Monday, October 31, 2016

Sermon from Sunday, Oct 30, 2016 (All Saints Sunday)



Reading:  2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 (Ostensibly Paul summing up his life as a servant of God and the community of faith -- in spite of all his faults and mis-directions along the way, he has fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith ... thanks to the grace of God shown to us all in Christ.)

Why do people become saints?

The question appeared at the head of a little essay in The Spectator this past Wednesday.  It was on the ‘Our Pulse’ page – a weekly feature on local schools.  This week’s page featured news, artwork, and short essays from St. Teresa of Calcutta Elementary School, and with the recent canonization of Mother Teresa – on Sept 4 of this year, making her now Saint Teresa of Calcutta, the students’ submissions naturally focused on Saint Teresa and what she means to them.

“Why Do People Become Saints?” was written by a girl in grade six named Chloe, and the title made me wonder why people do become saints.  What motivates them?  Do they set out to become saints?  Is that a life-goal for some people?

I imagine if it is, those persons really aren’t and never really will be saints.  To want to be a saint, at least in the way we imagine them – as objects of veneration and worship, super-human perfect figures we admire and look up to, maybe even pray to because they are closer to God than we are – to want to be that seems more self-serving, self-aggrandizing and self-directed, more ego-driven than real sainthood probably is about.

But as I read Chloe’s little essay, I realized what she was really asking is more “why do some people get recognized as saints?” or “how does a person become saintly in their life?”

And I wonder if the answer – at least one part of the answer, is that we let ourselves love – let ourselves fall in love with some part of God’s good will and God’s good purpose in our time.

Clarissa Estes, who wrote the book Women Who Run with Wolves, says this, for instance, about creativity and what makes a creative person.  Creativity, she says, “is not virtuosity [or a certain kind of skill], although that is very fine in itself.  It is [rather] the love of something, having so much love for something – whether a person, a word, an image, an idea, the land or humanity – that all that can be done with the overflow is to create.  It is not [even] a matter of wanting to, not a singular act of will; one solely must.”

And I wonder if it’s the same with saints and saintliness – that it’s a matter of loving, and having so much love for some part of what God is doing in the world, that you cannot but become part of it, cannot but start to act and live in harmony with what is being done for good in some little part of the world. 

Isn’t that, for instance, how Saint Teresa started when she was still just Mother Teresa?  She was teaching in a traditional missionary school, and from inside the walls of the compound she saw the poor who were uncared for and dying outside the walls, who would never come in, and her heart was broken by what she saw.  Her heart opened in love to those she saw, and she so fell in love with the dream of reaching out to them, of going out to them, and of holding them in her own arms, that she could not help but actually do it.

And she didn’t need to be perfect to do it.  She didn’t need to be “like this” with God – didn’t have to have everything right – either before she started or by the time she finished.

In my worship blog this week I made mention of two on-line articles that I finally got around to reading – that I stopped avoiding, that reveal some of Saint Teresa’s imperfection and flawed humanity.  Behind the veil of saintly devotion and perfection that the Church has helped create around Teresa, she was as deeply flawed as any human being, and her ministry and organization of the Sisters of Charity, were also equally human, probably corrupted, and at times sadly mis-guided.

“Wretched soul that I am.  I want to do what is right, but I cannot do it.  I do not do the good I want to do, and the evil I do not want is what I end up doing.  Who will rescue me from my frustration and imperfection?”

Teresa didn’t write these words but she might have echoed them, had she seen aspects of her life as others are able to.  It was Paul who wrote these words, over two millennia ago, at the very beginning of the Christian movement and mission as he looked as honestly as he could at his own life as a leader of the church.  Not much has changed in two thousand years, when it comes to the weakness and imperfection of our saints.

And that’s the point – the real miracle of sainthood – that God is able to take ordinary, even extraordinarily flawed human beings, and turn them to some good and holy use.  The miracle of sainthood – like the miracle of incarnation or trans-substantiation, is that even ordinary, imperfect, struggling human beings like us can find ourselves, part of something bigger and holier than we can ever understand – when we let ourselves, when we let the miracle happen.

“Let the love of God enfold you” are the words written on our narthex wall that we see every Sunday morning as we come to worship.  They are comforting words, inviting us into a safe place of healing and care.  They are also challenging words, encouraging us to let ourselves become so folded into the love of God for all the world, that we let our own lives be part of how that love is lived out and made known in the world.

And we need not do it perfectly, or even all our lives.  Maybe this is what helped Paul through his own times of doubt and self-criticism, because for a lot of his life he was kind of on the wrong road, or at least going in a wrong direction.  He was religious enough – very religious, in fact, but he was trying to be a saint, trying to be a hero for God and for good in the world, and it was so self-centred, so self-directed and so self-serving, that he couldn’t help but get it wrong. 

