All Saints

The scriptures referred to are Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4, Psalm 119:137-144, 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12, and Luke 19:1-10.

When a major holy day falls on a day other than Sunday, you can move the celebration to the nearest Sunday. That's what we are doing today. All Saint's Day is the first of November. And usually that means bringing along with the celebration the texts assigned for the holy day. I decided not to do that but stick with the ordinary readings for this, the 21^st Sunday after Pentecost. Because the theme of the holy day is saints. And our lectionary readings give us an excellent cross section of what it means to be a saint.

Technically, all Christians are saints. That is, we have been made holy by God. It is nothing we have done ourselves; it comes from what Jesus did on the cross. And to be made holy means to be designated for God's purposes. We don't use the communion chalice for coffee while we socialize after the service. It has been set aside to be used for God's purposes.

But just as the chalice was once some hunk of metal or wood before it was shaped into what it is now, so all saints have a past. And the raw material they came from wasn't always pretty. Except for Jesus, every person in the Bible had done things in their past that were sinful, some major. Moses killed an Egyptian and tried to hide the body. David committed adultery and then engineered the perfect murder of a soldier on the battlefield. Paul persecuted the church, and was responsible for the execution of Christians by the Sanhedrin. Yet God used them--sinful, imperfect people--to carry out his purposes.

We always think that a saint has to have a supreme faith, without doubt. But the prophet Habakkuk is profoundly troubled by the violence and injustice he sees around him. In fact the first word of his book, which our translation renders as “oracle,” literally means in Hebrew “burden.” All he can see is trouble and destruction and strife. He is disturbed by its existence in a world made by a good and just God, especially when he finds it among God's people. Why does God tolerate all of this wrong?

The answer Habakkuk gets is not comforting. Judgment on God's people is coming in the form of the Babylonians, who, we know, will destroy the city of Jerusalem and the temple and take the people into exile. Habakkuk thinks this is harsh. God answers this objection with a list of all the sins and evil he sees his people engaging in: arrogance, drunkenness, greed, extortion, bloodshed, sexual immorality and idolatry. The book ends with a psalm-like prayer affirming that God is not indifferent to injustice but will repay it at the proper time. The prophet prays that in his wrath God will remember mercy. (Habakkuk 3:2) In the meantime, the righteous will live by their faith in God's goodness. The prophet realizes that we need our faith the most when it is hardest to maintain. But, as we see in this brief book, having faith does not mean being free of all questions and doubts. But you have to keep the dialogue with God going. You have to stay engaged with him. As the father of a boy who had seizures said to Jesus, “Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) And that admittedly shaky faith was enough for Jesus to heal the boy. God works with what and who he has on hand.

The writer of Psalm 119, the longest in the Bible, is also writing about God's justice. But this time it's personal. “Trouble and distress have come upon me,” he says. Later he says he is suffering and is being persecuted. (Psalm 119:153, 157) He asks for understanding and that God show compassion. (Psalm 119:156) He admits that he has strayed like a lost sheep. (Psalm 119:176) Though he is “small and of no account” and though God's promises have “been tested to the utmost,” he does not give up his faith in God and his hope of deliverance. We imagine saints walking serenely through life in the light of heaven but at times doing the right thing feels like you're going through hell. Yet if things weren't so dark, God wouldn't call us to be the light of the world. (Matthew 5:14)

In his second letter to the Thessalonians, Paul writes, “We must give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring.” Notice that the problems and suffering were still going on at the time of his writing. But it was strengthening their faith and bringing them closer together. Adversity can do the opposite of those two things. It can destroy a person's faith and drive people apart. It really depends on how you choose to respond. You can dwell on adversity and let it continue to damage you, or you can look at it as a opportunity to learn and grow. In fact, though we hear all the time about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, we rarely hear of Post Traumatic Growth Syndrome. Trauma can also lead to positive changes in relating to others, seeing new possibilities in life, realization of greater personal strength, spiritual enhancement, and a greater appreciation of life and one's self and a change in priorities. We see these things in what Paul is saying about the Thessalonians. Suffering for Christ helped them grow in Christ.

Speaking of positive changes, that is what we see in the last saint presented to us in our lectionary readings. In our gospel, we get the story of Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector. We don't usually think of him as a saint. But he changes in the midst of his story and at the end Jesus pronounces him saved.

People in Jesus' day routinely thought of tax collectors, not as a necessary evil to running a country but as just plain evil. For one thing, the taxes they were collecting were for the running of the Roman empire, the occupying force in Judea and Galilee. So Jewish tax collectors were seen as traitors to their own people. And they could decide on what their commission was and add it onto the amount they took. So they were gouging their fellow Jews to make themselves rich while financing the pagans oppressing them. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, which probably meant he put in a bid to collect the taxes in the area and then hired others to actually do it. Zacchaeus was rich, having as his territory Jericho, where the Jewish aristocracy had their winter homes and where many priests and Levites lived. It was also on the border, so he was probably in charge of levying customs duties. So not an obvious candidate for a follower of Jesus, who says deny yourself and take up your cross.

