one end of Egypt to the other.” Moses killed an Egyptian and had to flee for his life. The great king David was an adulterer who plotted the death of Bathsheba’s husband.

The gospels relate Peter’s denial of Jesus, Thomas’ doubting the resurrection, Paul’s murderous campaign against the early disciples.

God did not choose any of these people because of their perfection. God simply chose to work in and through them. God chooses each of us to accomplish his will in us. God loves each of us as we are, not as we think we ought to be. Faith is first of all, not believing things about God, but coming to trust that God loves me jus as I am.