Sunday, November 5, 2023
/All Saints
Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12
The Rev. Clint Brown
There is a story of a young girl who would often accompany her father to his part time job. It was a rather unique job in that he was responsible for cleaning the cathedral in the city where they lived. While he worked, he would allow her to wander around on her own and explore what, to a small child, must have been a wonderland. You can imagine her delight as she discovered seemingly endless corridors and mysterious locked doors and wondered about all the unique objects stuffed into nooks and crannies. One day she found herself taking particular notice of the windows which to her looked just like pictures. She was transfixed by the way the evening light, streaming through the windows, would fall on her while she stood there, bathing her in the warm and varied hues of the stained glass. On the way home that night she asked her father about the people in the windows – “Who are they?” – and her father explained that some were angels; some were great characters or scenes from the Bible; some showed the life of Christ; and some were saints. “What’s a saint?” she asked. “Well, did you notice the light coming through the window? A saint is a person you only see when the light shines through.”
This has come to be for me the best definition of a saint I know of, a person you only see because the light of Christ shines through. There is no hint of self-importance in a saint, no interest in fame or power, or that we all see them. Rather, their desire is to be transparent to the work of Christ through them. We call a person a saint before they talk differently and act differently, in ways that suggest to us that when we see them, we are seeing a bit of what God must be like. A saint is a person made visible by the character of God. It is why on All Saints we hear the Beatitudes – “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” “Blessed are the meek.” “Blessed are the merciful.” “Blessed are the peacemakers.” There are not normal ways of behaving; these are, indeed, saintly ways of behaving. These are glimpses of what a saint is like, what God is like, and God is not through making saints. God means for you and me to be one, too. So let the light of Christ shine through you bright and clear and strong this day and every day. Go… be a saint.