Present-Day Saints

November 3, 2013 -- All Saints' Observance
Ephesians 1:11-23

¹⁵I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason ¹⁶I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. ¹⁷I pray 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, ¹⁸so 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, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. ²⁰God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. ²²And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, ²³which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Sermon: Present-Day Saints

I know a saint named Ted.  He is in his early 70’s, with wild salt-and-pepper hair and an unruly beard and coke bottle glasses.  He has ALS and so, every few minutes, his body jolts of its own accord.  Ted always, always, wears pearl snap plaid shirts, haphazardly tucked into his faded blue jeans. 

I met Ted in a coffee shop a few years ago.  A bit bewildered to be back in Texas after two years in Northern Ireland as a mission worker, I tentatively entered the coffee shop in my hometown, armed with my laptop so I could search for a church (I found you that way, you know!).  Always eager to get near a window, I took a seat parallel to Ted, with a table between us.  He had his laptop, too, and large headphones to hear the old Western movie he was watching.  I engaged in the socially-closed-off ritual of putting my headphones in, too, and didn’t say a word to him.  This continued for the next several coffee shop trips. 

But for some reason one day, our eyes met.  “I know you,” he said, matter of factly.  “Really?” I replied, as I took out my headphones.  “Yep, I’m Ted, and I used to teach you in shop class in middle school.”  What I did next was hopefully Oscar-worthy, “Ohh, yesss,” I said, squinting at him to take a closer look.  “Of course I remember you!”  Honestly, y’all, I had no recollection whatsoever of ever having met him in my life.

But with Ted’s memory, connecting me to my past in that town as I searched what future God might have in store for me, Ted and I became fast friends.  Every Monday morning, as part of an unspoken ritual, we met there, still with our laptops, him watching old movies and me call searching.  But we also talked a good bit each Monday, and refilled each other’s coffee.

That saint Ted is a very spiritual person, though he says his wife is a much more devout Catholic than he is.  He would keep up with my interviews and travels and always check in about how my search was going, reminding me he was praying for me, and I would hear about the work he was doing on his land and pray for his health. 

In a wilderness time between calls, knowing that saint Ted would be at the coffee shop each Monday morning was not only a comfort.  It was a tangible reminder of God’s presence in my life. 

Frederick Buechner once said, “In God’s holy flirtation with the world, God sometimes drops a handkerchief. Those handkerchiefs are called saints.”

I am grateful to God for dropping Ted back into my life.  And I am sure that each of you, when thinking back on your life, especially on times that were challenging and uncertain, can think of saints God has dropped into your path, bringing you hope.

I think this is what the writer of the letter to the Ephesians was getting at when he wrote, “with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God 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.” 

In the eyes of the world, there was nothing particularly powerful about Ted, especially as his body grew ever weaker.  He did not command the attention of any room, and you could tell from his chatty energy that he was used to just blending in to corners, never being spoken or listened to. 

Saints are not the spiritual greats of our days, nor are they the most powerful or brilliant or beautiful or successful.  The Greek word for saint – hagios – literally means, “different.”  Saints are those who dare to be different: to speak in a society of technological isolation, to remember the connections to their other fellow human beings.  Jesus spoke of such saints when he said,

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.  Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 

What he’s really getting at is this:  blessed are you saints who dare to be different for the sake of my kingdom.  Blessed are you who go ignored, because you do not ignore others.  Blessed are you who long for health, because you do not define people by their disease.  Blessed are you who are teary eyed, for you allow yourself and others to actually feel.  Blessed are you when you are mocked or labeled “dreamer” or “strange,” because God’s kingdom is built of saints like you.

God drops saints in our lives, and the mark they leave on us never goes away.  They are extraordinarily ordinary people, people we could sit next to for months and never really see.  But if we allow God to open the eyes of our hearts, we will see that saints are all around us – present day saints as well as those who know eternal life and never fully leave us.

These saints show us how to live with authenticity and courage.  They teach us the power found in the vulnerability of saying hello to a stranger.  They fill us with hope that the kingdom of God is not some ancient dream or distant promise but is here, now, in our midst. 

Being a saint is not that complicated, really.  Ted taught me that.  All it takes is an open heart and open eyes.  All it takes is recognizing a long-lost friend in the stranger next to you.  All it takes is the courage to be different.

There is a power at work within us: the same power that blessed those the world cursed and ignored, the same power that challenged the proud and arrogant, the same power that refused to let death win. It is the power of Christ within us, and it is what makes saints of shop teachers, and of us, if we’ll open ourselves up to it. 

Thanks be to the God who drops saints like unexpected gifts into our lives, to the Lord who is above all and through all and in all, and to the Spirit who binds us together with saints of every time and place in this one body of Christ the church.  Amen.