“Saints, Us Chickens and the Golden Rule”, A Sermon preached by the Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, October 31, 2010 at Church of the Ascension, Rochester, New York
Do unto others as you would have them do to you. (Luke 6:31)
If ever there was a time in our nation’s history for everyone to heed the words of the Golden Rule, it is in this pre election climate, as we head into the final two days before mid-term elections, with campaign ads full of half truths, sound bites that attack others and obfuscate issues and a general tone of adversarial fisticuffs. Jesus’ words to his disciples today, both in the famous beatitudes and in his difficult sayings about loving enemies, blessing those who curse you, doing good to those who hurt you and turning the other cheek are particularly challenging words to hear in the midst of our contentious national elections. By mid-week, we will all be challenged to accept whatever the election brings to pass and move on, working with those with whom we disagree whether our candidates won or lost. Once all the election bravado is over, the challenge is to move forward in a way that is helpful and productive for everyone, putting aside differences and leaving the campaign attack strategies behind us. The words of Jesus in today’s gospel sound impossible of fulfillment when you listen to campaign ads and speeches. Only a saint, one might think, could possibly do as he instructs.
Fortuitously we celebrate the Feast of All Saints today. This is the feast day in the Christian calendar when we remember and give thanks for people who have gone before us in history, both famous and infamous, folks known to us personally and those who have achieved “greatness” and “fame” in the larger world. All Saints is the one feast day in the liturgical year when we celebrate human beings in all their glory and grime. St. Francis, Mother Teresa, and Ghandi are numbered among the saints of God as well as our grandparents, brothers, sisters, children and friends. History is full of stories of people, famous and not-so-famous, remembered or forgotten, loved or ignored in life. All Saints Day gives us an opportunity to plug into that continuous stream of eternity that is life in God, to connect ourselves with those human beings who have gone before us whom we have loved and known and who now rest in God.
We will remember all kinds of saints today. Members of this faith community who have died in the past year. Our own loved ones who have died but who live on in our memories and in the way their lives impacted and shaped our own. All of them saints of God who lived different lives in different times, doing different things, but all part of the glory of God and God’s plan for creation.
On All Saints Day we honor history. The history that we have lived in our families, with our friends, through our ancestors, grandparents, parents, our children. The history of our nation and of our faith tradition. The stuff of sainthood is the stuff of human life and we pause today to honor that life with all its accomplishments and failures. History isn’t just boring facts in some dusty book. History is the story of all who have gone before us, who have shaped us and our world into what we know today. All Saints is our liturgical way of being sure we preserve a historical memory, so that we can learn from the past, its wisdom and its folly as we walk into our uncertain and sometimes frightening future. We honor history on this feast day because our God is a God who works through history and whose fingerprints we see in the events and people who shape our lives.
As Election Day approaches, we will live through a week in which we will participate in a process of history making, as we go to the polls and exercise our freedom by voting for our congressional and state representatives and other public officials. We will come out of the elections hoping those we have chosen will deal responsibly with significant public issues, like our ailing economy, the high rate of unemployment, immigration issues, national security and war and peace. History is an ever flowing stream and the people who vote and the people elected will be called to walk together into that unknown future to create a world and a legacy for the next generation that will speak well of our own. On All Saints Day we renew our baptismal covenant, reminding ourselves of the promises we made as Christians to make a difference in our world while we live on this earth, to work for justice and peace, to respect the dignity of every human being.
Our All Saints celebration reminds us that time marches on, that things change and the world moves on, that people make a difference while they are on this earth and then pass into God’s eternity leaving behind a legacy for those who follow. Those who weep now, will someday laugh again. Those who are poor now, will know wealth someday. Those who enjoy riches now, will at some time find that wealth useless to them. There is an ever flowing cycle of life and death, success and failure all of which is infused with the presence of God.
Annie Dillard, author of many works of fiction writes:
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature- but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
There is no less holiness at this time-as you are reading this- than there was the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Chebar, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of God. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha’s bo tree. There is no whit less might in heaven or on earth than there was the day Jesus said, “Maid arise” to the centurion’s daughter, or the day Peter walked on water, or the night Mohammed flew to heaven on a horse. In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture. (For the Time Being, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)
Ambrose Bierce once quipped that a saint is “a dead sinner, revised and edited.” A somewhat cynical definition but one that aptly describes the process of saint-making. We are all of us saints of God, as the children’s hymn goes, but the process of becoming a saint, a process that begins at baptism, is one that includes a lot of “revising and editing” by God as we travel our life’s journey. Learning to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to turn the other cheek, to offer our shirt when someone steals our jacket is pretty hard stuff. Sometimes we are better at it than others. Trying to make peace in a world rife with war, trying to achieve reconciliation with people with whom we have violent disagreements is the work of sainthood and it is very hard and exhausting work.
All of the saints we remember today had their moments of glory as well as their times of despair and defeat. Human life and human history are fraught with the struggles of ordinary people to do extraordinary things hopefully in concert with the will of God. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Simple wisdom, common to all religious traditions known to man, and probably the first big step towards reconciliation and healing in a divided and polarized world.
We are all saints-in-the-making, in our ordinariness and plain humanity, as much as in our occasional acts of altruism or heroism or simple kindness and mercy. We will renew our baptismal covenant in a moment, reminding ourselves that the covenant we made with God guides all our actions, behaviors and attitudes as we walk through this world in our time and place in history. We are called to do justice, to treat all human beings with dignity and respect, to work for peace, to pray and break bread together, to love as God loves us. As we renew the covenant we continuously repeat the phrase, “I will, with God’s help.” Only with God’s help can we do the work of sainthood. It doesn’t come naturally. When we gather at the Eucharistic feast in a few short moments, let us do so conscious of the presence of all those saints, named and unnamed whom we remember today – that whole company of heaven who sing with us the ancient song of praise- “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Glory be to you, O Lord most High.”
Amen.
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