Be A Saint

Scripture: AllSaints’ Sunday, A.D. 2014 A

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

What is a saint? A saint is someone who is saved.

What does it mean to be saved? Salvation is the eternal life of love and joy, the deathless life of holy overabundance, found only in relationship with God.

Are you saved? Ah. Now that’s the million dollar question.

Some will tell us that salvation is a once-and-done affair, limited to the past. Once upon a time we were baptized, we were given that sure and inviolable promise of God’s forgiveness, and thus we each have tucked away in our back pocket a one-way ticket to Heaven, to be redeemed at the end of our raucous days. And so it doesn’t much matter how we live in the meantime, whether we lie or cheat or steal or abuse—whether we use people like things and love things like people—because we were saved, past tense. So we might as well live like everyone else.

But to view salvation in this way is not an act of faith. Rather, it’s our attempt to find a loophole that would rationalize our lack of faith.

Some will tell us that salvation is progressive, the ongoing act of trying to please God by tilting His scales of Judgment, with more good deeds on one side than sins on the other. We are saving ourselves, climbing that ladder of works-righteousness, to make ourselves worthy of God. We’re earning our sainthood every day. But to view salvation in this way is to live a life trusting not in God’s forgiveness but in our own ability to make ourselves worthy. Rather than humbling ourselves and appealing to the unmerited mercy of Christ, we seek instead to become our own Christs, saving our own little worlds. Whenever someone insists that you must earn your way into Heaven, just ask them, “So how’s that working out for you?”

There are yet others who will claim that salvation lies purely in the unknown future, in the inscrutable Judgment of an arbitrary God. Some will be saved and some will be damned, but who can know the winners of that lottery? Who can say whom God will choose? Our fate lies hidden over the horizon. Thus salvation becomes not a promise of comfort but the looming specter of anxiety and existential dread. We fear the future as the chopping block for souls.

There are, of course, fancy names for all of these errors. Those who trust that a once-and-done salvation in the past allows them to get away with murder in the present history has dubbed antinomians, “lawless” men. Those who try to earn salvation by their own efforts day-to-day are Pelagians, working to climb a ladder of worthiness back up into Heaven. And of course it’s the Calvinists, with their fearful doctrine of double predestination, who grope for an unknowable future salvation, towards which they have neither hope nor control.

So if all of these are errors—if we cannot view salvation as lying purely in the past, the present, or the future—what can we say regarding our salvation? Simply this: “We are saved; we are being saved; and we hope to be saved.”

Brothers and sisters, we are baptized. This alone qualifies us as saints in the biblical sense. We are adopted into the promise of God, into the family of Abraham, into the Body of Christ. And this promise of mercy and forgiveness cannot be lost or washed away. It is eternal! We can always return to the font of our baptism. But that font is not a “get out of jail free” card, in the sense that we can live however sinfully we choose. Baptism is the restoration of our broken relationship with God. But this restoration is a beginning, not an end. It’s like being part of a family: no matter how much your family loves you, you’re not truly part of the family until you love them in return.

Baptism is less about being freed from something than it is about being freed for something. We are freed from our sins, yes; but more importantly we are freed for participation in Christ’s ongoing mission in this world. We strive to bear good fruit, to live lives of holiness and living faith in response to God’s overwhelming love and grace. We do so not for our own benefit, but for that of our fellow man—for one cannot love God and hate neighbor at the same time. We want to please God in the way that a husband wants to please his wife, the way that a daughter wants to make her daddy proud. Our relationship to God is restored in baptism, and that frees us to live our lives in such a way that we grow closer to God, closer to sanctification, each and every day. The more we know God, the more we know peace.

Does that mean we won’t sin? Heavens, no. We’ll sin all the time. That’s practically the definition of being human. But we’ll do so in faith that God loves us and forgives us and never tires of granting to us second chances. Sinners who seek in love ever to draw ever closer to God are truly the greatest of saints.

Then at last, someday, we shall leave the veil of this broken world behind and witness for ourselves the glory of God’s own face. Then there will be no more confusion, only clarity; no more hiding, only truth. Our race will be over, our battle won. And we look forward to that day when Christ shall say to each of His children, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master.”

So you see, salvation isn’t a one-note deal, past, present, or future. It’s more like a musical chord. We are saved, in justification. We are being saved, in sanctification. And we hope to be saved, in glorification. The bottom line is that God always loves us, so we strive to grow ever closer to God throughout our lives. And if this causes you any consternation—if you hear this sermon and think, “Oh, please, just tell me that my salvation is assured”—consider the words of St. Augustine. A woman in distress once came to him and begged how she could know that she was one of the elect, one of the company who would live forever with God. And Augustine replied to her simply, “If you wish it, it is so.”

Today, brothers and sisters, is the Hallowmas, the Feast of All Saints. Today we celebrate the fullness of salvation promised to God’s people: To all those who are baptized into Christ Jesus; to all those who struggle to live out holiness in everyday life; to all those who beg forgiveness when they fall; and to all those who have passed beyond the grave, from faith to sight, and into the beatific vision of Heaven. This is a celebration of the Church in her entirety, past, present, and future. It is the triumph of life in its fullness over the emptiness and meaninglessness of death. And it is a reminder that eternal life begins now. Sainthood begins now.

Thoreau once wrote that most men live lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. That is not our calling. We are called to the greatest honor of all—called to be saints!—called to embrace lives of virtue, difficult but rewarding; to overflow with good fruit for all the world to share; to be strong and noble and forgiving and humble no matter what our vocations or stations in life. And we are called to do all this out of love, out of joy, out of gratitude to our King.

It may not look like honor and glory, slaying dragons or exploring new worlds. It may look a lot more like self-control, like humble service, like being patient with your family and letting forgiveness conquer pride. Remember that the greatest adventure of all is the quest for immortality, and the most important day of our lives will be the day that we die. Be a man. Be a saint. And watch how all the world around you is saved.

In Jesus. AMEN.