Comments for Jim Other sermons.                 

Here’s a story that perhaps you’ve heard. A poor Scottish farmer was out in the field and heard cries for help coming from a nearby bog. He rushed over and found there, mired up to his chest in black muck, a terrified little boy. As the boy screamed and struggled, he sank deeper into the bog. He would surely have died had not the farmer been able to drag him out to safety. The very next day, a glittering carriage pulled up before the man’s hovel of a farmhouse. An elegantly attired gentleman, obviously of noble birth, stepped down from the carriage and introduced himself as the little boy’s father.

"You saved my son’s life," he said. "And I want to repay you."

"No, Sir. I cannot accept payment for what I did," the farmer replied, waiving the offer aside.

At that moment the farmer’s own little boy appeared at the door of the house. "Is that your son?" asked the nobleman. The farmer said that it was.

"Well then, I will make you this offer," the nobleman said. "Let me take charge of this boy and provide him with a good education. If the lad is anything like his father, he’ll grow to be a man you’ll be proud of."

The farmer agreed. And the farmer’s son did make his father proud. He graduated from St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become a world-renowned physician. His name? Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin.

But there is more to the story. Years later the nobleman’s son, the same child pulled from the bog by the farmer, became gravely ill. What saved his life this time was penicillin. That boy’s father, the nobleman, was Lord Randolph Churchill. The son’s name was, of course, Winston Churchill.

The word saint usually evokes images in our minds. We think of great men and women of notable achievement, sacrifice and goodness. These are people we, understandably, place high up on pedestals. Sainthood soon comes to equal fame. The problem with this is that we come to regard saints as different from you and me. They are seen as larger than life people whose goodness is somehow of an altogether different order than our own. In the story you heard, the fame and achievements of Alexander Fleming and Winston Churchill are undeniable. But who is the real saint? Of course it is the poor Scottish farmer, of whom we know little beyond the fact that he was very poor and did a decent thing any one of us would have done, given the opportunity. Yet his act changed the course of the world.

It is this understanding of sainthood that the observance of All Saints celebrates. When I reflect on the month long terror of the sniper shootings, I find myself full of appreciation for those who solved this case. Among so many, two people come to mind for me. They’ve been called heroes, but I think they fit the category of saints. One is Montgomery County Police Chief, Charles Moose, and the other is the trucker who noticed that license plate at the rest stop on I-70 and called 911, and then blocked the exit with his truck. During this ordeal, it seemed to me that there were people who were concluding that Chief Moose wasn’t doing his job well because he didn’t come across on the television screen like a presidential press secretary or smooth spin meister. Well, when the dust began to settle, it appears he was doing his job very well: a decent man of considerable ability, a man who cares and gives his best. And the trucker I just mentioned was a guy who had the presence of mind to do the right thing, and head on home. The solving of these crimes and the eventual convictions, God willing, will come thanks to people doing their jobs carefully and well. And there are plenty of people whom we will never see on camera or hear from directly, who are the real saints in this story. Sad to say, as we watch the jurisdictional wrangling going on, we are now treated to the annoying display of more than one outsized ego trying to claim the spotlight and build a career.

When Jesus accosts the Pharisees in the scriptures from Matthew we have been addressing this Pentecost season, he makes an incisive distinction between image and reality. He seems to say that people who are obsessed with being good may be more concerned about looking good than doing good. On the other hand, those who truly do good, rarely think about what they are doing at all. In fact, they just try and do the right thing in the moment in the same way you and I would. They are the real saints. Amen.

Return to CCC Home Page