Of Saints and Story

The Feast of All Saints, Year B

John 11:32-44

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Here in the church, we are always sanctifying things, setting them apart for God’s use. Each week, we sanctify the bread and wine: we set them apart from ordinary food and drink so that Christ can use them to become present to us in the Eucharist. Last week, you may remember that we sanctified a new fair linen for our altar. With a special prayer, I set it apart from ordinary tablecloths for God’s use alone. But we often forget that we human beings are sanctified, as well. We are set apart in baptism as living members of Christ’s Body. Holy people, sanctified people, people set apart for God’s use. That’s what “saint” means: someone who is set apart, someone who is made holy.

People, however, are not inanimate objects that can be filled with the Divine, like water is poured into a vase. People are made holy through story. All Saints’ Day is a day for stories. We remember the stories of the lives of our departed loved ones, those who are no longer with us on earth. In today’s liturgy, when we speak their names and light candles in their memories, our minds and hearts will be flooded with scenes from shared lives: the time grandpa taught you how to do that magic trick; the day that you walked down the aisle as husband and wife; the day you brought that tiny baby home from the hospital; the laughs you shared during coffee hour; even the terrible moments like a frightening car crash or the Thanksgiving dinner when everyone cried. The stories behind those memories unite us, even across the separation of death. They hold us in communion with those who have gone before us, with those who are still alive in God. They free us from the loneliness of time.

Even better, when we’re baptized, we join Jesus’ story. We have more than our own family stories to sustain us. We become part of God’s story of death and resurrection. When I sprinkle you with water in a few minutes and ask you to remember your baptism, I’m not asking you to remember the holy water that some priest sprinkled on your brow when you were a baby. I’m asking you to recall the whole amazing story of which you are now a part: the story where you die--where you die to self, to sin, to the things that you have done or left undone, to the evil done on your behalf. And the story where you rise with Jesus into light and hope and new life. It’s like Jesus goes into the smelly cave where you lie bound up like a mummy and tells you to get up. It’s like he is sending you out into the sunlight, like Lazarus, and telling the rest of us to unbind you, and to let you go free into a life of living out resurrection.

Set apart in baptism, are we to hold the rest of the world at a distance, then? Are we to shut our souls away in the sacristy cupboard with the chalices after church on Sunday? You might know Christians who think that the sinful world is somehow going to contaminate them if they venture too far from certain rigid rules and practices. Part of the warnings that new priests receive before ordination is that people are going to look at them differently once they are wearing that collar. It’s true, of course! Wear a funny white collar (especially if you’re a woman!) in the elevator at University Hospital, or at Kroger, or—heaven forbid—in a liquor store or an airport, and you are going to feel “set apart,” all right! People frown and greet you with wide-mouthed stares.

Those once-overs have never bothered me, though. I see my collar as more of a privilege. By being visually set apart, I don’t have to deal with any of society’s walls and hiding places. I can go up to someone who is hurting and ask, “What’s wrong?” without first having to make polite conversation for an hour. I am immediately invited into people’s stories. I am trusted with a glimpse into their souls. There is no greater gift on earth. Sometimes I think that I was made a priest because I need that outward sign in order to bear my baptism courageously. But as Christians, our baptism is our “collar.” In some ways, it might set you apart in the eyes of others. But if you are wearing it right, it will stand out as love when the rest of the world is full of hate. It will stand out as humility, when the rest of the world is full of pride. It will stand out as peace, when the rest of the world is filled with chaos. And most of all, it will set you free to enter into the lives of others, carrying with you the love of God. Baptism sets us apart, only that we may enter more deeply into our hurting world.

Finally, we are not alone as saints of God. We remember today the stories of the men and women lifted up by the Church throughout history as paragons of Christian virtue. Martyrs and scholars. Mystics and fools. People like St. Augustine, St. Francis, St. Clare, and St. Theresa of Avila. Their lives have been examined in great detail by popes and committees. Their stories have been cleansed of many of the mistakes that pepper our own lives. The Church has set them apart to give us stories that will lead us in “all virtuous and godly living,” as we prayed in today’s collect. Inside the thick walls of the Church, as Christian “insiders,” our statues and saintly stories pull us into God's presence. I can look at the stained glass saints in our Cathedral windows, for example, and feel held in holiness. Their lives give direction to my life. Their courage and their loving, human hearts give my story an end, a goal, toward which I can strive.

I wonder, though, what becomes of  those saintly statues out in the secular world? In the world where their stories aren't known? One hot summer day, I sat on a bench at the convent at Loretto, Kentucky, on retreat. I was surrounded by the glory of God in nature. God's Spirit flowed through the water, sparkling on the top of every wave; it sang in the birds' joyful chorus, and danced in the ballet of bobbing turtles. There, in the midst of light and shadow, surrounded by an abundance of life, I saw a chalk-white statue of the Virgin Mary. In contrast to the life around me, she seemed dead. She was trapped on a concrete block in the middle of the lake, dwarfed by the majestic pine trees at her back. She looked both resigned and unhappy under the hot sun. She seemed to know that she was too heavy to float, that if she were to step off of her small island perch, she would sink into the water of oblivion forever. I worried about her. Like faith unmoored from story, she seemed out of place out here in the woods.   

Then, all of a sudden, I could imagine her shedding her heavy stone body with a sigh of relief. I could see her swimming to shore and padding softly through the fields. Her robes were now supple and bent back the tall grasses; her scarf blew in the cool breeze; her kind eyes smiled in greeting at the world around her. “St. Mary needs me to free her,” I thought as I pondered the statue on the bench. She needs me to take her holy story outside, and give it the words and the freedom to live. She needs an invitation to walk with me out into the world.

          No wonder the story of Jesus and Lazarus appears in our All Saints’ Day lectionary. In all of our stories, Jesus arrives (not always when we want him to) and ventures into the darkness of sin and death. He rouses us and pushes us out into the light where a whole community of fellow saints awaits to unbind us and set us free. For what are we saints “set apart?” We are set apart for freedom: Freedom to love and to live. Freedom from solitude; freedom from sin and death; even freedom from the walls that we build around God and Jesus himself.