A Communion Meditation
Presented by Rev. Merlin T. Batt,
Intentional Interim Pastor
St. Matthew’s United Church of Christ
Maiden, North Carolina
All Saints’ Sunday
November 4, 2007

Scripture Lesson: Ephesians 1:1-2, 11-23
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Our liturgy this morning is so very full with the Sacraments of Baptism and Communion, and the Rite of Confirmation. As a result, there’s not much time for preaching. But I must tell you about a brief conversation I had with one of you after worship last Sunday. For the life of me I can’t remember who it was, but we were talking about the service today. The man said to me humorously, with a twinkle in his eye, “Well, Pastor, next Sunday is All Saints’ Sunday. I guess no one will show up!” The clear message in his comment was, of course, “There are no saints around here!”

Then, a day or so later, I looked ahead at the Scripture passages assigned for reading at today’s All Saints’ Sunday service, in particular the one from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, a congregation much smaller than this one, so small, in fact, it could fit in someone’s living room. It was a congregation of ordinary folks, much like us – farmers, factory workers, shopkeepers, tradesmen, teachers, homemakers, and so on. The only real difference between them and us is that, while most of us have grown up in Christian homes, most of them were former pagans. Only recently had they begun to following Jesus Christ.  They didn’t have a long tradition of Christian teaching and moral guidance behind them.

What struck me most was what Paul said about them in the letter’s salutation. Listen carefully as I read his words: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now, did you notice anything surprising in these words? He called these ordinary, everyday pagans-who-recently-became-Christians “saints”! Surely, we think, Paul must have intended his letter for, maybe, one or two of those Ephesians Christians – the extraordinarily faithful among them, the high achievers, the spiritual giants and moral athletes. But, the truth is, Paul did not write this letter to a small group within the church in Ephesus, only to those who were remarkably faithful. No, he wrote it to the whole church, as he put it, “to the saints who are in Ephesus.”

So here we have it – two contrasting meanings of the word “saint”. On the one hand, the word can refer to extraordinarily faithful Christian people like Mother Teresa or Saint Francis, in which case, as one of you said to me last Sunday, we don’t have any saints here at St. Matthews. On the other hand, the word “saint,” as it is used in the New Testament, means ordinary, unspectacular people who have been called by Jesus Christ to live lives caught up in the mercy and plans of God.

Let me say that again: in the Biblical sense of the word, a “saint” is an ordinary, unspectacular person who has been called by Jesus Christ to live his or her life caught up in the mercy and plans of God, in which case every person here today is a saint! Now, I admit, this runs against the grain of what we normally assume. And it will take some clear thinking on our part, not to mention frequent reminders, to help us re-claim the word “saint” for ourselves. But it’s worth the effort, because our God-given identity and our purpose in life are at stake!

Some few years ago, Reynolds Price, the North Carolina novelist and poet, dramatist and essayist, wrote an account of his struggle with cancer of the spine. Lying on his back in great pain and fear in Duke Hospital, Reynolds discovered the difference between what he called the efficient medical professional and the everyday saint.

His world-famous cancer specialist could barely carry on a conversation about his condition. The physician would pop into Reynold’s hospital room, examine him with lightning speed, and then rush on to another person in pain.

Reynolds contrasted his oncologist’s behavior with that of the nurses and aides who answered his calls in the predawn hours of his painful hospital stay. What he needed in his pain and fear, he said, was human concern and kindness. And what he needed he received from those women who, day and night, (in his words) “blend their professional code with the oldest natural code of all – mere human connection, the simple looks and words that award a suffering creature his or her dignity.” Reynolds called them “everyday saints” – people whose faith enabled them not to be worn down by the cares of life, whose faith taught them not to avoid those who are in need, and whose faith kept them from steeling themselves against feeling and responding to the hurt and sorrow of others.

This business of being one of God’s everyday saints is a funny sort of thing. Funny, in the sense that it is something that we already are by definition, and it is something that we choose to become. You see, if being a saint is a matter of being called by Jesus to live one’s life caught up in the mercy and plans of God, then we are saints by virtue of our baptism. In other words, your baptism in Christ defines you as a saint. The society in which we live seeks to define us in other, less honorable ways: as consumer, or commodity, or cog in a wheel, or number, or worker. But because you are baptized, you are defined by God as one of his saints. So, how many here today are baptized? Raise your hand…If you raised your hand, then you are by definition a saint - that is, you have been called by Christ to live your life caught up in the mercy and plans of God.

But that’s not the end of the story. You see, throughout our lives we must choose to become what we are.  Being one of God’s saints is not only what we are by definition, the result of being baptized; it is also what we choose to become. That’s why Jesus said to those who would follow him things like this: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you…Do to others as you would have them do to you.” You see, there is a choice to be made, not once but again and again throughout our lives, and the choices we make determine whether we become what God has named us in baptism – saints.

In a moment or two we’re going to confirm three young people in this congregation – Daniel Bost, Jordan Minteer, and Ashley Shrum. They have chosen to say “yes” to their baptism in Christ. They have not arrived at full Christian maturity (neither has any of us for that matter). These youth are only at the beginning of their Christian journey. They have much yet to learn about life, about following Jesus, about serving him in the world, about suffering for his sake. But they have made a choice, and that choice has to do with becoming more fully what they are by virtue of their baptism – saints. And while Confirmation is an important moment of choice in this regard, we all are faced every day with choices whether to become less or more what God has declared us to be - saints.

In Graham Greene’s novel, The Power and the Glory, the hero (really the non-hero) is a seedy, alcoholic priest who, after months living as a fugitive, is finally caught by the revolutionary Mexican government and is condemned to be shot. On the evening before his execution, he sits in his cell with a flask of brandy to keep his courage up, and he thinks back over what seems to him to be the failure of his life. “Tears poured down his face,” writes the novelist,

He was not at the moment afraid of damnation – even the fear of pain was in the background. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint, and a little courage. He felt like someone who had missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted – to be a saint.

The one thing that counts – to be a saint!

I’ll close with a story about a father who took his little son into a beautiful cathedral on a bright, sunny day. The sunshine shown through the many stained glass windows, and the father said to his boy, “Son, those windows show pictures of the saints. Do you know who the saints are?”

Looking up at the brilliant windows, the little boy said, “Yes, daddy. The saints are the ones who the sun shines through.”

And he was right. The saints are the ones through whom the Son of God shines, the ones through whose lives we catch a glimmer of the light of Christ. So why not be one of them? Why not be a saint? Why not keep your eyes fixed on the things of God? Why not reach out in compassion to others? Why not testify to God’s promised kingdom in the middle of the kingdoms of this world and their demands? Into this troubled, hurting, confused, and darkened world, why not let the light of God’s Son shine through your life more brightly? Why not be a saint?