Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Original Manuscript:
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It’s funny the picture books and Sunday School lessons you continue to remember from childhood. For me, one of those books is an accompaniment to the great hymn “I sing a song of the Saints of God”. This book followed with beautiful illustrations all the Saints alluded to in that hymn, stemming from St. Luke to Joan of Arc.
For the last verse, though, the illustrations changed. Here the people looked slightly more like those around me did, though maybe in slightly more dated clothing. Here the words turned to people that I might mean. The words ended, even, with the statement, “for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.” That’s a very powerful statement to make. It is a powerful statement to hear.
We’re so used to thinking the saints are those who did great things or those who lived long ago. They’re the people who did important things like write one of the Gospels. They’re people who we are called to live up to. They are people who seem to be better than us.
At the very least we might think of the saints as those who have passed on before us. They are those who built up our church walls. They are those whose names are literally etched into our walls even.
If you think these are the Saints of God, though, you’ve only covered a fraction of them in total. That is the point of our hymn this morning. That is the point of this day we are celebrating. That is the reason we are all here each and every Sunday.
That is even the point our readings are trying to make. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, the author praises the church for their love towards “all the saints”. That title of saints includes the Ephesians too. As we hear in the letter, “what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints,” and just right after that we hear, “and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power for us who believe, according to the working of His great power.” The great power, the great inheritance received by the Saints is what we receive as believers. We are the Saints too.
If that weren’t enough, the Letter to the Ephesians begins, just shortly before the passage we have read today, with the greeting “To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus”. These are the ones this letter is addressed to: the Saints. They weren’t great and wonderful people going about and doing things to be remembered now and to the end of ages. They were normal Christians like you and me. Yet they are remembered forever in our Scripture as Saints.
The Saints aren’t just those who did great deeds or were even remembered for them. As Jesus reminds us and as we have seen through our reading of the Prophets throughout the Season after Pentecost, many of these people were reviled and disliked in their own time, in spite of their service to God. Some, like Paul, even did horrible things before coming to Christ Jesus.
The Saints aren’t just those whose names have been etched in our walls either. At this point in time, most of them did deeds that are forgotten to us anyways. The Saints of God are the Body of Christ, as Ephesians reminds us, and the Body of Christ is another name, as we know from Baptism, for the church. That is all of us here. We are the Saints of God too.
Very shortly we will say together the Renewal of Baptismal Vows. We do so as a reminder that this is one of the 5 most appropriate occasions for a Baptism as we celebrate the Body of Christ, the great Communion of Saints, that we are baptized into on this day. We do it also to remind ourselves of what it means to be a Saint.
We also will say prayers for those who have died. We do so to remember the place they have in our hearts and because we know that one day we will see them as fellow Saints in God’s Heavenly Kingdom when we go to join them there.
The Saints are not exclusive, only including some and not others in our Faith. The Saints include all of us who hold onto Christ Jesus and rest our Faith in Him.
If nothing else, remember to yourself on this day that “the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”