Saints and Sanctity

Revelation 7:9-17; Matthew 5:1-12

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints. It is one of my favorite days of the church year. Discovering the riches of the communion of saints has been one of the most valuable gifts of our transition into the Anglican tradition. And I am eager to share some of that with our community.

But I am aware that not everyone here may feel comfortable about the notion of saints, let alone days set apart to honor them. And some of us may have notions of holiness that are harmful rather than helpful. Some of us are convinced that we are too weak or wounded to be saints. Talk of saintliness, therefore, becomes a shame-fest. And no one needs that tonight.

So, I thought I would use my sermon to attempt to answer two basic questions: 1) What are saints, and why would we celebrate them? 2) What does sanctity or holiness mean for us today?

Let’s start with the first question: What are saints, and why would we celebrate them? The Greek New Testament uses the word hagios, now often translated saint (from the Latin word sanctus), 229 times, and it typically means holy, sacred, or set apart. In the New Testament, all those in Christ, whether alive or dead, are saints—holy, sacred, and set apart.

The Gospel tells us we are saints because of what the triune God has done for us. The Father has elected us in Christ and destined us for fellowship with God. The Son has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into God’s kingdom (Col. 1:13). The Holy Spirit has reconciled us to God and one another, and now sanctifies us in Christ’s body. So, by God’s power unto salvation, we are all saints.

And yet, Christians have always honored their faithfully departed loved ones. Not worshipped, but honored or reverenced. The earliest Christians spent time in the catacombs in order to be near those who had died. They did not, as many have mistakenly thought, go into the catacombs to hide from persecution. No, Christians went down into the tombs in order to be with the remains of their holy departed family and friends. Often they prayed, ate meals, and worshipped with them. And they did this so often that, over time, they decorated the catacomb walls with Christian symbols and scenes from the life of Christ.

Once the church became institutionalized, particular days were established to celebrate especially distinguished servants of God, like the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, martyrs, and so on. And the significance of the saints was preserved in the earliest creed we possess, the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” The communion of saints is the whole Body of Christ, consisting of the living and the dead. When a disciple of Christ dies do they cease to be part of Christ’s Body? No. When a dear saint passes away, do they stop being part of the Church? No.

In the book of Revelation, as we heard read tonight, the saints appear before God’s throne. In an earlier scene, in chapter 5, the saints beseech God to judge the inhabitants of the earth—to do justice on their behalf. In chapter 7, though, they stand robed in white with palm branches of victory in their hands. “These are the ones,” the text says, “who come out of the great ordeal, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” That is to say, they have taken up their crosses and followed in Christ’s cruciform way. As a result, they are able to stand before God in holy freedom, rather than cower in shameful fear.

The Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of God’s holy ones surrounding us as a “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1). Our saintly loved ones may not be with us in a visible, tangible way anymore, but they are yet still with us somehow, too. Nowhere do we see a picture of the communion of saints more visibly than when we gather for Eucharist. My friend, Fr. Ken Tanner, says it this way: “[At the table] we sit down with God and all who are now with God: the holy angels, the four living creatures, the prophets and apostles, and all whom we love who live on in God. . . . At this meal our loved ones and all the redeemed across the centuries surround us and encourage us. . . . We worship Jesus with the saints and they worship Jesus with us…”

So, the saints—the holy ones of God—have been a key part of Christian imagination and practice since the very beginning. But some may still be worrying: Does paying attention to saints—say, through things like feast days—take our focus off of Christ? The answer, I contend, is no.

Bear with me now for a brief theology lesson: God is both immanent and transcendent simultaneously. God is not dependent upon the world in any way for God’s existence, yet God chooses to be intimately present with the world God has made. So, God exists outside and alongside creation but without ever being in competition with creation. God does not compete with creation because God—here’s a fancy word for you—co-inheres with creation—and this includes God’s holy ones or saints.

Why does this matter? Because the holiness of the saints we reverence is the same holiness what is in God. God is not competing with God’s saints. Saints have been made one with the triune God through Christ by the Spirit. You cannot honor a saint without honoring God because the saint is holy through the gracious and powerful work of God. Does the saint remain a human being—an active, free person, with their own personality and quirks and even failures? Yes, of course. But in their very freedom and activity is the work of the God whose holiness abounds within them.

