What do you want to be, anyway?

A Sermon for All Saints' Sunday

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9, Psalm 24, Revelation 21:1-6a, John 11:32-44

“What do you want to be, anyway?”

That is the question a friend asked Thomas Merton not too long after his conversion from atheism to Roman Catholicism. Merton recalls this conversation in his spiritual autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain:

I forget what we were arguing about, but in the end Lax suddenly turned around and asked me the question:

“What do you want to be, anyway?”

I could not say, “I want to be Thomas Merton the well-known writer of all those book reviews in the back pages of the Times Book Review,” or “Thomas Merton the assistant instructor of Freshman English at the New Life Social Institute for Progress and Culture,” so I put the thing on the spiritual plane, where I knew it belonged and said:

            “I don’t know; I guess what I want is to be a good Catholic.”

            “What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?”

The explanation I gave was lame enough, and expressed my confusion, and betrayed how little I had really thought about it at all.

Lax did not accept it.

“What you should say” – he told me – “what you should say is that you want to be a saint.”

A saint!  The thought struck me as a little weird.  I said:

“How do you expect me to become a saint?”

“By wanting to,” said Lax simply.

“I can’t be a saint,” I said, “I can’t be a saint.” And my mind darkened with a confusion of realities and unrealities: the knowledge of my own sins, and the false humility which makes men say that they cannot do the things that they must do, cannot reach the level that they must reach: the cowardice that says: “I am satisfied to save my soul, to keep out of mortal sin,” but which means, by those words: “I do not want to give up my sins and my attachments.”

“What do you want to be, anyway?” Why not say that you want to be a saint?

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints’ in which we commemorate those exemplary disciples in the Church’s history who have inspired the imagination of Christians. We commemorate those who, as the Wisdom of Solomon says, “In the time of their visitation they shone forth, and ran like sparks through the stubble.” We commemorate all the saints, well known, less well known, unknown, and forgotten. We remember ‘official’ saints like Francis, Clare, Barnabas, Nicholas, Catherine, etc. and more contemporary ‘unofficial’ saints like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Mother Teresa. And we rejoice in believing that we are united with them in the one great communion of the saints.

Why commemorate the saints? It is not to do them any favor. As Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) said,

The saints have no need of honor from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs.  Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them. But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by tremendous yearning.

The saints inspire us. If we let them, they also inflame a tremendous yearning in us to live lives of similar faithfulness, love, and joy. That yearning is the challenge of the saints. We need to be careful not to put them on a pedestal that makes them fantastical and unreal. Otherwise we will miss the challenge of the saints. And here is the challenge: all saints were made of the same stuff as you and me. By God’s grace and their own discipline they became more nearly what each of us could be, what each of us are meant to be – saints.

Of course, like Merton, we are all very aware of our own sin. But, there is also that false humility which makes us say that we cannot do the things that we must do, cannot reach the level that we must reach: the cowardice that says: “I am satisfied with not being any better or worse than most people” but which really means, “I do not want to give up my sins and my attachments.”

But, when we are honest with ourselves we know that that leaves us off balance and keeps us from entering more fully into the love and joy and peace that we believe God desires to pour into every crook and cranny of our lives. And it keeps us from being that love and joy and peace in the world around us.

What do you want to be, anyway? Why not say that you want to be is a saint?

What is a saint? Here is a description from one of my favorite singers, Leonard Cohen:

What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill.  His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shapes of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.

Balancing monsters of love. What do you want to be, anyway? Why not say that you want to be is a balancing monster of love running like a spark through the stubble?

Frederick Buechner wrote this of saints:

Maybe more than anything else, to be a saint is to know joy. Not happiness that comes and goes with the moments that occasion it, but joy that is always there like an underground spring no matter how dark and terrible the night. To be a saint is to be a little out of one's mind, which is a very good thing to be a little out of from time to time. It is to live a life that is always giving itself away and yet is always full.

What do you want to be, anyway? Why not say that you want to be a little out of you mind, living a life that is always giving itself away and yet always full – full of the joy of God, running like a spark through the stubble?

Thomas Merton, in a different book wrote this about the sanctity that typifies a saint:

Sanctity is not a matter of being less human, but more human. This implies a greater capacity for concern, for suffering, for understanding, for sympathy, and also for humor, for appreciation of the good and beautiful things of life.

What do you want to be, anyway? Why not say that you want to be more human?

