Pastor's Blog: The Saints Among Us
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Years ago, back when I was in seminary in Louisville, I played on the school basketball team, which we called “the Saints.” We played surrounding junior colleges, college freshman teams, seminary teams, and occasionally an associational all-star team. I’m not sure that we were always mindful of our team name because of how competitive we were. You don’t normally think of saint and competition in the same sentence.
I didn’t come up with the team name; it had been decided upon years before I arrived at Southern. But at the time, I thought it was a clever name, an almost subversive one. When I graduated and got into the “real world,” I looked back at it as a dumb name. Who did we think we were calling ourselves “the Saints?” But now, at this stage in life, I think of it as a name that every believer should embrace, especially believers who long to receive the crown of righteousness reserved for all who trust in Jesus.
I’m not sure that every Christian would agree with me on that point. Ask most Christians to define themselves and they will likely answer that they are “sinners (not saints), who are saved by grace.” I understand that definition and would not dispute it one bit. That’s truly where each of us is at the beginning of our faith journey. We are hapless humans with no hope for the future, save God’s grace in Jesus Christ.
However, when you look at the Bible, how does it say God sees us? He sees us as saints. Notice the number of times the being-redeemed community of faith in Jesus Christ is referred to in that way. Indeed, the Apostle Paul most often used it to refer to the members of the churches to whom he was inspired to write, although he knew they were far from where God wanted them to be.
So, maybe we need to revisit the word saint and redefine it from its popular definition. What does the term mean anyway? As I heard someone once explain it, a saint is an ordinary person who does extraordinary things in the power of the Holy Spirit. A saint is someone who makes it easier for the rest of us to believe in God.
In that vein, I remember something I read from Kurt Vonnegut, the famous author who was never thought of as an especially religious person, though later in his life his writings do seem to give some indication that he was starting to think about the importance of faith more and more. In one opinion column, he wrote about how “what (has) made being alive almost worthwhile for me was the saints I met. They could be almost anywhere. By saints I mean people who behaved decently and honorably in societies which were often so obscene.” He concludes, “Perhaps many of us…regardless of our ages or power or wealth, can be saints for (others) to meet.” In other words, perhaps we can live our faith in such a way that we make it easier for others to believe in God.
This Sunday, at both services, we’ll be honoring those who have gone before us with our annual Day of Remembrance. It’s a day that coincides with All Saints Sunday on the Christian calendar. The wonderful thing about these departed brothers and sisters is that they were people just like us – people who did their share of good, but people who also lost their tempers, scolded God, acted selfishly, made mistakes and regretted every one of them. They weren’t perfect, but now in the power of Christ’s resurrection they have been made so. They have won their victory and received their reward.
As you hear their names read, think about their witness and the legacy each has left behind, and how so many of them made it easier for us to believe in God. Then think about your own and how even now you can bear witness to the difference Jesus is making in you and help someone else to believe. You may not always feel like a saint, but you can trust in God’s power to transform you into one so that when your time comes, you can, as the old spiritual puts it, “be in that number, when the saints go marching in.”
“This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).