How To Become A Saint

Isaiah 25: 6-8 & Revelation 21: 1-5a

Roger Lynn

October 28, 2018

All Saints

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We are just a few days away from November 1st, the day when the church traditionally celebrates “All Saints.” The idea of a saint has taken on various meanings over the years, but in its original usage in the New Testament, it is roughly synonymous with “the faithful” or “those who belong to Christ.” So, for example, Paul writes to the Church in Rome and says, “To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints...” (Romans 1:7) With this understanding of the word, it becomes an expansive and inclusive concept, rather than narrow and exclusive.

So, how does one go about becoming a saint? What are the pre-requisites? What are the job requirements? What do we need to do? Natural enough questions, but mostly they reveal the limitations of our human perspective. Most of the time it seems as if we approach situations with the idea that we can accomplish whatever is necessary if only we can figure out what needs to be done and how best to do it. Which works remarkably well if we are trying to build a bridge across a river or learn a foreign language or decode genetic information. But when it comes to relationships, both human and divine, such an approach has serious limitations. And relationship is finally what being a saint is all about. We can’t just collect enough data and feed it into a computer in just the right way and come up with the formula for sainthood. At the heart of the matter, sainthood is a new way of relating with God and with each other. It is living in the presence of God. It isn’t so much about what we do as it is about who we are. And who we are is defined by the fact that we are fully and completely loved by God. When we begin to live into that reality then we begin to discover what is already true – we are already a part of the communion of God’s beloved saints.

Both the text from Isaiah and the text from Revelation are remarkable in the glimpse they offer of God’s expansive love. Isaiah speaks of the lavish feast that God is preparing for all the people. Not just for those of Jewish heritage. Not just for those who looked and talked and thought like us. Not just for those who considered themselves to be “chosen.” But for all the peoples. And Isaiah also speaks of what this expansive love of God will accomplish for all people. The shroud of the fear of death itself will be swallowed up. The light of God’s presence drives back the darkness in which our fears take root and rob us of life and joy. In the face of such love, only life will survive. And in Revelation we find a remarkably similar message being proclaimed. God’s love for all of creation is so powerful that everything is transformed by it and made new. When we begin to recognize that the dwelling place of God is right here in the midst of us, then there is no room left for tears and fears and darkness. In the light of the ongoing presence of God, all things are made new. Let that sink in for a moment. All things. You and me and the people we love and the people we have trouble loving and the situations which bring us joy and the situations which bring us pain. All things are made new. Transformed by the love of God into what they were created to be. And because God is not limited by time and space, such transformation is, in fact, already a reality. It is only our finite human perspective which prevents us from perceiving and experiencing it. Becoming a saint is the process of living into the transforming reality of God’s love and presence in ever fuller, ever richer, ever deeper ways.

Of course this is considerably easier to talk about than it is to actually experience. Catching glimpses of God’s expansive, transforming love is one thing. Fully embracing it and taking the risk of fully opening ourselves to actually being transformed is quite another thing altogether. We see evidence of such human limitation even within the pages of scripture. In both Isaiah and Revelation, in the verses immediately following those which we read this morning, the writers turn away from the vision of God’s love which had only moments before held center stage and instead declare some group of people to be beyond the reach of God’s transforming love. In Isaiah “all peoples” apparently does not include the dirty, rotten Moabites. For John, in Revelation, it is “the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars” who are somehow excluded from the love of God that is making “all things” new. I know that my own blind spot tends to involve intolerance. I am quick to be intolerant of intolerance. And in so doing I place myself firmly in the same place as every other “saint” who ever has lived or ever will live – in need of God’s transforming love. Our vision of who God is among us and who God calls us to be will always out pace our ability to live into that vision. That is part of what it means to be human. But the reality is that we cannot “become” saints because we already are saints. We already are fully and completely embraced in God’s love. We can only open ourselves to the possibility of being transformed into God’s already present vision of who we are. In Revelation we hear the voice from the throne declare, “It is done!”

So then, let us begin to live like the saints God already knows us to be. And let us also begin to recognize and call forth the “saintliness” in the lives of those around us, because God already sees that as well. Let us celebrate the fact that we live in the world where God is already at work making all things new.