So, the saints are not in competition with God, and honoring them does not create a conflict of interest. Obviously, saints are finite while God is infinite. Saints reflect eternal being while God is eternal being. Saints manifest received holiness while God is holy—holy, holy, holy. Yet God chooses to make his glory known in and through the lives of ordinary people. Honoring saints, therefore, is another way to honor God and his new creation.

With this in mind, I have to wonder… If we are surrounded by such a glorious and holy communion—and we are—then wouldn’t it be wise to get to know some of them as we seek to keep in step with the Spirit today? How can we expect to navigate the wilderness wanderings of our day without knowing the ancestors who tracked through the desert before us? How can we expect to traverse today’s Red Sea without the wisdom of ancestors who made the crossing generations ago? And how can we expect to remain faithful in Babylon without the examples of ancestors who have resisted and endured Babylon for centuries? I submit to you that we cannot.

And that brings us to our second question: What does sanctity or holiness look like today?

Even though I am decided fan of saints and saints’ days, one of the problems with such days is they can leave the mistaken impression that sanctity is only for special people. They are saints, we think, but I am not. The truth is, the Good News of God is for the healing, freedom, and sanctity of all people. By the Father’s will, through the Son’s work, in the Spirit’s power, holiness is for all Christians. Saintliness, then, is the goal of every Christian life.

Certainly, the Catholic Church and other bodies have formal processes to recognize official saints, but there are plenty of unofficial saints, too. In fact, most of the holy ones of God have remained nameless and unrecognized through centuries of church history. They have been farmers and midwives, landscapers and fishermen, nurses and secretaries, miners and sanitation workers. They have been your Nonnies and Mamaws, your teachers and track coaches, your ride-or-die friends, your tías and tíos. And they have been imprisoned and enslaved, black-listed and disease-infected, unhoused and buried in unmarked graves.

The reason for All Saints Day, then, is to provide a space to recognize the many ordinary holy ones who would otherwise go unrecognized. One way we do that is through the parish necrology, where we stop and give thanks for the witness of saints connected to our parish. Ultimately, this practice should encourage us—knowing who is now part of that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us—and it should spur us on to our own pursuit of holiness.

So, if we’re all called to be saints, then what exactly does holiness mean? What does it look like?

This sounds like a question that would be easy to answer. We know what the fruit of the Spirit is: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22–23). We know, as Paul says, “since we have these promises . . . let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God (2 Cor. 7:1). And we are “to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24). Surely, we know what sanctity looks like!

But given the history of Christianity, especially in the United States, and given the ways we have been shaped by that story and its discourses, I don’t think holiness is always self-evident. We think we know what holiness means. We think we can recognize holiness when we see it. But I’m not sure that’s always true. In fact, the gospels contain a warning about the very real possibility that we are likely to miss holiness when we encounter it. And, therefore, we can be confused about what holiness looks like in our own lives.

Think about it: If you had heard John preaching in the wilderness—with an overgrown beard, weathered skin, covered in camel hair—calling your church leaders “vipers” and telling you to stop exploiting the poor, would you have listened to him?

If you had seen young Miriam from Nazareth in her very pregnant state, poor and unmarried, yet brazenly declaring God’s favor toward her, would you have believed her?

If you had encountered Joshua the Contractor wandering around Galilee with his low-life friends, living off wealthy women’s donations, sleeping on friends’ couches, and teaching that he’s God’s Messiah bringing about God’s kingdom, would you have trusted him?

In other words: When you think of holiness, do you think of the poor and hungry, the meek and merciful? When you think of holiness, do you think of the mournful and the persecuted, those whom others insult and lie about? Probably not. Yet, these are precisely those whom Jesus calls “blessed,” those who will receive the kingdom of God (Matt. 5:3–12)—in short, those who are saints.

Because holiness is grounded in the work of God, the Holy Trinity, to elect, reconcile, and perfect a people to become God’s covenant partners in God’s kingdom (Webster, Holiness, 57), then often true holiness will not look like what we expect. Instead, it will surprise, confront, challenge, and offend us. Let me explain now with three things that holiness is.

