All Saints Day, when we remember all those,
regardless of their acknowledged sainthood, or their obscurity,
who have died in the faith,
the capital letter Saints and the small letter saints,
the obvious Saints and the quiet, hidden and forgotten saints,
a day especially for celebrating all the saints
who don’t have their own day on the church calendar.
And then there’s the next day, November 2, All Souls Day,
when we remember all the faithful departed,
our own Memorial Day.
As we came in this morning
we saw memorialized there around the baptismal font
loving reminders of all those who have died in the last year:
members of the congregation or their family members
or close friends.
So this is a time to be reminded
of the common theme of mortality – Death.
Now these Saints, we may note, were often martyrs,
and all of the Saints are dead.
Saints are different from heroes.
With Saints it’s not all happy endings and success stories.
The reading from the Book of Wisdom states
“In the eyes of the foolish … their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction …
in the sight of others they were punished”
The passage then goes on to say
that they were being disciplined and tested by God,
refined like gold in the furnace, and like a sacrificial burnt offering. This is the discipleship process
that anyone who is a Saint is called to go through.
This is the spiritual process that Jesus called his disciples into.
To follow Jesus faithfully is not just a one time altar call,
being fairly regular in church attendance
and keeping your nose clean.
Be assured that simply by being initiated into the household of God in baptism
we are now susceptible to this refining process in our lives.
It goes with the territory, part of the deal when we’re baptized.
Jesus, the spiritual master, is mightily present with us
as Resurrection Spirit, Holy Spirit,
doing spiritual housecleaning within us.
And I have learned from experience over the years
that if I don’t attend to what needs attention in my life
- spiritually, emotionally, behaviorally, relationally -
life is going to hit me up side the head - over and over again,
as much as it takes,
until I get the lesson,
until I awaken to my need for God’s incomparable grace, unconditional mercy and healing love,
and I start cooperating with,
instead of frustrating, this process of refinement.
You see, I have the belief that we are all saints,
and I don’t mean goody-two-shoes kinds of people
who are always sweet and smiley and self-effacing.
We are people upon whom Jesus has put a claim
and now there’s no use resisting.
You want life to work better for you?
Stop resisting and pay more attention to Jesus.
Remember he was the guy
who told Peter, Andrew, James and John
to push their boats out into the deep
after fishing all night and not catching anything.
And now when he tells them to cast their nets
all the fish in the lake make a bee line for the boat,
coming at the call of Jesus.
But then we humans aren’t half so cooperative as the fish
so that it often takes a lot more to get us to realize
that the One we call Savior actually can save us,
save us from ourselves.
Lazarus died.
He was gravely ill when his sisters sent the message to Jesus,
but Jesus had purposely stayed away
and he even informed his disciples that Lazarus was dead
before he started back to Bethany.
And indeed by the time he gets to Bethany
Lazarus has now been dead long enough in that climate
for significant decay.
There could be no disputing of the fact that he was dead.
Jesus was being very intentional in his delaying
and this was to serve a purpose in the school of discipleship
for Mary and Martha and those with them and his own disciples.
This was to refine their faith in a severe way,
through the intense personal experience common to all humanity,
the death of one we love.
For when we have come face to face with death
and discovered God with us,
discovered that nothing can separate us from the Love of God,
then we know that faith is simply trusting that reality,
and this will carry us through anything
and reveal our nascent potency as saints.
Jesus came to raise Lazarus from the dead,
the brother of two women who had great faith in him,
coming with disciples who ought to know what he could do.
And he encounters
“If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Here was the Resurrection and the Life
standing before them personified in Jesus,
and they couldn’t look up from their tears
to catch even the possibility of hope
that Jesus’ presence at that moment might make a difference.
It was enough to make a grown man cry.
But, of course, these tears that Jesus wept were more than frustration.
This was also Jesus taking within himself all their grief,
all their sorrow, all their hopelessness and despair.
“Take away the stone,” he tells them,
and when Martha protests
because she anticipates the corruption of the body,
Jesus’ rebuke must have come like a bucket of cold water
splashed in her face.
“Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”
Then the only one present realizing faith in Jesus at that moment
was Lazarus – and he was dead.
But the voice of Jesus is not to be resisted,
like the fish swimming into the net
Lazarus responds to those words shouted into the cave tomb
and bound as he was, the burial cloth wound about both legs,
he somehow managed to hop up out of the tomb,
so powerful was that voice.
What they all went through, Mary and Martha, their friends, the disciples,
from grief
to what must have been a huge fright
seeing a dead man emerge from his tomb
to unspeakable joy.
Such an occasion will change a person – most profoundly.
That’s how saints get formed.
Jesus says to each one us,
“Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”
We could see the glory of God being worked right here in us
if we would believe, if we would trust,
if we would not resist quite so much.
We would be Saints.
The potential is there.
We can be so much more than we are right now.
That is always the case.
God sees in us all the unrealized potency that is there
God sees us as great Saints,
ones who have gifts and ministries that can
bring living water to thirsty people,
that can unbind people,
that can loose them from all the various ways
in which lives can get bound up in death.
We’ve been baptized.
Jesus has put a claim upon us as his own.
He wants to disciple us,
so that we can be of some good use to the rest of a world
struggling in darkness.
We would be Saints.
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