Loving like the saints

Luke 6:20-31

The Rev. Sara Fischer

This is a favorite feast of mine—what I love about All Saints is that it encompasses the enormity of our tradition—so many saints, known and unknown.

All Saints Sunday is for us, as for many worshipping communities, the culmination of several holidays: All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls. Three different ways of blurring the border between death and life. All Hallows Eve is, of course, when we get glimpses of what goes on not quite beyond the grave, in the form of ghosts and ghouls. We had a great number of ghosts at our house on Friday night, as well as some monsters, superheroes, fairies, and a whole lot of frogs. All Souls, also known as All Faithful Departed, is the day that we commemorate all the everyday people in our lives whom we love but see no longer. This afternoon at Hope & Bread we will observe All Souls with a Day of the Dead altar and the opportunity for people to remember their own losses through making a small offering at that altar. All Saints, which on the calendar falls between All Hallows and All Souls (yesterday), is the day to celebrate all the Saints-with-a-capital-S. 

Today, this All Saints Sunday which is technically also All Souls Day, we celebrate saints large and small; we sing our adoration of the Saints with a capital S, and we pray in thanksgiving and in memory of the faithful departed from our own lives. 

One thing worth remembering is that nowhere in the Bible are “saints” mentioned the way that we think of them. Saints were not “super-Christians” or celebrity miracle workers. But wait, you might say, we heard the word “saints” in the letter to the Ephesians just now. The author of the letter says: “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints...” All the saints mean all the faithful people of God, including you and me as we try to live into our vocation as Christians here and now. 

Who is your favorite saint? Who has been a saint in your own life? Your assignment for this morning is to think about those questions, and give thanks for those saints in your heart when you come to the altar for the Eucharist. 

So if a saint is not a super-Christian or a miracle worker, what does it mean to be a saint? 

There’s a wonderful scene in Fiddler on the Roof, where Tevye’s second daughter has just announced she’s marrying for love. This is a foreign concept to him and so he asks his wife: “Do you love me?” She of course has never thought of such a thing and thinks he’s nuts. He asks again:

Tevye: Golde, I'm asking you a question. Do you love me?
Golde: You're a fool!
Tevye: I know. But do you love me?

Golde: Do I love you?
For twenty-five years, I've washed your clothes,
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house, 
Given you children, milked the cow.
After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now? 

Golde may not know how to talk about love, but she knows how to practice love.

We practice something as we try to get it right. There’s a reason why we make and re-make our baptismal promises four times a year. None of us will ever be perfect Christians. (There was only one of those and he would never have used the word Christian or saint to describe himself.) But we must keep doing those things that we feel God calls us to do as followers of Jesus. Each of us has our own particular way of letting the love of God move through us. To be a saint is not to be a perfect or a super-Christian but to let the love of God move through us so that we make some small difference in the lives of the people around us and so that we might, like the big Saints-with-a-capital S, point to God. 

Think of that sixth grade teacher you loved, or that family member on the other side of the veil whom you miss so much and remember today—think about what you remember. I’m guessing it’s the small acts of love, kindness, and respect that they showed you. This is what the saints show us—how to love in big dramatic ways like Jesus or like Mother Teresa, but also, and more often, the saints in our hearts and all around us show us how to love in small ways, like the ways that Golde loves Tevye. 

When we make and remake our baptismal promises, we remember that these are the things we strive to do, to practice: prayer, communion, evangelism, justice, peace, respect. The sum of these is love. Love is the thread that weaves through our baptismal promises. It is also woven through the blessings and woes in today’s gospel. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.”

These blessings and woes in Luke’s gospel are not meant to divide us. Jesus is not saying “you are blessed” and “woe to you.” Rather, he is reminding us that we are all connected. I cannot have peace if you do not have peace, I cannot enjoy the riches that I have if my neighbor is living in poverty. 

I recently came across a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks called “Paul Robeson,” in tribute to that wonderful singer and civil rights activist. In it she writes 

we are each other’s harvest:
we are each other’s business:
we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

We are each other’s harvest. We are each other’s business. This is Luke’s vision of the kingdom. This is borne out by what follows: Do to others, as you would have them do to you. Give to others as you would have them give to you. This is what saints do. All the saints. 

Sainthood—like everything else in Christian life—is not about worthiness, but about love. Our worthiness is neither here nor there. For a long time Tevye and Golde felt that love was neither here nor there and yet, it turns out to have been here and there all along. Love is everything, everywhere.

As we renew our baptism promises of love, let us remember all the saints who have gone before us and practiced their faith, their big and small ways of loving, as we practice ours, with God’s help, in the name of Christ.