SPEAKER_01: A reading from Daniel.
SPEAKER_01: In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in bed.
SPEAKER_01: Then he wrote down the dream.
SPEAKER_01: I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another.
SPEAKER_01: As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me.
SPEAKER_01: I approached one of the attendants to ask him the truth concerning all this.
SPEAKER_01: So he said that he would disclose to me the interpretation of the matter.
SPEAKER_01: As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever and forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: A reading from Ephesians.
SPEAKER_02: In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we who were the first to set our hope on Christ might live for the praise of his glory.
SPEAKER_02: In him, you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: This is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God's own people, to the praise of his glory.
SPEAKER_02: I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.
SPEAKER_02: And for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.
SPEAKER_02: I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe according to the working of his great power.
SPEAKER_02: God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come.
SPEAKER_02: And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
SPEAKER_02: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus looked up at his disciples and said, Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_00: Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
SPEAKER_00: Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
SPEAKER_00: Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
SPEAKER_00: Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
SPEAKER_00: But I say to you that listen, love your enemies.
SPEAKER_00: Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
SPEAKER_00: If any one strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.
SPEAKER_00: And from any one who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt.
SPEAKER_00: Give to everyone who begs from you, and if any one takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.
SPEAKER_00: Do to others as you would have them do to you.
SPEAKER_00: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, and welcome to the Feast of All Saints, and we get this opportunity year after year to think about the holy ones in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And I have to say it's really an amazing frame we're given here as we approach Thanksgiving, probably my favorite American holiday.
SPEAKER_00: We get a whole month to think about the holy ones in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Now, saints is one of those loaded words that I think is worth spending a little bit of attention on because many of us have heard of some of these very popular and famous saints like Saint Francis and Saint Christopher, you know, the kind of people who get statues and show up on medals.
SPEAKER_00: And you should know that those people are actually a kind of saint called canonized saints.
SPEAKER_00: Technically, what that means is that after they have died, miracles have been performed either in their name or through some of their personal objects, like their relics.
SPEAKER_00: You can go and, I mean, for example, there is a saint in the Lourdes, and people have gone to Lourdes and left their crutches behind.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a miracle people still expect now.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the kinds of canonized saints.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're ever looking at a picture and you want to know whether someone's canonized or not, I refer you to the one over there on the wall.
SPEAKER_00: Canonized saints always have a halo on their head.
SPEAKER_00: And the belief is this is what we get from our Catholic ancestry, is that those people have already entered into heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Thereby their prayers are answered and they can do miracles.
SPEAKER_00: Those are people who have extreme faith.
SPEAKER_00: Canonized saints.
SPEAKER_00: It may be good for you to know that our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters have the canonized saints, the haloed ones, but they have a second category of saints.
SPEAKER_00: These are the non-canonized saints who, frankly, have worked miracles in folks' lives without having been investigated.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest to you that it might be easier to be a canonized saint 40 years after you've died.
SPEAKER_00: Because, as Mark Anthony said, the evil men does live after them, the good is often teared with their bones.
SPEAKER_00: With canonized saints, it goes the other way.
SPEAKER_00: We remember people's big heroic deeds, and we forget that their own family couldn't stand to be around them.
SPEAKER_00: So I think this is really, really helpful to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Backward-looking saints is what we're used to.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest that as important as these people are, like Francis and Christopher and Michael and Claire and Bridget, when we hear in the Bible about the saints, we also have the opportunity to think about the lesser-known ones.
SPEAKER_00: And if you won't mind me saying, the ordinary saints.
SPEAKER_00: It's Bible speak.
SPEAKER_00: Really, it means holy ones.
SPEAKER_00: If we were to translate it straight out of Greek, it would say to the holy ones.
SPEAKER_00: And our day school kids know very well the word holy just means, thank you, Grant, it means special.
SPEAKER_00: Like extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00: The way we talk about it is look, we're going to use a chalice, which is a cup.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to put some wine in it, but it's going to be extraordinary wine, right?
SPEAKER_00: So it's a holy cup.
SPEAKER_00: It does something special.
SPEAKER_00: Regular wine just nourishes your body.
SPEAKER_00: This wine nourishes your spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Saints are people who do extraordinary things.
SPEAKER_00: They can be very ordinary, but they nourish the spirits of others.
SPEAKER_00: Saints are people who nourish the spirits of others.
SPEAKER_00: In Renaissance art, you can see it.
SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist is always, every time you see him in Renaissance art, he's pointing.
SPEAKER_00: Does anybody know who he's pointing to?