But so anxious was he to see Jesus that he, a short man, climbed a tree to get a better look, not a very dignified thing for a rich man to do. But it is consistent with someone who does what he must to get what he wants. And for some reason this man whose every material desire is fulfilled wants to see Jesus, whose life is all about spiritual abundance. Is that what he lacks and really needs? 

Imagine his surprise when Jesus stops and looks up and calls Zacchaeus by name. “Hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” Imagine the surprise of the crowd upon hearing this. Jesus was inviting himself to stay with the crooked head of the local tax office. There was a lot of grumbling about this.

So Zacchaeus, probably after eating and talking with Jesus, stands up and says, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” I want to point out 2 things about this announcement. First, in the Greek, because of the conditional nature of the sentence, it is implied that he knows he has cheated people. The word translated “if” could legitimately be translated “since” as in “Since I have defrauded...” And that is backed up by the second notable thing in Zacchaeus' announcement: the very generous reimbursement he offers. In the case of theft by deception the Torah only requires that the guilty person must restore the principal with 20% interest. (Leviticus 6:2-5; Numbers 5:6-7) But Zacchaeus is offering to repay at the rate akin to that for property theft. (Exodus 22:1) And since he has the force of the empire behind him to make people pay, what he did was a form of robbery. So he is publicly confessing to robbing and cheating people.

That's why Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.” Abraham gave up his home and everything to go to the land of Canaan because he trusted God. Zacchaeus gives up well over half his wealth after his encounter with Jesus. Our Lord's words and actions must have caused the tax collector to put his trust in Jesus and what he said. In the previous chapter Jesus made his famous pronouncement about how hard it was for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. Essentially, Zacchaeus is switching his allegiance from the empire of Caesar to the kingdom of God.

We don't really know what became of Zacchaeus after this but he must have kept his word or people would not have kept telling the story so that Luke, in researching his gospel, would have heard of it. And it must be a true story because rather than being a generic tax collector whose existence could not have been verified, we are given the name of Zacchaeus. He would have been remembered both as a very corrupt official who extorted money from everyone and also the one who spectacularly changed his life after meeting with Jesus. Small wonder his name has survived.

Saints are as varied as the vessels we use at the Eucharist. They each have a different shape and purpose. We need all of them to celebrate the Lord's supper properly. And God calls all of us to different roles and equips us for each. As Paul writes, “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given us, let us use them.” (Romans 12:4-6) He then lists things like preaching, serving, teaching, giving encouragement, giving generously, leading and showing mercy. The list is not exhaustive. And though Paul doesn't say this, most parts of the body have multiple functions. Our skeleton not only gives us shape and protects our internal organs and gives places to anchor our muscles so we can move, in the marrow it produces red blood cells which carry oxygen and white blood cells which fight infection and platelets that help us stop bleeding. Even your skin, which we primarily think of as just holding our insides inside, helps regulate body temperature, secretes sweat and oils and acts as our first line of defense again germs. So too members of the body of Christ are not limited to doing just one thing.

Which means you can be a saint even if your gifts aren't preaching or singing in the choir or teaching Sunday school. One person knows how to fix things around the church and also knows when to call in a professional. One person might understand legal issues the church must deal with. Someone has to keep track of the money and pay the bills and the staff and make sure every penny is accounted for and goes to its proper use. Some people are just good at listening to others and encouraging them. Some people are great at seeing what the community needs and therefore opportunities to minister to others. Some people are great at seeing the big picture and some are good with working out the details and we need both types in planning. And, like Paul's list, there are doubtless functions that I haven't mentioned.

We have this vision of saints being spiritual superheroes, people very different from us ordinary Christians. But in reality no saint is Superman, with the inborn ability to do everything. We are more like Batman, ordinary people who must train to be good at something. Because the difference isn't in what gifts we have; it is in the degree to which we devote those gifts to serving God. If you want to be an athlete, you devote as much of your time as possible to running, throwing, gymnastics, weightlifting or whatever you need to do to hone your skills. If you want to be a good video game player, you practice a lot and learn strategy. If you want to be an expert on anything practical, you read and get someone to show you how and practice the skills over and over. You cannot be a good Christian merely by going to a building for an hour one day a week. You have to study the Bible and put it into practice and determine what your gifts are and how you can use them for God.

We read about the heroes of the faith, in the Bible or in the subsequent history of the church and we are sometimes in awe. But they also had their flaws, their doubts, their dark times, as do we all. They just never gave up on trusting God and his goodness and the hope we have in Christ. As the hymn "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God" goes, for the saints of God are just folks like you and me. And as we sing in the second verse, “and there's not any reason—no, not the least, why I shouldn't be one, too.”