All Saints’ Sunday
30th
October 2011 9:00am Eucharist
Principal, Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford
Readings:
Revelation7: 9-17; 1 John 3 : 1-3; Matthew 5: 1-12
What Kind of Saint Are You?
Saints
are a tricky species. Some of our most famous Saints are notoriously difficult people. No-one quite knows what to do with
them. For example, a prominent
English Roman Catholic was beatified by the Pope earlier this century. John Fisher died a martyr’s death in the
Reformation, and is remembered for his holiness, scholarship and courage. Also for being stubborn, mean and harsh. In his lifetime he had also played a
substantial role in a Cambridge College, and the Pope’s initiative and the
elevation of John Fisher posed a particular problem for the editor of the
College magazine – how to carry the news.
A lengthy feature article somehow seemed inappropriate, especially as
the College was quite anti-clerical.
The solution was beautifully simple. The report of Fisher’s beatification was
carried under ‘News of Old Members’.
All Saints and
All Souls. A time in the year when the church can remember with fondness its
heroes of the faith, especially the obscure ones. When I served my title in Bedford, we
lived at St Minver Road. St Minver was
the daughter of a Welsh Prince (8th Century), and the only story attached to
her is that whilst brushing her hair one day, staring at her reflection in a
well, the devil appeared to her in the ‘mirror’ of the water. Quick as a flash, she threw her hairbrush
at him, and knocked him down the well: game, set and match.
It is easy to get to be humorous with hagiology
– the study of Saints. There are
saints for travellers, sore throats, children, pets and television. Their benefaction leaves nothing
untouched. Yet to focus on their
patronage misses their point. Saints serve a far more serious purpose
in life, and we ignore their function at our peril.
One of my favourites is Wilgefortis, Patron Saint of unhappily married women. A Portuguese Christian martyr, her story
is that she prayed to become unattractive rather than be married off to a pagan
king in Sicily. Legend has it that
she duly grew a moustache, and her suitor withdrew. (Odd, really, since facial hair is
hardly grounds for divorce). She
rejoiced that her virginity was still intact and she could now devote her life
to prayer. Alas, her father was not
so pleased, and had her crucified.
Whilst on the cross, so the tradition claims, she prayed that her
suffering would somehow liberate all who were ‘encumbered’.
Her cult spread to England. Thomas More complained about the
devotion to her (by now known as St Uncumber), which
for reasons that should perhaps best not be explored, was especially
concentrated in East Anglia. The
local custom was to leave a ‘peck’ of oats at her statue by Dusk, on the basis
that the Devil would be sure to be riding through the village that night. The oats would tempt the Devil’s horse
to stop for refreshment, giving Satan a five minute break during which he could
apprehend the errant husband. One
statue to her survives – in Westminster Abbey.
Saints
can be extraordinary people. A
popular story from World War Two tells of a Romanian Christian who found
himself imprisoned at Belsen, and deprived of all he
needed to sustain his faith: no crucifix, bible, icons, devotional books,
corporate worship or knotted prayer beads.
So he prayed in secret – that he might respond to the call of love. He found himself spending time in the
camp with the sick, the starving, the diseased, the dying and the betrayers –
all those who were shunned by others.
One day, as the camp drew close to liberation, an atheist – a priest, in
fact, who had his faith shattered by the experience of war – came to see the
Romanian and said, ‘I see how you live here. Tell me about the God you worship’. And the Romanian replied: ‘He is like
me’.
I
wonder which of us could reply: ‘he is like me’? As the gospels regularly hint, it’s the
example that makes the difference, not the ideas; the praxis, not the
theories. The call to discipleship
remains compelling simple: to be like him.
And
yet we often miss Saints when they are right under our noses. Because they can be very ordinary
people, just like you and I. Not
long after I moved to Sheffield, a near-neighbour of mine died. I had never met him, but his obituary
was carried in The Independent.
The Revd Kenneth Hayes was a rather unremarkable man. He had been a pastor in a small mining
village in Wales, which no-one would ever have heard of but for the name of Aberfan.
It was Hayes who, on October 21st
1966, had been shaken that morning by a terrible sound followed by an even more
terrible silence. The coal slurry,
heaped up into big mountains, and after days of rain, had all fallen on the
infant school. Hundreds of children
were killed. It was he who had
opened up his chapel, organised the relief work. It was he who kept the community afloat
in the months ahead, organising appeals for toys, arguing for compensation, and
taking Aberfan to Downing Street. He was in all respects a remarkable man.