Why not? Is it cowardice and false humility? Sin and attachments? Complacency with being ‘less than human’, less than fully alive? When we are honest with ourselves do we not sometimes sense that we are less than fully alive – not fully alive to God, not fully alive to others, not even fully alive to ourselves? I sense it in myself. The saints are those who are more fully alive and they inflame a yearning in us to be similarly alive.

And they challenge us to respond to Jesus calling to us, “Come out and be unbound.” We are like Lazarus. Parts of us are dead and need resurrecting. We all know well enough that there are things shut up in our hearts that would cause a stench if we uncovered them. Sin and attachments bind us like strips of grave cloth.

Jesus stands before us, weeping, desiring to fill is with his life and love and joy and peace. We need only role away the stone and allow him to have his way with us. Diligently practicing the classic spiritual disciplines is how we take away the stone – self-scrutiny and repentance, prayer and fasting, practicing the self-emptying, patient love of Jesus.

This is not about trying to get God to love us more. Through Jesus, we know that God already loves us – however dead we might be. We cannot make God love us more because God already loves us freely and completely. But our sins and our attachments can get in the way of our experiencing that love. It is not that God loves the saints more but that the saints availed themselves more to that love.

Only God can work in us the radical life-giving change in us for which we yearn. Only God can right all that unbalances us. Only God can transform us into balancing monsters of love. Only God can produce in us inner springs of joy and make us more fully human, more fully alive. But, God usually waits for us to take away the stone. If we want it, we can do the things that open us to God’s Holy transforming Spirit. Do we dare take the stone away? Do we dare ascend the hill of the LORD with the saints and stand in his holy place?

Why not say that you want to be is a balancing monster of love running like a spark through the stubble?

Why not say that you want to be a saint?

Seraphim of Sarov and the Burden of One Another

 

Today is the Feast Day of Seraphim of Sarov in the Orthodox Church. Seraphim is not widely known in the West, but he is an intriguing and inspiring saint. He has sometimes been referred to as the Russian St. Francis given his humble way of life and unusual relationship with wild animals. For years, he lived in an isolated hermitage where

Only the birds and the wild beasts visited him, and he dwelt with them as Adam did in Paradise. They came at midnight and waited for him to complete his Rule of prayer. Then he would feed bears, lynxes, foxes, rabbits, and even wolves with bread from his hand. St Seraphim also had a bear which would obey him and run errands for him.

Here is another story from his life that I find particularly interesting and edifying:

One day, three robbers in search of money or valuables once came upon him while he was working in his garden. The robbers demanded money from him. Though he had an axe in his hands, and could have put up a fight, but he did not want to do this, recalling the words of the Lord: "Those who take up the sword will perish by the sword" (Mt. 26: 52). Dropping his axe to the ground, he said, "Do what you intend." The robbers beat him severely and left him for dead. They wanted to throw him in the river, but first they searched the cell for money. They tore the place apart, but found nothing but icons and a few potatoes, so they left. The monk, regained consciousness, crawled to his cell, and lay there all night.

In the morning he reached the monastery with great difficulty. The brethren were horrified, seeing the ascetic with several wounds to his head, chest, ribs and back. For eight days he lay there suffering from his wounds. Doctors called to treat him were amazed that he was still alive after such a beating. For the rest of his life Seraphim walked hunched over and in pain.

This and the quote above are borrowed from here.

Years passed and Serapim’s reputation as a holy man grew. Eventually, he began to receive visitors offering them spiritual counsel as well as physical and emotional healing. One morning,

Seraphim’s three aggressors [the three who had beaten him so badly years ago] appeared on his clearing. They were led by a huge one with a red face, who sobbed like a child. When Seraphim ran forward to greet them, they fell on their knees and touched the ground at his feet with their foreheads.

“Forgive us, man of God, forgive us and tell us what penance we must do. Lord have mercy upon us! Shall we leave our families, journey to the Holy Land, chasten our sinful flesh under the monk’s habit?

Seraphim raised them up from their knees. “Go back to your families and your work; strive to be loving to your wives, children, parents, and to each other, to all. You’ll find it hard enough. Try to be of good cheer and sin no more. I’ll do penance for you, I’ll carry your load on my back. Go in peace.” (Flame in the Snow by Julia de Beausobre, P. 104).

For the rest of his life, Serphim carried a bag of rocks slung over his hunched-over back. When he returned to life in community he substituted a large, heavy iron cross around his neck. He thus bore the burden of his attackers.

I am moved by the tenderness with which Seraphim treats his former attackers and the gentle charge he lays on them which he admits they will find hard enough. But, more, I wonder at his offering to do penance for them.