First of all, holiness is attention and submission to the Good News with its promises and commands (Webster 72). The Gospel is the power of God through which Israel’s exalted Messiah, on the basis of his life, death, and resurrection, by the Holy Spirit’s presence, recreates all of life under his authority and word. There is a promise here: God has acted in history to bring about God’s kingdom. And God’s kingdom will not finally be overcome.

These promises, though, bring with them commands: To obey what Jesus teaches; to submit to the purifying judgment of our sin; to place our bodies, our lives, and our goods at God’s disposal. Hermano Padilla says it like this: “[F]aith is genuine only in the degree to which it obeys” (Mission between the Times, 97). What was the church in the book of Acts known for? Praying together, learning together, caring for one another, and having everything in common. Friends, let’s not fool ourselves by imagining that such a way of life is considered desirable or “successful” in U.S. society today. Not at all.

In addition to attention and submission to the Good News, holiness is, secondly, confession of sin, penitence, and faith (Webster 73). To be holy is to recognize that, although we’ve been delivered from the wages and power of sin, we remain saints-in-progress, constantly subject to the purifying and shaping work of the Holy Spirit. This goes for us as individuals and as a community. Theologian John Webster says it like this: “The Church is holy only as it is exposed to judgment . . . It is in repentance, rather than the assumption of moral pre-eminence, that holiness is visible” (73).

Now, this is a tricky to talk about today. Many churches that have been exposed as abusive environments have gloried in a reputation for worldliness, sometimes called “edginess” or “authenticity.” They use the “cool” factor as an excuse for sin—for failing to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8). It is a self-righteousness that says “I’m not perfect just forgiven,” and therefore never has to admit wrong-doing or say they’re sorry. In a similar way, some church leaders have used the claim “we’re sinners just like you” as cover for irresponsibility, incompetence, and failure to protect the vulnerable. Don’t you dare judge me, they say, because you could easily make these mistakes, too. As if “learning as we go” is an excuse for sinning against victimized and marginalized people.

So, let me say again: Because of our U.S. context, and our lack of familiarity with the commands of the Gospel, it’s frighteningly easy for earnest Christians to mistake performative-repentance for real-repentance; to mistake boasting-in-sin for boasting-in-God’s-transforming-power. Repentance means contrition, yes, and showing sorrow for wrongdoing. But repentance also means restitution and reform. And most of the time, repentance, restitution, and reform are not sexy, fun, or cool, and they’re certainly not quick or easy. So, holiness of life means a life characterized by confession of sin, penitence, and faith—embodied trust in Christ to transform us.

The third thing holiness is: Bearing witness to the world through good works. Saints of God live lives of faithful deeds that are visible to the world and declare the wonderful deeds of God (Webster 74). There are two aspects to the faithful works of the saints: gathering and withdrawal, on the one hand, and sending on the other. Yes, there are times to gather and withdraw from the world’s ways. To rest, to learn, to refresh ourselves, to remind ourselves what’s true, good, and beautiful. But there are also times to send and to go out.

Our baptism consecrates us in God’s own life, setting us apart as God’s kingdom people in a world aligned against God. But our baptism also brings us into solidarity with the world through our identification with Christ. Just as Jesus joined the throngs of people on the banks of the Jordan River and went down into the muddy waters, choosing solidarity with the suffering of the world, so too we do the same. Here at Advocate we’ve used the language of contemplation and action to remind ourselves that good works require both. And our good works, whether large or small, seen or unseen, bear witness to God’s kingdom come in Christ by the Spirit.

All of this sounds pretty straightforward, right? Holiness is attention and submission to the Good News. Holiness is confession of sin, penitence, and faith. And holiness is bearing witness to the world through good works. But we must remember that we live in a country that is under the dominion of powers and principalities and opposed to God’s good purposes for creation. As Christians in the U.S., we are part of a story in which, tragically and horrifically, churches have often made peace with the powers and principalities—joined them even—and conflated sanctity that comes from God with worldliness that comes from the Evil One.

So, I have said what holiness is. But I also need to say briefly what holiness is not.

First, holiness is not “civilization.” Now, bear with me for a moment, please. Much of how we think about holiness is governed by what we imagine to be aesthetically pleasing. And if you’re racialized White and/or raised in a predominantly Anglo-American environment, then your sense of what’s true, good, and beautiful has been shaped by that language and culture. The good news is that sanctity exceeds the bounds of such cultural norms! But we need to become aware of that fact so that we can recognize holiness when we see it.