SPEAKER_00: He's pointing to God in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist always shows you where Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: And I would suggest to you that's what ordinary saints do.
SPEAKER_00: They point us exactly to where God is in one another.
SPEAKER_00: Where is God in one another?
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite theologians is this guy called Boyle.
SPEAKER_00: He is a Jesuit theologian out in Los Angeles, and his ministry for the last 30 years has been taking gang members right when they get out of prison and removing their gang tattoos.
SPEAKER_00: Turning them into bakers and waitresses.
SPEAKER_00: And see, removing the tattoos allows them to go out in public without being shot by a rival gang.
SPEAKER_00: He's a Jesuit, and only Jesuits say things like this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, you know, Jesus doesn't lose a bit of sleep worrying about whether or not we'll forget that the Eucharist is extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is sure we remember that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus loses sleep worrying about whether we'll remember how ordinary the Eucharist is, because we all eat three times a day, and it is in the presence of others that God has made manifest in ordinary ways.
SPEAKER_00: Paul writes his epistle today not to the church leaders in Ephesus.
SPEAKER_00: He writes to the saints who are in Ephesus.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, at the time the Bible was written, most people were illiterate.
SPEAKER_00: This would have been read out loud to a group of people.
SPEAKER_00: Who were the saints in Ephesus?
SPEAKER_00: Well, presumably anybody who could hear the letter being read.
SPEAKER_00: So we have this incredible invitation, I think, to think about sainthood.
SPEAKER_00: In the Episcopal Church, saints are those who point us to God, dead or living.
SPEAKER_00: We have this other opportunity to think about ways in which we have and might continue to point others to God so that we can assemble as the communion of not almost saints, but the communion of already saints.
SPEAKER_00: We get to hear Jesus say the Beatitudes today in Luke.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Blessed are the poor.
SPEAKER_00: I want to suggest to you, Jesus might be saying something a little different than the words themselves seem to read this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I want to suggest Jesus might be saying, Blessed are people who are not already full.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are people who make room for other people.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are people who make room for God in their lives.
SPEAKER_00: Because they will be filled with godly things.
SPEAKER_00: We're celebrating a saint today.
SPEAKER_00: She died about two months ago.
SPEAKER_00: Her name's Meg Mitheney.
SPEAKER_00: Meg didn't wear shoes very often, and her hair was often a mess.
SPEAKER_00: But I'll tell you what Meg did is she made room for every person I ever saw her meet.
SPEAKER_00: She made room to listen to them, to greet them, and not just say, How are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: And you're supposed to say fine and leave.
SPEAKER_00: She actually wanted to know.
SPEAKER_00: And she was made full.
SPEAKER_00: She was made full by people answering her.
SPEAKER_00: She made room for God in everybody I ever saw across our first front desk.
SPEAKER_00: We get to hear Jesus say a few odd things today, and I want you to stay with me for three of them.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be hard because you're going to hear the first one and you're going to think it's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Blessed are you, and if people strike you on one cheek, you should turn the other.
SPEAKER_00: And if people ask for your cloak, you should give them your tunic.
SPEAKER_00: And we could take this to mean, hey, we're not supposed to fight back, we're not supposed to do anything right, you know, we're just supposed to be these meek people.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to know that this story right here is exactly what inspired both Gandhi and Martin Luther King in nonviolent protest.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to walk through what this means.
SPEAKER_00: There's the New Testament scholar called Walter Wink who writes half of a book about this.
SPEAKER_00: The most degrading way that you can hit somebody then or now is with the back of your hand.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're to strike somebody who you consider less than yourself with the back of your hand and they turn their cheek, now you're forced to do one of two things.
SPEAKER_00: Use the back of your other hand, or actually hit them on.
SPEAKER_00: If you hit them with your fist, they're no longer beneath you.
SPEAKER_00: Now they're your adversary.
SPEAKER_00: At the time of Jesus, if you owed money, people could sue you for your clothes in payment.
SPEAKER_00: So pretend Hal, snap back there, owes me some money.
SPEAKER_00: I could sue him for his blazer and for his pants, even.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine here we are in public.
SPEAKER_00: Like this.
SPEAKER_00: You owe me$20, Hal.
SPEAKER_00: Give me your blazer and your pants.
SPEAKER_00: And Hal says, Well, that won't cover the debt.
SPEAKER_00: Here, take my underwear as well.
SPEAKER_00: Who looks worse?
SPEAKER_00: Hal or me.
