saint making (Theva)

Psalm 32, Luke 19:1-10

Saint Making!

The month of November is made up of numerous Christian festivals and celebrations. We have the all souls and the all saint’s days just to name two which follow each other from Nov.1 to 2. As a child I remember gathering around the country church yard for worship on these occasions. I stood around the head stones of the tombs, sang songs read passages of scripture, lighted candles and the minister offered prayers for the departed souls. The terminologies of soul’s days and the saint’s days were all confusing to me then. And even today I am mixed up about them. However as a child I imagined that the minister had the magical powers to transform souls into saints. I imagined that during that worship the souls buried underneath the tomb stones flew into the sky dome called heaven. And I imagined they were transformed into some extra-terrestrial beings called saints. This concept remained with me unchallenged till I reached my confirmation age of 13.And now you know why I chose this title for today.

      How do we make saints? Do we make saints like how we make furniture and fire places, automobiles and the air planes, pastries, pizza and ice cream?  Saints are men and women who lived a great exemplary life and excelled in ministry with a deep sense of humility and faithfulness. In the Roman Catholic Church the selection of saints involves a laborious research and scrutiny of individuals by the Vatican. It takes many years perhaps fifteen to twenty years to canonize a person, a saint. I have two pictures in the power point today. One is the picture of the existing and the prospective saints in the Catholic Church. There are hundreds of them but we may remember at least some such persons as Peter and Paul, Anselm and Augustine, Benedict and Francis, Helena and Ann, Patrick and Michael. How about the prospective ones? I have a long list of names and the Vatican will not consider them for they are not of the Roman Catholic faith. Albert Schweitzer and Amy Carmichael, Gandhi and Nelson Mandala, Dag Hammarskjöld and Bonheoffer, Dali Lama and Martin Luther King, Eva Peron, Susan B Anthony are some of them. The other picture in the power point is our gospel for today, the Zaccheus story.

        Saints in the Catholic Church; are supposed to be interceding for all of us who are on our way to perfection. However in the united Methodist Church we uphold the notion that all God’s children are saints.  Paul writes to almost all the churches whether the church in Corinth or Philippi, Rome or Thessalonica, that every believer of Jesus the Christ is a saint. So when our Roman Catholic friends pray to the saints, we pray for the saints and today in our church we have already prayed for those who have left behind a memory, something sacred and honorable and something praise worthy and loveable.

        Every saint is an imperfect human being. Every saint perhaps may have a holiness DNA mixed with a few skeletons in his or her closet. Saints are not angels. Just like any of us they struggle, they doubt, they believe, they love, they serve and they die. Saints are not perfectionists for somebody defined a perfectionist as one who takes infinite pains and give them to others.

       Here is a children song coming to us from England about saints. (No.712 in our hymnal) “I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true, who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew. And one was a doctor and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green, they were all of them saints of God, and I mean God helping, to be one too.” A stranger one day visited a church on a Sunday morning, looked around the building and then entered the sanctuary. There the people and Minister were standing and praying together. The stranger heard their prayer “Lord we have left undone the things we ought to have done and have done the things we ought not to have done”. The stranger then sat in one of the pews and said with a sigh” Thank goodness, I have found my people at last”.

         The secret of saint making is to take our humanness seriously and learn to live life fully and serve humanity without any reservation. The secret of saint making is to learn both the grandeur of the joys of life as well as the sorrows in walking through the shadows of deadly valleys. Friends! I began this sermon today with an imaginative story of saint making. And now here is a real one in which Jesus was involved. And the other person’s name was Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax man which means he earned a high salary and lived within high fences. Even today high salaries and high fences go together. In other words he was filthy rich and became rich by receiving money from people illegally. One day when Jesus was passing by he wanted to see him. So he climbed up a sycamore tree to see Jesus. However Jesus had seen him from afar. When Jesus got near to the tree he invited zacchaeus to come down and invited himself to his home for a meal. We don’t know everything happened during the dinning and wining session. But we do know what zacchaeus said during the conversation with Jesus. Half of my goods I will give it to the poor. And all the bribes I received from people I return four fold. This is today’s gospel story. Zacchaeus was a lonely man an alienated man an isolated man, a rich man and a short man. However after his encounter with Jesus, we are told he is a changed man. He is now at the center of his community. He has reconciled with his people by giving back their wealth taken away forcefully. At the end of the dinner party Jesus says that today Zacchaeus has experienced salvation. How? He has regained his humanness. He has regained his respect and dignity in the community. He is no more in bondage to greed and selfishness and false values. He is liberated from pride and pretenses. Are the Saints born as saints? No my friends! They are made and re made by the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. Amen!