But it was also he, a 36 year old
clergyman, who on that morning, had lost his own son somewhere under the silt
and slurry. In spite of his loss,
he had worked for his community, holding everyone up when he should have been
breaking down. In all of that
unbearable anguish, he had still bestowed a calm sincerity and spirituality to
a community searching for meaning in the midst of unimaginable grief. He is a kind of saint. He fought the government and Coal Board
for Aberfan when many would have given up. He pushed Harold Wilson hard for
compensation, but only won a partial victory. The Coal Board refused to move its tips
unless it was compensated for this, so the Aberfan
Disaster Fund was compelled to dig into its own disaster fund and makeover, in
1966, £150,000 back to the Coal Board, so it could make Aberfan
‘safe’.
Up until the last minute, it had
demanded £235,000. The negligence
that killed 100 children cost the Coal Board virtually nothing. They paid £500 to each bereaved family,
and £160,000 to the village, but then got most of it back from the coerced
donation. It would be churlish to
call Kenneth Hayes a ‘Saint’ in the way that the Anglican or Catholic churches
might mean it. Hayes was a
Baptist. Yet there was something extraordinarily
saintly about his conduct throughout life, a stature that meant that he became
an icon for his community, a beacon of hope in a dark place. Saints are like that: they stand out in
communities, and in the midst of disaster, pain or persecution, they stand up,
and are counted.
I love John Dewey’s poem which speaks
well to the All Souls and All Saints season. The poem is about his two sons who died,
but it could just as easily be an elegy for any saint.
To
us you came from out of the dark
To
take the place of him who went -
Quenched
that glimmering joyous spark
Not
ours you were, but lent.
To
us you came from out of light
Brightest
of lights that ever shone
To
make dark life sweet and white;
Not
ours you were, but God’s own loan.
With
us a little while, our light, you dwelt –
And
did we fail to care, or care did we too much?
Again
we saw a dying light to darkness melt
While
our aching arms vainly strove to touch
And
hold our own
God’s blessed loan.
According to one Jewish tradition, we
are all in the hands of God. But it
is the righteous souls – the Saints – who ‘glow like sparks in the
stubble’. It is an enchanting
image. Saints, rather like the
embers of a fire, continue to give off light and heat, and may still illuminate
life. But they are also thrown out
of the fire into the world. They
are on loan there, sitting light to life, but illuminating us with their wisdom
and holiness. Although they are
dead, it is because of their deeds that they are not forgotten. But their lives – sacred, selfless and
sacrificial – still speak to us today, and ask us what we think life is really
worth living for?
So my question is this: what kind of
Saint are you? To answer it, you
have to look into your heart, and ask some searching questions about your self;
your life, and what you are doing with it.
Who or what on earth are you for?
What random and costly acts of kindness and generosity will you perform
today? And tomorrow? Can you love and serve others –
putting all before your self – and yet not count the cost? Can you, at the same time, radiate
warmth, peace, openness and hospitality.
To be a beam of God’s light and warmth in a world that is sometimes dark
and cold? Can your friends and
colleagues say, hand on heart, that to know you is to somehow have been touched
by the presence of God?
It’s a big ask, I know. But all saints are basically normal
folk. They just give their lives
over to God, and watch God make the ordinary into the extraordinary. There is no better way to live. This allows us to say four final things
about all Saints. First, Saints are
not perfect: they can sin, and all sinners can be Saints. Second, Saints are loaned to life, and
they live their lives in this knowledge and in this light. They expend their energy with passion
and enthusiasm, not counting the cost.
They are a gift. Third, they
sit lightly to life. They are
already close to God, and their union and absorption with the true light acts
as a conduit for grace in this life.
To know a Saint is to know something of the presence of God. Finally, all saints have a spark about
them. It glows with the breath of
the spirit, and it illuminates the darkness, setting the world alight. Saints are not the fire, but they know
that they are the fuel.
Our task as the church is be like any Saint.
Not clinging to our lives but to God, and being imbued by the light and
fire of the spirit. Living like
this, we are All Saints. As one Eastern Orthodox prayer puts it: ‘Set our hearts on fire with love for
thee O Christ, that in that flame we may love thee and our neighbours as
ourselves.’ Amen.