Other sermons.            Comments for Jim

Sunday, November 5, 2000
Rev. James A. Todhunter\

What is a saint? To begin with, here is what a saint is not. A saint is not a perfect person. A saint is not a person who is so good and so wonderful that all we can do is look up to him or her. A saint is not a person whose presence somehow reminds us of how inadequate we are. Saints are not people we wish to attach ourselves to because they are great and we are small. A saint is not a plaster statue.

What is a saint, then? It seems to me that there are three qualities that define a saint. A true saint is first of all, a person who possesses humility. Second, a true saint is someone who yearns to love God and love their neighbor. And third, a saint is an up-builder of people.

Humility. Humility is not putting oneself down and languishing in self-hatred. The anonymous author of the great fourteenth century contemplative classic The Cloud of Unknowing defines humility this way. "In itself, humility is nothing else but a true knowledge and awareness of oneself as one really is." Humility is living without illusions about oneself – either the illusion that inflates your ego, or the one that diminishes it. Spirituality is essentially being aware, and applying that attitude of awareness to oneself.

The yearning to love God and neighbor. Jesus is asked what the great commandment is, and his answer is the basis of Christian faith. I firmly believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not say anything truly unique in the history of religions. What he did was repackage the central teachings of Judaism in an explosive and revolutionary way. Jesus answers the question by citing the First Commandment. The Shema or "Hear, O Israel" affirms the absolute holiness and uniqueness of God. There is one God and this God, our creator, is to be worshipped whole-heartedly. But Jesus did not stop there. He knew that in the context of his time and place, religious leaders had become so obsessed with God’s holiness that they had forgot about the implications of that holiness for our behavior toward one another. So, in the same breath, he evoked the whole prophetic tradition of Israel. For the prophets said that we must worship God in all God’s holiness, and we must love our neighbor. For the prophets, love was not simply a feeling of warmth and affection – love was the practice of righteousness and justice. Love was not simply emotion, but deeds of compassion. What Jesus said so profoundly was that love of God and deeds of compassion were totally inseparable. And he sums this up in the statement that this one commandment is really two.

I said that saints yearn to love God and neighbor. Their accomplishments, as do ours, always fall short. Their humility reminds them that we always return to that yearning, for without it there is no quickening of the spirit. The Kingdom of God really does start with something so small as a tiny mustard seed, and that seed is yearning.

And finally, saints express this compassion in acts of up-building. So much of what happens in our world represents a tearing down. Attacks on values and community. In our personal relationships, the "put-down" too often replaces the encouraging word as a sign of friendship and affection. Saints understand that there is nothing more important than building up others. And they do this by seeing beyond appearances into a person’s sometimes hidden potential.

In many ways the Battle for Britain in the Second World War was won by the courageous airmen of the Royal Air Force. And the military and political leadership of that time brought out their capacity for self-sacrifice. One who served, the actor Sir Ralph Richardson, years later remembered their leaders, saying "They brought out the best in us, because they were able to see the good in us that we didn’t know was there." That is up-building.

Saints. People of humility, people yearning to love God and neighbor, and people who love by building up. The seeds of sainthood are in each of us. It is such yearnings that unite us together in the Body of Christ.

In closing, a writer who has beautifully captured the yearning and the humility of the spiritual journey is the 19^th century Scot, George MacDonald. We struggle, we stumble, to grope in the dark, and yet we move forward toward the presence of Christ.

"Wake, thou that sleepest; rise up from the dead,
And Christ will give thee light." I do not know
What sleep is, what is death, or what is light;
But I am waked enough to feel a woe,
To rise and leave death. Stumbling through the night,
To my dim lattice, O calling Christ, I go,
And out into the dark look for thy star-crowned head.

AMEN

Back to Table of Contents.