St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, November 1, 2009

Home-Grown Saints – Rev. David Mundy

Ruth 1:1-18 Revelation 21:1-6

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I came upon a framed photograph a few months ago, one of those pictures that gets tucked away in a box during a move and ends up in limbo for years. It is back on my study desk again, as a reminder of some of the people I serve.

Before I show it to you, I’ll tell the story of how I got it in the first place. When I was in my twenties, I served a two-point pastoral charge with one congregation being much smaller than the other. One of the members was a rather frail old man who used a cane to walk. He had a big set of whiskers that made his head look too big for his body. After I had been there a couple of years he asked me if we could go together to visit his wife, who lived in a nursing home. I was a little surprised because I assumed he was on his own, but I discovered why I hadn’t heard about her. We made the 45 minute drive to the residence and he took me to the room of his spouse who was barely responsive to him and didn’t acknowledge me. Somehow, though, it was important that I went with him and read a psalm and prayed.

Months later he asked if I would go again, although he was not well enough to make the trip. It is a different story to visit someone you don’t know and who can’t communicate, but I went for his sake. While I sat there feeling rather awkward and useless, I noticed a photo on her bedside table. It was of a young woman who was standing astraddle two horses as though that was what everyone does. I was curious, so the next time I saw the old guy I asked him about it. He told me that it was of his wife, which I had suspected. As a young woman she loved horses and did stunt riding for the sheer joy of it. I asked him for a copy of the photo and of course he wanted to know why. I told him that I needed the reminder as a young man that those people I visited who seemed frail and decrepit weren’t always old.

They had once been young and vital and made their contributions to the world around them, including to the community of faith and the photo would help me keep that in mind, both while they were still alive and after they had been “promoted to glory” as our friends in the Salvation Army put it.

This is All Saints Day in the Christian year and it is a time for us to remember those who are now in the twilight of life or are no longer with us, yet are not forgotten. When we use the term saints we might think in terms of spiritual celebrities, the special Christians who “made a name for themselves” as being somehow holier and more faithful than the average believer. An example might be St. Francis who gave up everything to serve Christ and seemed to have a special affinity for animals.

There are also saintly people waiting for promotion to God’s “hall of fame” such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta who worked with the outcasts of Calcutta and AIDS sufferers when that disease was still cause for great fear.

But in the New Testament the people called the saints weren’t singled out as spiritual superstars. They were the “home grown” Christians who had served God as best they could and were remembered with affection and love.

Because it is All Saints Day one of the readings we heard this morning is a passage which is often read at the graveside when a person is buried. The verses suggest to us that while this life is finite and death is real, we can live with a resurrection hope of eternal life. Our tears of loss are real, yet Christ is our companion in our grief and in a figurative way at least holds out a hanky and says “have a good blow,” tenderly wiping away the mess as a parent would comfort a distraught child.

Our other passage tells us about a woman named Ruth, a foreigner who loses her own husband to death, but decides that rather than returning to the comfort and safety of her own family, she will throw in her lot with her mother-in-law, whose name is Naomi. We don’t hear too many “feel good” stories about mother’s-in-law, in the bible or anywhere else, but Ruth loves Naomi, who is not a person of power or influence.

It’s quite remarkable that thousands of years later we take the opportunity to retell this simple story of a family relationship. We could call Naomi a home-grown saint, even though this story predates Jesus by a thousand years or more. We certainly aren’t told that Naomi is old, but she is a respected elder. She is a real person who has an extraordinary influence on her daughter-in-law by her example.

So what do you think? Can All Saints Day be our opportunity to acknowledge and express gratitude for the “regular folks” who have been spiritual mentors and touched our lives?

It seems that many cultures do a better job of honouring those who are now “asleep in the faith” as the apostle Paul put it, as well as those who are living elders. I say this aware that this goes against the trend of our own society. Unfortunately here in North America we often act as though the elderly are a problem to be solved rather than acknowledging their contributions to society, their wisdom in faith, and a love which is often mature and worth emulating. In a virtual cult of youth we are often uneasy around those who are aging. Many times people said to me that they don’t visit failing older people because they want to remember them the way they were, without thinking that the way they are now is all part of the process of living and dying.

In other countries such as South Korea which are now strongly Christian there is a long tradition of venerating ancestors that predated the arrival of the Christian religion. This tradition has been incorporated into Christian practice and is an important part of yearly rituals.

And even here in Canada there are groups which choose an alternative way. Our Rev. Cathy mentioned to me that when her husband John was a parish priest on a Native reserve in Northern Ontario All Saints Day was an important occasion. Families gather to share a meal and to remember loved ones. They go to the cemetery to visit the graves of family members who had passed from this life to the next. While these acts of remembrance and respect are now attached to the Roman Catholic church, they probably had their roots in earlier native traditions of honouring elders.

How do we honour the “home grown” saints who have shaped us in ways that we may be aware of and other ways we may not really understand?

We can do what we are including in worship today, saying that the lives of our loved ones still matter even though we are now separated from them by death. In some congregations they light a candle for each person as a reminder that the light of life and the light of Christ can’t be extinguished. A flower is also a way of saying that a life shared with us still blooms.

Through the years I have come home on many occasions from visiting someone, usually older, and said to my wife, Ruth “I want to be like him/her when I grow up.” There are qualities in that person’s way of being I want to emulate. It might be their sense of humour. It might be their strength in the face of adversity. It might be their openness about a deep conviction that God never abandons them and that eternal life in Christ is real for them. Sometimes, truth be told, people get crankier and more difficult with age, but we can still do our best to extend respect and kindness.

Last week my mother asked if I would go to the hospital in Oshawa to visit a dear family friend who has entered into the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. When I found her room both her husband and adult daughter were there. They had been having a tough time because this wonderful woman who taught me in Sunday School years ago has become, in her dementia, belligerent and, for the first time in her life, quite profane. As I walked with the family to the elevator I let them know I was going back for a few minutes and the daughter warned me that her mother might call me things I won’t repeat here because this is a family show! While I joked that I had been called worse things, I went back with some trepidation, braced against being “cursed out.”

I’m relieved to say that it didn’t happen. I reminded her that I had also been her childhood piano student and that while she was a very good teacher, I was a very poor student. Somehow this helped her to connect and after a while I took her hand and offered to say a prayer with her. Her eyes filled with tears before she closed them and at the end she thanked me profusely. We don’t always know how God can be present in people’s lives.

We can also choose to be saintly, not in some “holier than thou” way, but by our example as people who aren’t afraid to say that we are followers of Christ. As parents and grandparents, as friends and co-workers we have a wonderful opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others even though we may never know what that influence has been in this lifetime.

We might not consider ourselves to be spiritual elders or mentors, Yet we can be constantly “growing up” in faith, and learning the important lessons of the life in Christ which are not only important for us but as what we can pass on to others. We are “home-grown” saints in training.

Because we will be honouring loved ones who have died this morning I will leave you with an adaptation of a Quaker prayer which I often use in funeral and memorial services.

We give our loved ones back to God, who gave them to us in the first place.

yet as God did not lose them in giving,

so we have not lost them by their return.

For what is God’s is ours always if we are God’s.

And life is eternal and love is immortal,

and death is only a horizon,

and a horizon is nothing more than the limit of our sight.

Thank God for the saints around us.