ALL SAINTS 2009
BAPTISMS AND STEWARDSHIP
Many years ago, during the summer months, I was the number one bin dumper at Di Giorgio pear packing shed in Linda California. During the summer months I would stand there all day, the bins of pears would come up on the rollers, I would roll the bin into a device that lifted it and then dumped it into a big tank of water and chemicals, and then they would go up on the belt to be sorted and packed and then shipped. I would then lower the bin, push it out, and put in a new one. It was a highly technical job that required a highly trained technician like myself.
My last summer working there was a young man with slicked back hair who was a good Linda boy who carried a big, black Bible to work and often read it during the breaks. As the summer wore on, and we got to know him, he would share with us about his faith in Jesus. As well as I can remember, this was the first time anyone personally shared their faith with me, outside of sitting in church, which I had done pretty much my whole life. With this person began my whole new and revived journey in the Christian faith. Up to this point my faith, such as it was, was what I would call a church faith. Now began my day to day life as a Christian.
As I was reflecting on All Saints day, I began to realize that this day shouts out to us the central core of what we are trying to be here at Faith Episcopal Church. As we say over and over again, until some of you are tired of hearing it, we are striving to be people who take our Christian faith seriously. I personally get tired of saying it, but, as one church leader said, vision leaks, and we have to keep before us our vision or we will drift away from it very quickly.
How the church, down through the ages, turned being a Christian into simply going to church from time to time instead of realizing that we are all saints, called to follow Jesus in our day to day lives, I am not too sure. The disjunction, or difference, between what we often think a Christian is, and what the Bible says, are often so radically different that it is amazing.
Over the years, of course, the church would look upon certain Christians as being exemplary – martyrs, great teachers of the faith, and people like Francis who lived very serious Christian lives. These people began to be called saints, while other Christians were not saints, but just ordinary, run of the mill Christians. I would guess that very few of you think of yourself as a saint… saint Liz.. .saint Kathy… saint Bill.. and on and on.
And yet, when we turn to the pages of the Bible we learn that the title saint was an interchangeable word for Christian, or follower of Jesus. Over and over again in the New Testament the follower of Jesus are called saints.
Paul writes:
To all God’s beloved in
1 Corinthians 1:2 ( NRSV ) 2To the church of God
that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be
saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, both their Lord£ and ours:
In my translation of the New Testament, at least 60 times Christians are called saints. So why is this important for us today? I believe it is very important simply because it helps us understand more deeply what it means to be a Christian. The root of the word for saints is the same word used for holy. The concept of holy has two basic ideas: purity, or separation from sin and being set aside, or dedicated to God. Christians then, or saints, are people who have been set aside, or dedicated to God and are then called to lead lives which leave sin behind.
I believe our tradition gets it right when, on this day, we have baptisms. While there is all sorts of symbolism in the sacrament of baptism, one that cannot be missed is that through this ritual we are setting aside, or dedicating our lives to God while at the same time professing our innermost desire to lead new lives by following Jesus. In baptism we take vows to turn away from Satan, the evil powers of this world, our sinful desires and then turn to Jesus as our savior and Lord, promising to follow and obey him, trusting in his grace and love for us.
While all the words of this ritual are easy to say, this is really radical stuff. At its most basic level, we are declaring our allegiance to Jesus above every other god in this life. I always wonder, would I baptize my children, or would I be baptized, if it really cost me something. Would I baptize my children if it meant that they would be outcasts in the culture, made fun of in the neighborhood, not be able to go to good schools, and have few job opportunities. Would I raise my children as Christians if it meant that, like Agnes, she could be killed?
As a child of twelve years, Agnes suffered for her
faith, in
I know that this might seem to be overly dramatic, but I think it is helpful to realize that our faith is not all about taking the easy path in life. Sometimes, it requires us to take the narrow way, to make sacrifices in our day to day life. When I was in my early twenties I read a lot about suffering Christians in the communist countries and I was lay awake at night, thinking, could I go through what they have to go through, simply to be a Christian? I don’t know.
In our culture however, the battle we face is different, though no less fierce. Our enemy, in a real sense, is apathy. Since there is no outward pressure that comes against us in our faith, we can take it all very lightly and, before we know it, we are hardly living the Christian faith at all. Even the most basic commitments of our faith---- like worship and praying and reading the scriptures and giving seem optional to us, let alone making any greater sacrifices for our faith.
This is why understanding ourselves to be saints is so important…. It can change the way we think about ourselves in this world. This is why renewing our baptismal vows is so important. For, how we think of ourselves determines how we live. Somewhere I read that Martin Luther, when he had doubt and felt under attack in real and emotional ways would say something like: “Martin, you are baptized.. that is who you are.”
If we see ourselves, above our every role, as a saint of God, as a baptized child of God, the course of our day to day lives will be changed. Our values and our hopes and what we do are changed, because they are molded and shaped by the counter cultural values of our faith. Over the last few weeks we have been reading in Mark how the rich will find it hard to enter the kingdom of God… how if we want to be great, we must become a servant… how the God we worship cares for the poor and the outcast of society… and today, as we celebrate our baptisms and calling to be saints, we are reminded again of our call to live our lives in such a way that our faith is central to who we are.
Living out our faith, as we say over and over again here, is not a set of laws and rules that we have to follow, but is, rather, a response to the love of God shown to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We strive to be faithful saints out of thankfulness and love, not out of guilt or a desire to earn God’s favor.
This, of course, is the reason we give…. You knew I would get around to talking about money at some point…. Since we are in that time of year when we are asking you to pledge to support this church.
In a real sense, our giving of our money away to God gives us
a measurement of the level of the depth
of our faith. While we may not have to go into the Roman arena and die for our
faith, we are challenged by Jesus, over
and over again, to give of our resources for the work of the
It is good to look this god in the face and say, I am not your slave. I will not bow to you and serve you.
The central way we disarm this god is to be radical and generous givers. I have never met a person who was generous with money as a way of life who was unhappy or regretted their generosity. And as I say many times, if any of us every get to reflect upon our lives on our death bed, I don’t think any of us will be thinking, I wish I had not given so much money away to God. I wish I had saved more and kept more and spent more on myself.
Giving is a way to free us up from
the tyranny of money. And when we give to the church, or to other organizations
that help people, it is a win/ win situation. We experience the blessing and
freedom from giving and the money is used for the extension of the
Today is All Saints day, and we are able to be here, and bring these children into the community of Faith through baptism, because of the lives and generosity of the saints down through the ages. As I get older, I have this greater sense of my ancestors who have sacrificed and given so that I could be who I am. All the churches I grew up in and the heritage I inherited were gifts given to me. As an adult, it is my joy and privilege to work and to give for the generations to come. My time is coming to an end, but the faith will be carried on by those baptized today along with the younger members of this congregation.
As I said last Sunday, I am proud to be a member of Faith Episcopal Church. With all of our weakness and faults, we are striving to be faithful saints of God. May the Lord continue to bless and guide us, so that through us , the Christian faith will continue on, from generation to generation. AMEN!