Laying a Foundation: History
Sirach (Ecclesiasticus): 44: 1-15; Hebrews
11:32 -12:2
November 4, 2007
by Dr. Charles Parker
I. Introduction
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Jack Blalock e-mailed me an article about the new book that came out recently of Mother Teresa’s correspondence with her spiritual advisors and superiors over much of her life. As many of you have probably read in the couple of months since the book came out, in these letters Mother Teresa shares in very dramatic terms some of her own doubts and struggles that she had with God and who God was for her. The author of the article that Jack sent seized upon these doubts as a sign of Mother Teresa’s dishonesty and even hypocrisy as a believer. But I find the acknowledgement of this kind of struggle and doubt – particularly coming from a woman whom many believe to be a saint – a very helpful witness about the nature of sainthood.
This is, of course, All-Saints Sunday, a time when we reflect together on the saints – both “official” and unofficial – who have gone before us. We at Metropolitan are blessed with a rich history of saints who have shaped and molded us over the past hundred and fifty years, and it is appropriate to spend some time honoring them today.
II. The Great Cloud of Witnesses
The writer of Hebrews would not have been bothered by this book on Mother Teresa at all: he had a very healthy appreciation for the flawed nature of saints. We spent some time with this book of Hebrews this fall, but just to remind you, Hebrews is one of the letters that we call the “General Epistles,” because unlike most of the NT epistles, which are addressed to specific communities, the general epistles are written to a more general audience. This particular letter does not have an author named, and the letter acquired its name -- “to the Hebrews” -- sometime in the second century because it seemed aimed at a Jewish Christian audience who really knew the stories of the Jewish Scriptures.
And we can see that in this passage today. The writer has just gone through Chapter 11 listing many of the great saints and heroes of Jewish tradition who endured hardships and triumphed by faith; and then he gets to the end of this chapter saying, “There are far too many additional stories to recount,” and he (or she) lists a handful of random figures who triumphed by faith or endured hardships by faith, clearly with the expectation that his audience knows their stories. But one of the interesting things about this group is that none of them is entirely virtuous characters.
Gideon was a frightened farmer who tried hard to avoid stepping into the leadership role that God had assigned for him. Jephtha caused the death of his daughter through his own rashness. Samson had notoriously challenging and unhealthy relationships with the women in his life. And David, of course, was an adulterer and murderer.
These are folks who struggled. They were challenged and they often failed. They fell on their face - sometimes in very public and humiliating ways – and they picked themselves up and kept moving.
This is a helpful reality for us to keep in mind, because I think that many of us place saints in a different class than we are in. We make them super heroes, without doubts and foibles, so that they’re not like us. And we do that, I think, because it’s easier to say, “Those folks aren’t like me. I don’t have what they have.” It’s easier to look at Saint Francis, who gave away all of his earthly possessions to feed the poor, if we can say, “he’s different from me.” We’ll sometimes go to some great lengths to avoid the humanness of our saints.
There’s a story I read (but have been unable to verify) about the famous, 7th century, Welch abbot, St. Beuno. The story goes that when doing some archeological work at his abbey, they had to disinter his bones. An anthropologist came to examine them and discovered that there were the bones of a fetus within the pelvic bones. When the anthropologist pointed this out to the Welshman in charge of the project, he remarked, “Saint Beuno was a very remarkable man.”
The writer of Hebrews gives us these names to counter this need of ours to set saints apart: these saints and heroes of the faith didn’t start out to be saints and heroes. They didn’t plan on being held up as examples of faith. They didn’t understand themselves to have a special relationship with God. They were women and men, just like we are here- who heard a call from God, didn’t know how they could answer it, but stepped up and gave it their best shot.
I have been
reading some of the prayers of St. Ephraim the Syrian who was one of the great
theologians and hymnographers of the Eastern Church. Ephraim was a deacon in the Syrian town of
Our own
patron saint, John Wesley, was an incredibly gifted man and a tireless worker. But he also wrestled with a lot of
demons. Like Samson, he had a very
tortured relationship with the women in his life, and was haunted --
particularly throughout his early life -- with a sense of his own
inadequacies. For some time after he
returned from his disastrous missionary journey to
One of my personal saints, Oscar Romero, was appointed as Archbishop of San Salvador precisely because he was such an unremarkable man, a man whom the political elite knew wouldn’t cause any waves. Twenty-seven years after those same folks had him assassinated, his voice continues to shape the life of that country.
III. Looking back, looking forward
The writer of Hebrews and the writer of Ben Sirach tell us the stories of the faithful to remind us of the people that shaped us and helped to bring us to where we are. They also tell us those stories to give us a sense of God’s work throughout history, because if we keep in mind how God has worked throughout our history, bringing life out of death and triumph out of defeat, maybe we’ll be able to muster the strength, and the courage, and the vision, to keep working when we don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.
I will be
the first to admit, that when I look at the issues that we as a church are
called on to confront, I get plenty discouraged. How do we start to attack ever growing
separation between the rich and poor in our city? How do we turn around our schools? How can we have an impact on the hatred and
violence that tear apart the
I don’t know the answers to any of those questions, but I do know that we’re going to find answers to them. How do I know? Because I can look at the hopeless situations faced by our spiritual mothers and fathers, and I can see how they persevered and kept the work of the Kingdom moving forward. I know that when they kept their eyes on Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” that they were able to throw off the obstacles placed before them. I know because our God is a faithful God, who gives us the gifts that we need to do the work that we’ve been given to do.
IV. Conclusion
All Saints Day is a day not to idolize those saints who have gone before us, but to recognize how, despite their weaknesses and faults, God’s work was accomplished through their lives. It’s a day to celebrate the fact that when they didn’t know how to go on or how God’s work was going to be done, they kept on going on and doing God’s work, and trusting that God’s will would be accomplished.
I want to close with a little bit of wisdom that hung on my wall for some time. I’m not sure who wrote it, but it goes:
"Why were the Saints, saints? Because they were cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful; patient when it was difficult to be patient. And because they pushed on when they wanted to stand still; and kept silent when they wanted to talk. And because they were agreeable when they wanted to be disagreeable."
That was all. It was quite simple, and always will be.
Thanks be to God. Amen