Saints In A Thousand Pieces

Sermon-All Saints’ Day-Nov. 1, 2009
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Ok, I tell you a lot of stories about my friend Mark who is a priest in Binghamton, New York, but it’s because, unlike me, he makes so many mistakes. Three weeks ago he was baptizing a child in his church, so he told this story.
Today we have a baptism, and that's always fun. I'm not sure it would have been quite as much fun to baptize a Viking back in the Dark Ages of Europe. But some Vikings did get baptized. There is a story that the leader of one tribe of Vikings heard the story of Jesus and decided to be baptized. And in his tribe, if HE got baptized, EVERYBODY got baptized. So they all traipsed down to the river, because in those days, you got baptized by being dunked all the way under.
They understood what that baptism was all about. All the warriors, at the command of their tribal leader, walked into the water to get baptized. But all the warriors, including the tribal leader, held their right arms up out of the water during the baptism. They got dunked completely - except for their sword arms.
They knew they were going to continue on using those swords in their Viking-like activities, so they did not want those sword arms baptized.
So Mark told this story, and then he went on to tell the congregation that it was pledge Sunday and they shouldn’t hold their wallets up in the air to exempt that part of their body from Christ.
So at the offering, several men in the congregation held their wallets up in the air, just as he told them not to, to tease him. Only Mark is so blind he didn’t realize that these guys were holding up their wallets making fun of him, he thought they were holding up cell phones taking pictures of the baby he just baptized.

We welcome all you saints today! You may not believe you are a saint. You may not feel like a saint. No one may have told you recently that you are a saint. But do you think saints felt like saints? During the civil and religious strife of the Reformation in England, Protestant Roundheads stormed into cathedrals, destroying all religious “Catholic” symbols, getting rid of anything that they believed stood between people and God. They were the Taliban of Protestant Christianity in the 17th century. In Winchester Cathedral there was a magnificent stained glass window over the west end dominating the whole cathedral that they pulled down, smashing it into a 1000 pieces. The shattered pieces, which once had shaped a Rembrandt-like scene from the Bible, could not be restored to form the original picture. With love and care, the people picked up the pieces of that beautiful scene. Long before the time of abstract art, they leaded the broken glass together with hope and returned it to the round window. Today, 300 years later, the same sun shines through the same beautiful colors of fine stained glass, a kaleidoscope of pieces, rearranged in a different and even more meaningful way. The broken glass tells a more powerful story than the previous window did of a people’s love and faith during a time of oppression.
Today we baptize two children. We call them, our newest Christians, our newest saints. They have done nothing wonderful, nothing holy, nothing sacred. Except be born. And bring joy into their family’s hearts. What more does God want? What more is a saint called to do? There is an old story of a child who was asked what a saint is, and he pointed to the church’s stained glass window and said simply, “a saint is someone the light shines through.” Saints aren’t necessarily the best people, they’re not always the holiest people, they are simply the people who for one brief shining moment show us the light-and lead us towards God.
We do something here at Trinity that is backwards, counterintuitive. In our service, we remember the people who are saints for us-those living and past who have touched us and shown us the way. We will read their names in a few minutes. And then after the 10:30am service we go out to the garden, and we will remember many of the church’s saints, those who showed all Christians the light of Christ. The first list are those who showed us the way-the second list are those who showed everyone the way. Both lists have the same purpose, to be transparent to the light.
Anatole France, the famous French poet, journalist, and novelist and Nobel Prize winner said that when he was a little boy he read the story of the life of St. Simeon Stylites, that strange gentlemen of ancient times who lived for thirty years on top of a sixty-foot pillar in Syria praying, and for some reason Anatole decided he was called to perform a similar act of saintly heroism. So he went into the kitchen, climbed up on the kitchen cabinet, and stayed there all morning. At lunchtime he got down. His mother, who understood what was happening, said: "Now, you mustn’t feel bad about this. You have at least made the attempt, which is more than most people have ever done. But you must remember that it is almost impossible to be a saint in your own kitchen."
But that is what we say today, that the list of saints that we read are the people who are saints for us in our own kitchens. They are the people who have led us to God, and showed us the Beatitudes, and taught us what it is to be blessed. Often the people we mention today were broken into a thousand pieces, and had to be put back together in a new configuration, revealing a whole different person. Often our lives feel like failures, or too damaged to ever be a saint or guide for anyone. How often do we look at our selves and think, “I have wasted so much, I have thrown away so much of my life, I have missed out on so many chances, so many opportunities? Judith Davis, Rector of Christ Church-Washington once preached
“Saints are people who know something profound about love, that suffering is connected with it. They learned the path of sainthood is not one of accolades but accusations.”
We remember all the saints today, those just being born, those who passed decades ago, those who seemed to touch only us, those whose witness touched everyone. Each one was a broken stained glass window scattered on the floor that God put back together to reveal a way.
We are asked to be saints, too. To be good and to let light shine through us. To be born again continually and to bring joy to our families. To stand in our kitchens and practice holiness-even if it’s only in our kitchens. We are never ever good enough. We are never holy enough. No saint is. But that is what God asks, that we be willing to be put back together in new ways, to show something profound about love.
Amen.