Until God stopped him short.  He was knocked off his high horse.  Was forced to see how blind he really was.  He had to ask for help.  And from that moment on, he was changed.  He was no less flawed, no less imperfect, no less human than before, but now he was going in a better direction.  He was letting himself be guided.  Instead of living out his own religious agenda and his own need to be on top, he was happy to be able to act out God’s love for others – to be a tool, even a rusty and broken one, in the toolbox of God’s kingdom of love.

There’s a song called “Utilities” by a group from Winnipeg called The Weakerthans that may just be a prayer for that kind of miracle and that kind of gift in our lives:

“Got this feeling that today doesn’t like me.  The air tastes like flowers and paint.  There’s a sink full of bottles and cutlery, and the car’s got a list of complaints.  I just wish I were a toothbrush or a solder gun.  Make me something somebody can use….Got a face full of ominous weather.  Smirking smile of a high pressure ridge.  Got more faults than the state of California, and the heart is a badly built bridge.  Seems the most I have to offer doesn’t offer much.  Make it something somebody can use.  Make this something somebody can use.”

This week a woman named Kasia Brieggmann-Samson was interviewed on the radio.  Four years ago her husband Tom was killed while he was biking to work when he was struck by a van and then by a second motor vehicle.  It was a terrible accident and a horrific loss.  Four years later she still feels broken and lonely, also deeply anxious any time she’s out on the street.  And in that brokenness – out of that brokenness, she joined a group called Families and Friends for Safer Streets.  She joined for support – not to be and to feel alone, and now that she is there she is doing what she can as part of that group to help change for the better the way things work on the street, and how life goes for others in the city.

“Seems the most I have to offer doesn’t offer much.  But make it something somebody can use.”  For the past few years, for the present moment, and probably for a few years more, Kasia is letting some deep part of her heart and some current need of the world to come together, and because of that no matter how jagged or hurtful or broken her little pebble may be, it’s making holy ripples in the pond of the world.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Towards Sunday, October 30 (All Saints Sunday)

Reading: 2 Timothy 4:6-8 and 16-18 (Ostensibly the apostle Paul summing up his life and offering a closing word to the whole venture -- I have fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith ... could any of us want to be able to say anything better?)

For Aaron, who first raised questions about Mother Teresa for me.
 
This Sunday we celebrate All Saints.  

So I am trying to sort out what I think and feel about "saints," and the question seems to be focusing around Mother Teresa -- lauded as a saint in her lifetime, and now officially (since September 4 of this year) Saint Teresa of Calcutta.



On one hand, this week I finally read two on-line articles that I've known about for some time, but have avoided reading until now -- "Mother Teresa was no saint" in the Huffington Post, and the original research article it is based on, "Mother Teresa: anything but a saint" in UdeMNouvelles, an online publication of the University of MontrealWithout going into all that is exposed (the links to both articles are at the bottom of this page), it is enough to know that once the mask of saintly devotion is peeled away, what is revealed is a human being as deeply flawed as any, and a ministry and organization equally human, probably corrupted and in some ways terribly mis-guided.   Both articles suggest -- not unconvincingly, that Teresa's saintliness is primarily a product of her church's need for a hero to "sell" the Church to an increasingly disinterested world, and a very good public relations campaign. 

On the other hand, this Wednesday's "Our Pulse" in The Hamilton Spectator --which every week features artistic and literary work of a local school, featured submissions from St. Teresa of Calcutta Elementary School, and the submissions of students from grades 5-8 focused primarily on two things: the official story of St. Teresa and her Christ-like commitment to the poor and dying of Calcutta, and the heartfelt sentiment that "today, we pray to St. Teresa of Calcutta to help us live our lives as she did, with a loving and caring heart."  

Or as another student put it, "We try our best to live in Saint Teresa's exampleLike her, we want to help those in need.  So for this Thanksgiving we hosted a food drive for the Good Shepherd where we filled many boxes full of canned goods for people in our city."

How can you argue with that?  With the good effect of the canonization of Teresa, on those who learn to admire and emulate the impulse of charity and care for the poor?

But I also agree with a conclusion of the two "de-bunking" or revisionist articles noted above and cited below -- that we would be far better served by the church if instead of having to see saints as perfect and beyond reproach and somehow closer to God and perfect holiness than the rest of us, the church could somehow manage to hold together both the extreme flawed-ness of any human person and organization, and the reality of wonderfully gracious deeds that still are done, and the wonderfully gracious impact that even deeply flawed and misguided people can have on the world?  

Because isn't this where most of us are?  And how most of are counted among the saints?

I don't know ... but I know I'm looking forward to Sunday, when all of this will be on the table.

Oh yeah, here's the links to the articles that I avoided for so long:

http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2013/03/01/mother-teresa-anything-but-a-saint/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/krithika-varagur/mother-teresa-was-no-saint_b_9470988.html