SPEAKER_00: Walter Wink says what Jesus might be doing here is saying, How is it that we unmask powers that put us at dis-ease with one another?
SPEAKER_00: When the marchers went from Selma to Birmingham, you see, the strategy was when they spray you with a fire hose, and when the dogs come on you, you get up and you keep marching.
SPEAKER_00: You realize national television, in fact, the world's eye, was watching police fight people who weren't physically swinging back.
SPEAKER_00: And people could not understand how somebody could continue to fight someone who was not fighting back.
SPEAKER_00: But Martin Luther King Jr.
SPEAKER_00: was very clear they were fighting back.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't fighting back against the police, they were fighting back against the powers of racism and segregation.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the saints do.
SPEAKER_00: The saints do not have enemies in the realm of people.
SPEAKER_00: The saints have enemies that are powers and principalities.
SPEAKER_00: The saints do not fight against congressmen or unjust rulers.
SPEAKER_00: The saints fight against unjust rule.
SPEAKER_00: The saints fight ageism and racism and sexism.
SPEAKER_00: And the saints do it in this way.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, you give when you're asked for.
SPEAKER_00: The saints do it not by judging what people do with what they give, but by judging whether they continue to give.
SPEAKER_00: The saints are people who love in the most impossible and trying ways.
SPEAKER_00: That sounds like extreme faith, but I want to suggest to you that you all know saints, frankly, that are extremely faithful.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll tell you, my greatest saint in my life is my mother.
SPEAKER_00: She's still very much alive.
SPEAKER_00: She does have extreme faith, but you know, I think the biggest testimony in my life, my mother was a math teacher for 33 years.
SPEAKER_00: She's one of the few teachers I've ever had who the day after you took a test, it was returned to you not only with your grade, but with all of your mistakes worked out on your own paper.
SPEAKER_00: So if you made an addition error or a sign error, she worked your problem out on your paper from that point on for more than 140 students at a time.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what bewitched her to grade like that because I used to teach math and I didn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: I did turn papers back the next day.
SPEAKER_00: That was the important part, but not quite like that.
SPEAKER_00: What was interesting is there were some students who didn't even look at their paper twice, but most of us, most of us who were able to just pause, realized what a gift her extreme faithfulness was.
SPEAKER_00: How many teachers have you had in graduate school or college who never returned your papers back at all?
SPEAKER_00: Half of mine.
SPEAKER_00: Here was a lady who would return your paper the next day fully marked out.
SPEAKER_00: Here was a lady who taught class without any special charisma.
SPEAKER_00: She wasn't an energetic teacher, she was a faithful one.
SPEAKER_00: She wasn't somebody who had a cloud of groupies and took them to do this or that.
SPEAKER_00: She was somebody who got up and did her job faithfully every single day, and it made a difference.
SPEAKER_00: She was extremely faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And in so doing, she didn't just point us to math, although she did that.
SPEAKER_00: She pointed us to what it's like to follow God.
SPEAKER_00: She did not get overwhelmed when we didn't learn our lesson the first time or the fifth time or the nth time.
SPEAKER_00: That did not make her change her faithful behavior.
SPEAKER_00: She was faithful because she was.
SPEAKER_00: She was faithful because she is.
SPEAKER_00: She gave, when asked, of herself.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a poem that Frederick Biekner wrote.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of prosaic poetry, if you don't mind me saying, I want to read it once, and then I'm going to change one word and read it again.
SPEAKER_00: This to me describes the saints.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a story from Frederick Beakner, Protestant minister, that he recalls early on in life.
SPEAKER_00: I hear you're entering the ministry, the woman said down the long table, meaning no real harm.
SPEAKER_00: Was it your own bad idea, or were you poorly advised?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer that she could not have heard, even if I had given it, was that it was not an idea at all, neither my own nor anyone else's.
SPEAKER_00: It was a lump in the throat, it was an itching in the feet, it was a stirring in the blood, the sound of rain.
SPEAKER_00: It was a sickening of the heart, the sight of misery, it was a clamoring of ghosts.
SPEAKER_00: It was a name which when I wrote it down in a dream I knew was a name worth dying for, even if I was not brave enough to do the dying myself, and could not even name the name for sure.
SPEAKER_00: Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you a high and driving peace, and I will condemn you to what feels like death.
SPEAKER_00: I hear you're thinking about becoming a saint, the woman said down the long table, meaning no real harm.
SPEAKER_00: Was it your own bad idea, or were you poorly advised?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer she could not have heard, even if any saint in the world has given it, was that it was not an idea at all to be a saint, neither our own or anyone else's.
