“A Real Saint?”

Sermon

Sunday November 3, 2024 (All Saints’ Sunday)

24th Sunday after Pentecost

Wisdom of Solomon 3: 1-9

Psalm 25

Ephesians 1: 15-23

John 11: 32-44

“A Real Saint?”

There’s something that I used to hear fairly frequently, but not so much these days. It was something along these lines:

“I try to live a good life, but hey, I’m no saint”.

Or, “Old Joe, well, he certainly wasn’t a saint!”

Or, “Martha, she had to be a saint to put up with a husband like

hers.”

Or, said sneeringly, “Well, yah, he’s a real saint!’ (As if to say that he wasn’t at all like that.)

All these comments reflect a mistaken view or outlook on what a saint is or what a saint isn’t. There are two things that I need to say, corrections that I need to make, right at the onset:

Firstly, to be a saint doesn’t mean that you are now perfect, that

you have somehow ‘arrived’. No, saints are still sinners, works

in progress, just like the rest of us. It’s like the button my youth

group once gave me, “Please be patient with me, God isn’t

through with me yet.” That is something that all true saints are

fully aware of.

Secondly, being a saint doesn’t mean that you are necessarily

pious or ‘other-worldly’, at least not in the limited ways that we

usually use those terms. It doesn’t mean that you are ‘so

heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good’: often it is just

the opposite. Often a ‘saint’ is very involved in the world, and

its people and affairs.

Just to illustrate these facts, let me share the stories of two people, a mother and her son, that the church routinely considers ‘saints’, St. Monnica and St. Augustine of Hippo.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, has long been seen as the exemplar for women, and this is quite appropriate given her faith and her quiet and consistent submission to the will of God. But, in some ways, I feel that she is somewhat removed from the difficulties and hassles faced by the majority of women. For this reason, I would propose Monnica, the mother of Augustine of Hippo instead, as a worthy role model. She is what I would call a true ‘saint’.

Monnica was faced with trying circumstances on three levels. Firstly, there was her own self. As a young person, she was given the responsibility of decanting the wine for the family’s use. However, early on she developed the habit of taking a sip of that wine before bearing it to her parents. As is often the case of little indiscretions, seemingly innocuous habits, this grew and grew and developed a life of its own. Before too long, she was taking far more than just a sip.

How and where this matter came to a head is most instructive, for God was able to use the most-unexpected person to challenge Monnica’s behaviour. A young servant girl had been assigned to assist Monnica, and on one occasion that they were together and Monnica proceeded to indulge her habit, the servant girl upbraided her and accused her of being nothing but a lush. That chance remark brought Monnica to her senses, and she changed her ways.

However, that was not Monnica’s only failing. Early on as a mother, she recognized her son, Augustine’s intelligence and remarkable leadership ability, and tried to steer him into a successful career in public service. But alas, this did not pan out. Instead, he became the leader of a group of juvenile delinquents. And along the same line, she also tried to arrange for him a very socially advantageous marriage. That too fizzled and came to nothing. Indeed, Augustine as a somewhat typical rebellious youth, took up with another woman, had her as his mistress—for some twelve years, no less, and even had a son by her. How’s that for thumbing your nose at your mother! And yet Monnica put up with it.

And that wasn’t all, for soon after her marriage, she discovered that her husband, a non-believer, was a drunk and an abuser. So, she had that to put up with as well. She stayed with him for years and years, and continually prayed for him. However, in some ways, they deserved each other, for she too was stubborn and wayward, a tough nut to crack.

Fortunately, over time Monnica grew in grace and in her ability to perceive God’s will and submit her own ambitious spirit to it. It was a gradual process, one that took time, but it made her a different person, and ended up changing her husband’s life, and her son’s as well.

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Now, as for her son, Augustine, he was brought up in a half-Christian home and raised as a Christian, but he found it too boring and intellectually unchallenging. Endowed with a brilliant and restless mind he roved over the Roman world seeking wisdom and availing himself of astrologers and all sorts of spiritual advisors and philosophers. He embraced a pagan philosophy, Neoplatonism, and a neo-Christian cult, Manichaeism, and actually served for a time as an instructor of both. But neither of them satisfied him. And, always through it all, he struggled with his own morality, and with his own stubborn self-will. Surrendering himself to God was rather difficult, as he once prayed, “Lord, make me chaste—but not yet”.

And through all of this, his long-suffering mother never gave up on him, and implored the bishop of Milan, Ambrose, to pray for him and speak to him. And eventually, it was through this wise and capable bishop that Augustine saw the intellectual and spiritual worth of the Christian faith and was himself converted. He became one of the most prominent Christian thinkers and theologians of all time.

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These flawed, and oh so human individuals are but a couple of the enormous host that the Church has deigned to call ‘saints’. But here the Church is somewhat in error, for the Scriptures give an altogether different definition of what it means to be a ‘saint.’ In New Testament terms, anyone who loves and follows Jesus is a ‘saint.’ So, all those people over time who have tried to follow Jesus and be like Him, who have tried to grow in faith and in love are actually ‘saints’. So, if we are trying to do that, then we, by the New Testament’s definition, are saints.

And so that means that there have been myriads of unknown, unnamed saints, yes, even in our own lives. (That’s why we remember all these loved ones today.). In fact, I like to think of anyone, and everyone, who has touched our lives for good as being a saint: parents, grandparents, aunts & uncles, teachers, coaches, pastors, counsellors—they are all around us. And what that means also, is that we, you and I, can be saints in other peoples’ lives. And let me leave us all with a double-edged challenge:

-firstly, to think of all those people who have touched our lives

for good, our own personal saints, and thank them if possible.

-and secondly, to consider how we, you and I, might act out this

idea of being a saint for someone else, of touching their lives

good.

And so, you and I, as unlikely as it might seem to us, can be saints in the New Testament sense. Thanks be to God.