Dead Saints

 This is the Sunday when we celebrate All Saints Day, 

            and when we remember all those, 

                        regardless of their acknowledged sainthood, or their obscurity, 

            all 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.

 

Well, it has been a difficult year, 

                        especially with delayed funerals and memorial services,

            which makes this time of pausing and remembering particularly important.

 

So this is a time to be reminded

            of the common theme of our mortality.

 

All these Saints, capital letter Saints, we may note, were often martyrs, 

            and all of the Saints we commemorate are dead.

 

Now 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, 

            and 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 they had been fishing all night and not catching anything.

                                                Remember that story?

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,

            and they had more fish than the nets could hold.

 

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,

                                                sometimes even 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 by now 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.

And, 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?”

 

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,

            and 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 of us, 

“Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

 

            If we would believe, if we would trust, 

            if we would not resist quite so much,

we could see the glory of God being worked right here in us

 

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 for the rest of a world

                                    that is struggling in darkness.

 

We would be Saints.