“Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus: To all the saints in Christ Jesus . . .””
Today you will meet the saints. No, not Augustine or Patrick or Elizabeth, but Sherry and Sue, Bob and Randy, Jamal and Karen, Jose and Rebecca.
Don’t look for halos. They are not there. These saints are “called” not “named,” but more on that later.
I am indebted to Frederick Buechner (pronounced BEEK-ner) for this saintly reminder. Sunday, in an attempt to put a little holy pause in my day of rest, I pulled Buechner’s The Sacred Journey off the shelf. The author, now in his 90’s, was a little more than fifty at the time of this writing. He was looking back over his life to understand how God had been at work, even when Buechner in his younger days had not really been looking for God. He writes,
What quickens my pulse now is the stretch ahead rather than the one behind, and it is mainly for some clue to where I am going that I search through where I have been, for some hint as to who I am becoming or failing to become that I delved into what used to be.
Recognizing God’s work through all of life makes his life — and yours — not simply “a journey,” but a sacred journey.
In his reflections, Buechner takes us to Lawrenceville, the New Jersey school he attended “that Fall before Pearl Harbor.” He contrasts the Freddy who went into that boarding school (“pimply, nonathletic, my mother’s son”) from the Freddy who came out (a young man with friends, fathers, and a vocation).
Buechner’s father committed suicide when Freddy was ten. About that he writes, “And if part of my search, those Lawrenceville years, was the search also for a father, I found fathers galore.” He names four:
Mr. Martin, who may have just changed the whole course of my life with that one preposterous grade; and Mr. Thurber, who gave hour after hour to going over with me in great detail those ghastly, promising poems; and Mr. Bowman, my Greek teacher, who was mad as a hatter and recommended that I read Norman Douglas’ South Wind because he said it would corrupt me; and Mr. Heely, the headmaster, who on the day before school was to start once said to his faculty, “Gentlemen, never forget that when you enter your classrooms tomorrow, you will frequently find yourselves in the presence of your intellectual superiors.”
Reflecting on this experience as emblematic of life, Buechner writes,
On All Saints’ Day, it is not just the saints of the church that we should remember in our prayers, but all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives who, one way or another, have been our particular fathers and mothers and saints, and who we loved without knowing we loved them and by whom we were helped to whatever little we may have, or ever hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own.
Buechner’s saintly reflection got me thinking about how the apostle Paul begins many of his letters focused on the saints. To his dear friends in Philippi, Paul says :
“To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
That Paul employs the word “saint” is quite intentional. The word, hagios, refers to something or someone "set apart" and therefore "different (distinguished/distinct)." It is being set apart by (or for) God — and therefore special to the Lord — that creates the distinction.
This is rich theology, not mere technicality. God calls us “saints” because He calls us to himself, because He sets us apart. We are first and foremost saints by calling, not saints by conduct. It is the work of Christ on my behalf, not my work on Christ’s behalf that makes me a saint.
I can detect a little humor in Paul’s words when he “includes” the church leaders (overseers and deacons) as saints — as if to punctuate that the everyday people of the church are saints. And if one has any doubts about this, just read Paul’s letters to the church at Corinth, a church which displays all-too-well the sometimes “un-saintliness” of those called to be saints.
So yes, every day is “all-saints day.” As Buechner points out, God uses a rich variety of his people “by whom we were helped to whatever little we may have, or ever hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own.”
And since it is God’s grace that has put on this sacred saintly journey, we extend that same grace to those “broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives” who, while failing to measure up to our saintly standards, are still “saints by calling” and fellow travelers with us on this sacred journey.
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Notes:
“What quickens my pulse . . .” from The Sacred Journey by Frederick Buechner. San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers. 1982. Page 6.
“Mr. Martin, who may have just changed . . . from The Sacred Journey, page. 74.
“On All Saints’ Day it is not just . . .” from The Sacred Journey, page 74.
“The word, hagios . . .” from HELPS word-studies and Strong’s Concordance. www.biblehub.com. Accessed July 19, 2021.