Once upon many times, there lived a whole cadre of people. Like I said, these people did not all live at the same time. They live at all times and every time, and some are living still. This cadre of people is difficult to describe, as they are not particularly alike. In fact, they are quite diverse. They run the gamut from the rough and tumble to the sophisticated, from light hearted and fun loving to quite serious, from deep thinkers, even philosophical giants to hands on worker bees, and from very brave to quite shy. Some are heroes, while others are seen rather as quiet simple folk, heroes only to their family and close group of friends. No matter how I struggle to categorize or even describe them, I cannot find a way. I am stymied – brought up to a rude halt at the very beginning of my fable.

By now, you have caught on that I am talking about Saints, this being the Sunday after All Saints Day. And like many other pastors on this day, my task is to talk about Saints. I know the other pastors are doing that, because I checked the Religion section of the Post yesterday. That does not make me like it any better. So I ask myself, how does one talk about Saints without it being a history lesson or making it a kind of sentimental, sweet treatise that does not do justice to the persons involved. And why talk about Saints anyway? Our denomination does not venerate Saints, or identify persons to be elected to sainthood. Most of us do not pray to saints. And long gone are the days when bones of saints were collected or worn around necks for various religious reasons. (Necklace) So why am I doing this?

And then there were the scriptures for the day. The ones for All Saints Day did not inspire me. Besides, they did not match the bulletin cover. The Scriptures for today were so much more charming. I mean, first there is Zacchaeus, a favorite of all young children in the church school. Just mention his name and all current and former teachers of little ones smile with fond memories of how the children loved that story. They may even want to tell you stories about those teaching experiences.

But Zacchaeus is not just for children. His is an extremely well told story filled with some very adult themes. First, let us remember that Zacchaeus was not disliked by his contemporaries because he was rich. Ordinarily most ancients would have assumed wealth signified divine blessing. He was disliked because he worked for the Romans. This meant that he had few religious scruples and was probably greedy. Jesus acceptance and beckoning forth of Zacchaeus was a powerful statement that even those characteristics were not outside the boundaries of God’s love made present in Jesus.

In the action of climbing the tree, Zacchaeus was not just showing idle curiosity, but wanted to see who Jesus was. Zacchaeus wanted to know personally who this Jesus really was that was going about teaching, preaching and healing. Wanting to know, wanting to see, wanting to take it all in, wanting to grasp a bit of the holy in the midst of everyday life is a spiritual pursuit. What he discovered was that Jesus was the one who reached out to those whom others assumed were off God’s list. Jesus calls Zacchaeus from the tree and goes home with him. Zacchaeus responds by offering much more than just repayment. And so the story a surprising relationship, of human transformation in the presence of Jesus, generosity as a liberated response to grace, and breadth of acceptance and grace in all its scandal and glory.

Then there is Habakkuk, who, unlike Zacchaeus, is not wanting to see but is asking why God is making him see all that is happening around him. Motifs of sight appear throughout this passage. Habakkuk is struggling with the tensions between the evolution of human history and the character of God. Habakkuk is living at the time of Babylonian rise to power; war is all around him. Some were seeing this impending doom as the punishment of God for injustices and unfaithfulness of the Israelites. As far as the prophet is concerned, fighting the Israelites evil with evil from the Babylonians does not measure up to the purity of vision that should emanate from Gods eyes. His request to see, to look at, are requests for prophetic clairvoyance or vision. He is asking to see what God see. In order to do that he climbs up not in a tree but in a watchtower. The vision Habakkuk is given is that we are to avoid headstrong blindness (better translation than proud) and to live by faith – which is by continuing to seek insight into the character of God. Habakkuk is then charged to write that vision large so that runners may read it.

The letter to the Thessalonians is a good follow up to Habakkuk as the writers are communicating with a community of faith in order to praise them for their faith and steadfastness as an inspiration to others.

Which may bring us back to that difficult to describe cadre of people I began with. For as I worked my way through today’s scriptures, I actually had a vision. These people were all saints! They were all seekers, wanting to know God, wanting to discover God’s ways. They were willing to try any way they could to see, to know, to understand, or even to get a glimpse of God and God’s ways. They went up trees, into watchtowers and even to the edge of challenging God to show forth God’s ways. And through all that they have become and will remain an inspiration to others. And that is what we really need from Saints, is it not, inspiration and models, visions of how we are to be or what we can be as persons of faith. From the modeling of Saints, we gather the courage to push our seeking, our looking, our searching to another level, whether it be through trying new prayer forms, or through study. Maybe we seek to know God through helping others or struggling with them for justice and peace, for often through the eyes of those who are hurting, we see God, come to know God in a new way.

Sometimes those who climb up in the tree or go out on a limb are not always popular. After all, the crowd was not happy that Zacchaeus was so warmly welcomed by Jesus. Yesterday some of us attended the Jesus Seminar at St. Luke’s Church. The work of the Jesus Seminars is not popular with everyone, while for some it is liberating and has allowed them to find new approaches to faith. I listened as people struggled with or gleefully soaked up what they heard. One of the speakers told of the punishment of his denomination because of his work. Over lunch, a friend spoke of her journey of faith, which has taken many paths. There has even been a tree or two along the way, plus a deep painful chasm. But the seeking has continued with some remarkable results. As in the story of Zacchaeus, boundaries get broken or expanded and grace abounds.

We need the Saints to encourage us to not be afraid of expanding boundaries. We need the Saints for courage in our own seeking and wanting to know God. We need the Saints in all their diversity, in all their near weirdness, in all their efforts to get to know God. We need them, because without them, there is no way I am going up in that tree and I am deathly afraid of the edge. Thanks you, Saints, for holding up the vision, so I can see it plainly in my effort to run on by!

Amen