Saintly Sinners and Sinful Saints
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Feast of All Saints (transferred) (C), November 6, 2022.
Ephesians 1:11-23
Theologian Samuel Wells writes:
We live our lives by two stories. There’s the one we present at an interview, when we want to impress people; and there’s the other one we tell only to a counselor, a confessor, or the most trusted friend.
[Or, in the end, dare disclose to no one.]
That first story, that’s our saint story, that’s the one we’d like our name attached to. That second story, well, that’s a different story entirely– and that story, to our minds at least, is irreconcilable with the first. We are no saints [1].
If you are like most, a consideration of the saints leads in one or two directions.
The named. That’s the most likely direction - Peter, Julian of Norwich, George, Mother Teresa, and those others we know by name—Saints with a capital S—whose legacies are clothed in faith, courage, sacrifice, and even martyrdom. This is one vision that we encounter when we consider the saints –a vision that seems quite unattainable.
And yet, any true study of the Saints brings them to life beyond the heroic caricature that we might conjure. They were not without their shadows. They were not without their moments of shame. They were not without sin. They were in the world and of the world.
Perhaps consideration of the saints takes you in another direction – to those unnamed. Perhaps you think of those people who you know or have known that, while not official saints, seem to possess patience beyond the norm or moral codes so virtuous they seem other-worldly. They are just too different from us in the end.
Of course, we know, or at least suspect, that isn’t the entire story. What we’d like to be other-worldly patience, or unblemished purity, or unattainable virtue is something, but it’s not those things. No one lives just the one story, because we are, all of us, imperfect, all human beings. All sinners.
But, somehow, it is comforting to hold sainthood at a safe distance and to view the communion of saints as observers rather than as participants.
After all, we are all too familiar with our own struggles. We are intimately aware of our own shortcomings. We know what we are like at our worst, in those moments that we hope no one else ever sees or hears about, including God.
And perhaps this is what lies at the root of a fear that I hear confessed often: that we do not matter after all. (A fear I have had myself). Or perhaps this is what lies at the root of that suspicion that sits at the back of our mind and eats at the soft places of our hearts that if people knew us, truly, they would not really like us. Could not truly love us.
And yet, no one lives just the one story.
We are also, all of us, saints by virtue of our baptism and our participation in the Eucharist, where we encounter this affirmation: “With Angels and Archangels and, with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name” (BCP, 334). As one preacher notes:
The original use of the term saints, particularly by Paul, was meant to indicate all the faithful gathered to worship God. Today is not just about heroes of the faith, and it’s not even just about our own beloved departed who have gone before us. This is not ‘Some Saints Day.’ This is ‘All Saints Day.’ [2]
We are one in Christ with all believers, all saints, whether on earth or in heaven, alive or dead. Afterall, the church is but the Body of Jesus the Christ. Fully human and fully divine as the church is both heavenly and earthly.
We began our service this morning with a beloved hymn, For All the Saints.
It is a hymn that may seem only to speak of the heroes of the faith – faithful, true, and bold. But when we listen closer, we are taken on a joyful, albeit heartrending, journey – beginning with the faithfully departed, making a turn at the blest communion of which we are a part, and finding that its end is simply another beginning – a yet more glorious day.
The tune for this great text is commonly thought to be among the finest of 20th-century hymn tunes. Composed by Ralph Vaughn Williams the tune’s name is sine nomine, Latin for “without a name.” Nameless it may be, but it is also beloved, a glory to the Creator, and deeply known—how fitting for a day such as this.
While we may feel unknown, nameless, or far from sainthood, we are meant to offer ourselves to God, nonetheless. Not when we become more pious or improve our marriage; not when we are better parents to our children or when we find a job or the right job; not when we get sober or when we perfect the dish we want to bring to the Lord’s potluck, but now.
Jesus doesn’t want our designer suit, pressed and fashionable as it might be. Jesus wants our nudity – those things we are afraid to put on display. Jesus wants the real story. Only when we show up, and acknowledge our need and our brokenness, can we begin the journey to wholeness. Only when we show up naked, can we be clothed in light and come to those ineffable joys that our Creator has prepared for those who truly love Him.
As today’s Collect announces, we have already been knit together in one communion, a communion containing saintly sinners and sinful saints, the named and the unnamed, the known and the unknown alike; whether still this side of heaven or having already gone home into the eternal embrace of a loving God.
O blest communion, fellowship divine.
The risk really is that the Feast of All Saints becomes about a celebration of a story that is not ours, not with our faults and our fears and our fragility. And that can feed the fear that we are not enough; do not matter; are not worthy of remembering or of love.
Wells writes:
Every Christian makes the same mistake. We all think God wants our grand story, our All Saints’ story. But the truth is God wants the real story. Being a Christian means longing to be a saint—but, in the meantime, offering to God our soul, unwashed and un-ironed. [3]
That too is the work of a saint. It is, perhaps, our most important work. To offer, as one Eucharistic Prayer puts it, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto God.
We remember and celebrate that today, no matter how ill-fitting the name of saint may feel to us. Because here’s the Good News, no one lives just the one story; we are, all of us, both sinner and saint.
And to be a saint is to belong to God. To trust in His faithfulness and to abide in His love. And in so doing, to reveal Christ to the world.
It is to pray alongside Saint Paul:
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.
Amen.
[1] Samuel Wells, “How Then Shall We Live?: Christian Engagement with Contemporary Issues,” (New York: Church Publishing, 2017).
[2] The Rev. Whitney Rice., “All the Faithful Gathered to Worship God,” 2016, http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/files/2016/09/All-Saints-C.pdf.
[3] Wells, “How then shall we live?”