The Hope To Which He Has Called You (sermon for All Saints 2010

The Hope To Which He Has Called You

The story is told of a Sunday school class of children. The teacher asked, "What do you have to do to be a saint?"

Of course, none of the children said anything. So the teacher said, "If I sold everything I had and gave it to the poor would that make me a saint?"

And the children said, "No."

So the teacher said, "What if I went around always being nice to everyone all the time, would that make me a saint?"

And the children said, "No."

"What if I were able to change the world and make it a peaceful and happy place, would that make me a saint?"

And the children said, "No."

So finally, the teacher asked, "OK, then, tell me, what would I have to do to be a saint?"

And one of the children said, "You have to die!"

Of course, All Saints Day has traditionally been about honoring those who have died. But in the protestant tradition, we have rediscovered the word in both the old and new testaments, and we see that a saint is not just those who have died, but also those whom God has made saints.

So let's ask, what do you have to do to be a saint?

St. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, said that there are three gifts of the Holy Spirit that are eternal, that never pass away, faith, hope and love. And he said, the greatest of these is love. And certainly, we would say, one has to love to be a saint. And not just any love, as Jesus himself pointed out in this lesson from Luke. We'll talk about that later.

Today, I think the focus is on the second of St. Paul's three eternal spiritual gifts, that of hope.

A saint is a person who hopes.

The hope is not just any hope, but the hope to which God has called you.

Hope, according to Webster's, is a desire with an expectation of fulfillment. We're not talking about pipe dreams or wishful thinking or even optimism. We're talking about honestly taking stock of the real world and expecting confidently that God can and will transform that world from the inside out, starting with us.

Do we have this confidence? I don't know. When I listen to people in my daily rounds, I don't hear the beatitudes of Jesus. I hear a different set. It goes something like this:

"Blessed are the rich, for they have earned it.

"Woe to the poor, for they are lazy and irresponsible.

"Blessed are you when people speak well of you, because reputation is everything,

"Woe to you if they revile you, because you are an annoying troublemaker and deserve everything you get.

"Hate you enemies, and do not bless them. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, shoot them in the head.

"Love those you love you, and ignore the rest."

The world's beatitudes have not really changed since Jesus' day. They are still just as central to the way lots of people think. The beatitudes of Jesus are not difficult to understand, but they fly so much in face of the wisdom of the world as to simply be unacceptable. The good news is that Jesus is not pronouncing a final judgment. He's pronouncing hope. Hope for all of us.

The hope to which God has called us is the hope that the poor will inherit the kingdom, the sorrowful will be comforted, and those persecuted for declaring that hope will be vindicated. It is the hope that the humble people of God, the ones who practice love for their enemies, will triumph over the much more impressive powers that practice domination and vengeance.

All Saints began as a day to remember those who were martyred in the early years after Jesus' resurrection. The people of God from the very beginning strove to keep in remembrance those who refused both to obey the law that said they had to worship anyone other than Christ, and more importantly, refused to hate or to even resist those who badmouthed, persecuted, tortured and even murdered them. Many of these people they knew, but there were many more who simply disappeared, anonymous Christians who were chewed up in the maul of the Roman machine. Early Christians established All Saints Day in special remembrance of those nameless witnesses, who forgave the crowds that cheered for their blood and died praying for them.

They did these things because they practiced the hope to which God had called them. They sold off possession to give them to the poor in order to practice this hope. They gave up their homes to be used as places of gathering and worship as a way of practicing the hope to which God had called them. They prayed for people that hated them, hoping as God had called them to hope. They gave to everyone who begged from them, no questions asked, because they hoped as God asked them to. If someone stole from them, they offered the thief more of their possessions in the hope that their generosity would inspire him, as God had called them to hope. They responded to evil with good, in the hope to which God had called them.

The love, the eternal and unstoppable love which Paul said was the greatest of all God's spiritual gifts, is very specific and amazing: it is love for one's enemies. It is this love, above all others, that saves the world.

So let's take some time right now, friends, to remember any and all who have gone on before us into the heavenly places that practiced this hope for God's kingdom, and love for their enemies.

(Candle lighting ceremony.)