SPEAKER_00: It was a lump in our throat, it was an itching in our feet, it was a stirring in the blood at the sound of rain, it was a sickening of the heart at the sight of misery.
SPEAKER_00: It was a clamoring of ghosts.
SPEAKER_00: It was a name which when I wrote it down in a dream I knew was a name worth dying for, even if I was not brave enough to do the dying myself, and could not even name the name for sure.
SPEAKER_00: Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you a high and driving peace.
SPEAKER_00: I will condemn you to what feels like death.
SPEAKER_00: The saints are these people who are possessed with this madness to point to God's presence in our world in the most invisible and apparently inauspicious places.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, we remember them, ordinary saints, because they were successful.
SPEAKER_00: They did these things.
SPEAKER_00: Things.
SPEAKER_00: Like Meg, making room for time.
SPEAKER_00: Like Chris Kraft, who we remember today.
SPEAKER_00: Chris Kraft, who was in charge of most space operations that got us to the moon.
SPEAKER_00: A man so confident and learned and sure that he was able to continue after Apollo 1, right?
SPEAKER_00: A man who could change his mind.
SPEAKER_00: That's what a saint does.
SPEAKER_00: They say, I was wrong about that.
SPEAKER_00: Chris Kraft, who said the proudest accomplishment in his entire life was his family.
SPEAKER_00: The saints are those kind of people.
SPEAKER_00: The saints are people.
SPEAKER_00: He's not in here.
SPEAKER_00: Like Rob Puckett, who is a funny man and never at anybody else's expense.
SPEAKER_00: That is ordinary faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: And it points to larger life.
SPEAKER_00: And it is exactly the communion of saints we're invited to join today.
SPEAKER_00: Not just some people long ago that we remember on medals, but people who have turned the story of our lives in math classrooms, in coffee shops, in pews, and first communion instruction and Cub Scouts.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the saints of God.
SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the biggest journeys we're all invited to make is not just to see the presence of God, the saints of God, as you look around this room or even in your workplace, again, anybody can hear the letter is called a saint.
SPEAKER_00: The surest place to see a saint, and maybe one of the biggest growing areas you like me have, is in that glass above our sink.
SPEAKER_00: When we shave or brush our teeth or comb our hair, because the scripture is quite clear.
SPEAKER_00: We don't come here and become a saint later.
SPEAKER_00: We come here to the rail because we're already saints of God.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe, maybe this is some internal discipline for you.
SPEAKER_00: I have a hard time with these words.
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you what I'm saying and believe it in my head, but integrating it into my own life is really, really difficult.
SPEAKER_00: And I would never get up in front of you and say, well, just be a saint like me.
SPEAKER_00: That would feel really dreadful.
SPEAKER_00: But I had a moment last week where two of my friends came into town from California.
SPEAKER_00: They were saints to me because they came for essentially a party.
SPEAKER_00: They showed up, and boy, that was so life-giving.
SPEAKER_00: That my wife, who's really good about everyday sainthood, kept knocking on the doors of my brain and said, Don't you see?
SPEAKER_00: It's a two-way street.
SPEAKER_00: You're a saint to them.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a hard thing to realize.
SPEAKER_00: It's a high calling to live into.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just mine, it's yours.
SPEAKER_00: All of us have these moments where even if just for a moment we point to something greater than ourselves, I'll tell you, I think part of the reason we get so uptight about calling people saints is they might do something to ruin it.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we gotta wait till 40 years after they're gone, right?
SPEAKER_00: Then we forget about the quirks.
SPEAKER_00: But I'll tell you to my mother, there is nothing my mother could do that would pull her from the canon of sainthood in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Even if she became a Wiccan or a Satanist or a Wiccan Satanist, even if she said, all that stuff I did, I just did it, it would never disqualify the time she pointed me to God because isn't that what the scriptures say?
SPEAKER_00: Faith, hope, and love can never be disqualified.
SPEAKER_00: Whether someone's given them to you or you give them to someone else.
SPEAKER_00: Today we get to celebrate twelve new saints actively joining in the communion of well, the communion.
SPEAKER_00: This is just the day we get to see it.
SPEAKER_00: And I hope we'll continue to see that in one another, and see that in ourselves, because the truth is this place points the world to something greater than itself.
SPEAKER_00: This place, this school, these scubbed out packs, our Christian ed.
SPEAKER_00: Point people to God.
SPEAKER_00: You do that every day, saints of God.
SPEAKER_00: And here we are about to join the communion of saints once again.