Thus, I say again: holiness is not “civilization.” What I mean by this is that holiness is not characterized by the many things we associate with Anglo-American social and cultural norms. Holiness is not objectivity, rationality, emotional restraint, or moderation. Holiness is not the English language, western time-keeping, “traditional” gender roles, home ownership, high-and-tight haircuts and business casual attire. In other words, holiness is not many of things we associate with respectable, successful, and cultured people. Again, remember: John the Baptist, Miriam of Nazareth, Jesus, not to mention Peter, Paul, Priscilla and Aquila, Thecla, Perpetua and Felicity, and more. Remember: Dorothy Day, Howard Thurman, and Oscar Romero. Face it, friends. These are not folks who would have comfortably mixed and mingled at the July 4th cook-out—and yet they are decidedly the holy ones of God.

Also, we need to note that holiness is not cleanliness. Again, I know this is hard to face, but we must do it. For many of us, sanctity is so associated with middle class standards of hygiene, both personal and communal, that it’s hard to see and hear the testimony of saints who demonstrate otherwise. But a clean bathroom and whitened teeth do not a saint make. Do we really think the poor in spirit and the mournful keep a tidy house? Do we really think the hungry and thirsty for righteousness smell like clean linen and lemongrass? No. Of course not. Cleanliness is not, in fact, next to godliness.

Furthermore, holiness is not health, either physical or mental. Sanctity is not a diet plan, a work-out routine, a max bench-press, or a marathon. This is not to say one’s path to holiness might not include such things, but they do not constitute holiness as such. Let’s be clear: The saints of God are fat and thin, strong and weak, muscular and flabby. They are stereotypical Barbie and weird Barbie, Alan, and even just Ken. The saints of God have chronic pain and cancer, heart conditions and autoimmune disorders. They have depression and complex PTSD; they are autistic and have ADHD. The saints use walkers and wheelchairs and orthopedic shoes to enter the kingdom of God.

Lastly, holiness is not performative piety. In our internet age and social media world, it is easy to be duped into thinking that holiness is available for all to see. Yes, holiness is visible. It is the power of God through our embodied lives. That will inevitably be seen by others. But holiness is not performed for others to see. It is not displayed or made a spectacle of or commodified. Holiness is not a currency through which to buy a following or a platform upon which to build your career.

Holiness is attention and submission to the Good News; it’s confession of sin, penitence, and faith; and it’s bearing witness to the world through good works. More often than not, living in this way will mean you are unpopular, de-platformed, and overlooked. You will not do the sexy, cool, or fun things. Your Instagram will be boring and uninspiring. You will be unremarkable to the world. But you will be infinitely precious to God, and, Jesus says, the greatest in God’s kingdom.

The French novelist Léon Bloy once said, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.” Why? Because sanctity or holiness is the fullest expression of who we are meant to be as humans. And when we surrender to God in pursuit of holiness, we are becoming most fully ourselves. Remember: God’s holy ones are incredibly diverse in their personhood, styles, backgrounds, education, occupations, and callings. Even as they surrender their lives to God, they do not cease to have their own personalities and interests and ways of being in the world. In fact, they become more vibrant and alive as they are aligned with the Source of their life.

Think of the intense, bright light of God’s holiness as it passes through the prism of the saints. When it does so, it splits into all sorts of colors, each one a beautiful aspect of God’s glorious being. The particular light expressed by each saint is the Light of God, but it is Light passed through the features and personalities and deeds of each individual person. So, when we look at the wide variety of God’s saints in God’s kingdom, we get a more complete picture of God’s splendor and glory.

So, I invite you tonight to become more fully what you already are: a saint. To fail to become holy is to fail to become who God intended you to be. To fail to become holy is to fail to make the church what God intended the church to be. And this would be a great tragedy, for you and for all of us. We need your particular kind of holiness. The world needs your particular kind of holiness. I encourage you to explore the lives of the saints, with all their flaws and peccadillos, if for no other reason than to realize that “God can also work in the people around us and even in us, whose faults we know [all too] well” (Laurence Hull Stookey). May God make us saints and give us true, Gospel sanctity. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.