I am not sure what it might mean to do penance for someone else’s sins. But, I do appreciate what I take to be Serphim's recognition that we belong more intimately to one another than we are often inclined to admit. If indeed we are "the body of Christ and individually members of it" and "if one member suffers, all suffer together with it" then perhaps our responsibility for one another runs as deep as Seraphim's actions imply. Might it even be that the charge to "bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ" could include bearing the burdens of each other's sin? Perhaps this is what a life of forgiveness is about.

I wonder if bearing one another's burdens might also mean bearing the burden of one another. How often do we distance ourselves from the "burden" of others who we find burdensome? How different would disagreements in church (at any level) - or, for that matter, family and political disagreements - look if we understood those with whom we disagree as members of ourselves whose burden we are to bear even if they have hurt us, even when bearing with them weighs on our hearts like a bag of rocks over our shoulder? Would we be as quick to relish the latest outrage of our foes? Would we speak of them with derision and disdain? Would we dismiss their questions and concerns with contempt? What if we, like Seraphim, attempted penance on behalf of those with whom we disagree or who we find most disagreeable? Or at the very least what if we practiced bearing the load that is the other for the sake of our own souls?

All Saints Sunday -- 11/1/09

Every now and then I visit the Wade Center at Wheaton College. I like to sit and read and sometimes work on a sermon in the museum there. The museum

showcases memorabilia and rotating wall displays which highlight selections from our collection of books, letters, manuscripts, and artifacts” related to seven British authors: Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.

There are some big items: an actual wardrobe from C. S. Lewis’ childhood home (complete with fur coats and a sign warning that the Wade Center will not be responsible for any one who might try to enter), a desk from his office at Magdalen College of Oxford University, and the desk on which J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit. In display cases, one can see a pair of glasses once owned by Dorothy Sayers; a pipe and tea mug that belonged to Lewis along with a mug that he likely used for other beverages; and the honorary MA diploma awarded by Oxford to Charles Williams along with the mortar board he wore upon receiving that diploma.

I confess that for me it feels like a pilgrimage destination, a shrine full of holy relics. Except for Barfield who I have not read, each of these authors has inspired and nourished me spiritually. Each has expanded my imagination, which is another way of saying each has enhanced my capacity for faith, love, and wonder. When I am there I feel their presence and my faith is encouraged.

As you know, I am particularly fond of Charles Williams. Though he is not an officially recognized saint, his effect on those who knew him gets at what all the saints are about.

The poet, W. H. Auden, who attributed his conversion to Christianity to Williams, wrote,

for the first time in my life I felt myself in the presence of personal sanctity. I had met many good people before who made me feel ashamed of my own shortcomings, but in the presence of this man . . . I did not feel ashamed. I felt transformed into a person who was incapable of doing or thinking anything base or unloving.

"Transformed into a person who was incapable of doing or thinking anything base or unloving" is another way of saying sanctified or made holy. The saints we celebrate on Saints days and today, on All Saints, are those Christians who stand out as exhibiting exemplary holiness. Which is to say that by God’s grace they are particularly transparent to God’s goodness. Saints are fragrant with the aroma of heaven. That transparent goodness and fragrant aroma changes those with whom they have contact.

And even more is changed. Upon learning that his friend had died, C. S. Lewis wrote that when he tried to combine the idea of death with the idea of Charles Williams he found that "it was the idea of death that was changed."

The saints anticipate – embody even – a glimpse of the splendor of resurrection glory. A glory that is stronger than death.

Because the glory of God is stronger than death, those who have been received into the fullness of that glory are never completely removed from us. Though they have "ascended the hill of the LORD" and "stand in his holy place" having received their blessing and reward from the King of glory, they continue to encourage those of us still making the ascent up the hill of sanctification. We are knit together in a great fellowship with them with threads stronger than death.

Among other things, this is what is meant when we affirm in the Apostles' Creed that we believe in “the communion of saints”. Those who God has "tested and found worthy of himself", those who he has refined like gold, still shine forth in our midst. The saints "run like sparks through the stubble" of this world igniting our imagination and our expectation of another world where all will be made new and the stench of sin, disease and death will be no more. They enhance our capacity for faith and love. Through them the Holy Spirit can transform us and inspire in us the desire to be persons who are incapable of doing or thinking anything base or unloving.

And so we rejoice in their fellowship and run with endurance the race that is set before us that we might, together with them, receive the crown of glory that never fades away.