Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Original Manuscript:
In the detective show Monk, there's an episode where the title character's, Adrian Monk's, friend Police Captain Leland Stottlemeyer is having marital problems, which Monk deduces as Stottlemeyer drops off a case file to him. Monk then suggests that the Captain stay with him.
Some might see this as just dealing with the annoyance of having a houseguest for a little bit. Some it wouldn't annoy at all, especially since Stottlemeyer tries his best to help out and clean up after himself. The thing is Monk is incredibly Obsessive Compulsive, so he likes things a certain way. He likes things cleaned a certain way.
The final straw is when the Captain decides to help out by vacuuming. The second he finishes, Monk picks up the vacuum and goes over everything again. When the Captain asks what is going on, Monk says "you did a diagonal, I prefer a crisscross. It's no big deal."
Well Stottlemeyer looses it at this point, and all the aggression he and Monk have built up towards each other comes out in a shouting match, during which Stottlemeyer picks up a picture of Monk's late wife Trudy and says, "In the morning, I'm gonna call the Vatican and nominate your late wife for sainthood, because you are impossible!"
The way Stolemeyer holds up Trudy Monk is how we often think about saints. We see them as these special sort of people with great patience and wisdom to undergo anything. We think they are special, super, better.
That's the exact opposite of what saints are. As we heard in our sequence hymn, "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God" by Lesbia Scott, they are "just folks like me". They are just regular people. They aren't special. They're quite ordinary.
They're the people who Jesus describes this morning: the meek, the poor in spirit, the mourners, the persecuted, the hungry.
They're also peacemakers, the merciful, and pure in heart. The ones who often get overlooked or seen as naive.
It doesn't take much to a saint. In fact, often times they are the "least of these."
Revelation tells us the same thing this morning as well. The saints are the ones who have suffered the great ordeal. They are the hungry and thirsty.
And it is to these that God offers relief. It is these who have their robes washed to be absolutely clean. God has come to heal them. God has come to make them pure, to make them whole.
These are who the saints of God are. They aren't people who are special. They're not people with otherworldly strength to handle any obstacle. They are people like you and me. Because in one way or another, we have all gone through hard times. All of us, no matter who we are or what we have has been a little broken at times. All of us, rich and poor, good and bad, black and white, and all others in between, we all find ourselves in need of being made whole.
So whoever you are, whether a person out of patience or someone weighed down by the struggles of this life, have no fear. There's no special criteria that God is asking you meet. Quite the opposite. In fact, God is calling on those who will come to Him. Those who realize their need to be made whole. And that's what He does for His saints. He restores them. He makes you whole.