Saints for Life

I think I saw in the news that this past week that Mayor Daley served as Principal for a Day in one of the Chicago Public Schools. Other community leaders also were invited to participate as Principal for a Day at various schools. It’s an invitation-only opportunity. Only special people get chosen to be principal for a day. The point of the program, I think, is not so much to reward special people like the mayor as it is to raise awareness and show support for the public school system. And I wonder if the mayor had to really step into a principal’s shoes for more than a photo op whether he might find it easier to go back to just running Chicago.

But putting politics aside, think back maybe to your early grade school days. Imagine yourself a wide-eyed first grader. And remember the principal. The principal was a person who elicited awe. Powerful, very special, maybe kind, maybe stern, an even more important person than the teachers, the final authority on every issue. From a child’s perspective to be principal for a day would be a pretty heady experience. You can imagine that only someone really special would be given the privilege of being principal for a day. Kids would never get to be Principal, not even just make believe for a day.

Or think about some of the other people that we think of as exalted. Think how exciting it would be to captain a great sailing ship for a day or to command a submarine. Or what if you could quarterback a professional football team for just one play. Or consider how incredible it would be to wear a real astronaut’s space suit, even for just an hour on earth. Or wouldn’t it be awesome just for a day to be a real queen, like the queen of England. Not a Halloween princess, a real queen.

All of these are people that we look at as set apart from the rest of us, different, living lives greater or beyond the lives we all live. They are not like us; we are not like them; we will never be them. To stand in their place for even just a day is almost unimaginable. And, of course, even in that fantasy we couldn’t really do what they do, but just to pretend for a brief period of time would be really exciting. But even that isn’t going to happen for any of us, at least not for those of us who are already adults. We aren’t even going to get the chance to pretend to be an astronaut or a captain or a quarterback or a queen.

Yesterday was All Saints’ Day. We’re celebrating it today. And we’re singing the wonderful children’s hymn, "I sing a song of the saints of God." I requested it, and not just because it is a nostalgic reminder of my childhood. I learned it as a girl in the Episcopal Church. Regardless of that, its message is very good. Most of us will never be special enough to be a quarterback or captain of a space shuttle or a king of a queen. We’ll never even get to pretend for a day. But all of us get to be saints. There is nothing more exalted, more wonderful, more awesome than being a saint. And we are. And not just for a day. We are saints from the day we are baptized until the end of time.

"I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true. Who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew. And one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green: they were all of them saints of God and I mean, God helping, to be one too…. And one was a soldier, and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce wild beast: and there’s not any reason, no not the least, why I shouldn’t be one too.... You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops or at tea, for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too."

The saints of God are just folk like me and I mean to be one too. As we baptize Joshua and Haley today, they are becoming saints. Real saints. The hymn is fun, and I suppose it’s easy to sing it and enjoy it and even sort of believe it, but I wonder if most of us still don’t think to ourselves: I know I’m supposed to think of myself as a saint, but I feel more like a pretend saint, somebody pretending to be saint for a day. Those saints in the shops or on the trains… people like me… we may sometimes be pretty good people, but as saints we’re just pretend, not real saints like the ones in the Bible or the stained glass windows. No. That voice inside us is wrong. The hymn is right. There is nothing pretend about baptism. There is nothing make-believe about baptism. There truly is not any reason why Joshua and Haley aren’t becoming real saints today. Real saints. What a wonderful, exciting, unbelievably awesome and special thing it is to get to be a saint. Nothing compares. No other fantasy comes close. And today Haley and Joshua get to become real saints. Joining the rest of us in the communion of saints.

A quote from the Book of Common Prayer about baptism: "Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body, the church." Full initiation into the church. And from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, a wonderful resource on saints: "The Church is ‘the communion of saints,’ that is, a people made holy through their mutual participation in the mystery of Christ." The church is the communion of saints, a people made holy.

To call something holy is to say that it is God’s. God doesn’t own or possess things in the same way we like to keeping them for himself. For something to be God’s means that it is set apart for God’s purposes in the world, that it is filled with God’s Spirit, that it is cherished by God. This table is a holy table because it is set apart for God’s use. God cherishes it as a place and a way to gather us together and share his very life with us. To say that we, as saints, are holy means that we are God’s. Our lives are a part of God’s purpose in the world; we are filled with God’s Spirit; we are cherished by God. And the Book of Common Prayer also teaches us that "the bond that God establishes in baptism is indissoluble." We are God’s forever.

The church is the communion of saints, a people made holy by their mutual participation in the mystery of Christ. Those words "mutual participation" are important. That’s a sermon I’ve preached before and will preach again. Today I’m talking about saints. We are saints. We are God’s holy saints. Remember that. Sainthood is not something that is "earned" by an elite few who somehow live lives of extraordinary piety or miraculous virtue or superhuman sacrifice and then become saints. We are saints. Real saints. From the day of baptism forever. The initiation into sainthood comes with baptism. In baptism become God’s. You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. We are God’s. Indissolubly forever.

We get to be saints. Every day. As the light of dawn shines on us each morning may it remind each of us of the Light of Christ given to us at baptism to burn in our lives. We are holy. Every day we are a part of God’s purpose. We are a part of the communion of saints that lives with God’s purpose. The Holy Spirit is in us in everything we do, percolating through us with joy or courage or strength or wisdom, the Spirit’s gifts, given at baptism. And we are cherished by God. We get to be holy, God’s own saints, every day. And the really miraculous thing is, that if we can remember what a glorious thing it is to get to be a saint… the other stuff… the acts of sainthood, the saintly life… will happen almost without our thinking about it.