What is a Saint? Luke 6.20-31

Luke 6.20-31

Fred and his brother Jimmy were thugs. They ran the local crime syndicate. They dealt in drugs and prostitutes. They intimidated residents, threatened businesses, trafficked, blackmailed and bribed, and they ran protection rackets. They were responsible for several murders, but nobody had ever been able or courageous enough to pin it on them.
Fred died and Jimmy went to the vicar. I want you to say that my brother was a saint. No way, said the vicar. Jimmy said, 'If you say my brother was a saint, I'll give £1m to the church". No way, said the vicar. "Well then", said Jimmy, "Let me put it another way. If you don't say that my brother was a saint, we'll return and burn your church down".
The day of the funeral arrived. The vicar stood up: "Fred was an evil crook. He was a thug and a wife beater. He dealt in drugs and prostitutes. He was known as a murderer. He blackmailed, trafficked and bribed and he ran protection rackets. But compared to his brother Jimmy, he was a saint."
Today we celebrate All Saints Day.
I don't know what your definition of a saint is:
One child described a saint as "a dead vicar".
Perhaps you think of a saint as someone who we particularly honor for their service of Christ - like Mary or St Andrew or St Alban or St Sergius.
Well, yes, we do celebrate people like them through the year, and our communion with them, but today we remember the countless others.
Saints in the bible sense of word, ‘agioi’, which refers to anyone who is a follower of Jesus - anyone who has been called to be ‘set apart, holy’ for the service of God.
So Paul wrote, ‘To God’s beloved in Rome/in Corinth, who are called to be saints’; and he also wrote ‘to the saints’ in Ephesus, in Philippi, in Colossae.
The point is that if you are a follower of the Lord Jesus, one who has put your trust in him, you already are a saint, ‘set apart’, holy.
But that is not the end of it. You are also called to become a ‘saint’ – to live as a saint, as one who is set apart.
And in our reading from Luke 6.20-31, we see three ways that Christians are called to be set apart:
1. We are called to be different, to be saints, to live in dependence on God
Jesus’ sayings in Luke 6 are not easy.
‘Blessed are you who are poor – woe to you who are rich’
‘Blessed are you who are hungry– woe to you who are full’
‘Blessed are you who weep – woe to you who are laughing’
‘Blessed are you who are rejected, excluded and defamed because of me’
Luke, as we have seen, speaks a great deal about riches and poverty.
He reminds us how Mary proclaims, when she is told that she is to be the mother of the Messiah, God’s King who has come to reign in God’s world,
“He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” Luke 1:52-53
His manifesto statement begins with the great declaration:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” (Luke 4:18)
And he recalls the times when Jesus called people to give up everything to follow him.
In Luke 14, Jesus teaches, unless you give up everything you possess, you cannot become my disciple (v33)
In Luke 18, he tells the rich young ruler who wanted to ‘inherit eternal life’ to sell all that he owned, to give to the poor and to follow him. (v22)
And when Jesus called Levi, Luke tells us that Levi stood up from his tax collectors’ desk, ‘left everything’ and followed him (Luke 5.28)
This is not the place or time to speak of how Luke thinks of possessions.
But I want to repeat what I have said already, many times, over the past few weeks as we have read through Luke. Jesus’ teaching here does not mean that we all have to go and sell everything that we have. Maybe God is calling one or two of us to do that, but usually it is combined with a call to join in community with others.
But what we do need to realize is that the more material possessions that we have, the easier it is for us to live for the things of this world and to put our trust in our stuff or in our money, and not in God. And we have to fight against that.
Jesus here is not speaking of the general poor. He is speaking to those who have already come to him, who have already put their trust in him.
“Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
Blessed are you who are poor …” Luke 6:20
(I note how Jesus looks up at them. He is not standing over them, in a position of power. He is below them in a position of vulnerability).
His disciples were poor: most of them would have given up their work to follow him. On one occasion they are criticised by the Pharisees for picking grains of corn on the sabbath. Jesus defends them and says that they are picking grain because they are hungry
And remember how Jesus sent them out on their missionary journeys: take no purse, no bag no spare shoes or change of clothing, ..And it was in their dependence on God that they saw astonishing things happen.
The story is told of how Thomas Aquinas, the C13th Church leader, was being shown around the treasury in the Vatican. He was reminded of the story of when the lame man asked Peter and John for help. Peter and John replied, ‘We don’t have any money’. Well, said the man from the Vatican, we no longer need to say that. To which Aquinas responded, ‘Yes, and because of that, we have lost the ability to say what Peter and John said next to the lame man, ‘In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, get up and walk’.
It is when we are most conscious of our poverty, of our brokenness, that we can be most conscious of the power and love of God.
I don’t quite know how to say this, but one of the immense privileges for me being at St Andrew’s is that I am conscious of the presence God among us in a way that I haven’t experienced in many other places. And I wonder whether that might be connected with the fact that many of us do feel quite powerless and aware of how helpless we are in the face of forces that are so much greater than us – and we know that we are completely dependent on God.
I wonder whether we are most authentically Christian when we wake at 3am in the morning, conscious of our sinfulness, our mortality, our fearfulness – and we know that we are empty, drained of self-confidence, recognising our utter helplessness and brokenness and need for God - and when we cry out to Him for mercy, but in confidence that he will meet us
It is as we watch the widow walk out of the church behind her husband’s coffin, or the parent walking behind their child’s coffin, singing the hymn, ‘Great is thy faithfulness’ that we are looking at a saint.
2. Saints are called to live with a hope in the other world
The more we have, the less we are prepared to live for the other world
The more we have, the easier it is to be invested in the things of this world
The more we have, the easier it is to put our trust in the things of this world
The more we have, the easier it is to live for the things of this world: the praise of others, human love, respectability, comfort, material possessions
The more we have, the easier it is to forget God
That is why in Deuteronomy, in the Old Testament, when God promises material blessings to the people of Israel, he warns them: when you grow rich and prosperous in the land that I give you, do not forget me.
But the more powerless that we are in this world, the less that we have, the more likely we are to live for the other world, for God’s Kingdom
I wonder whether that is one of the reasons why churches, especially in materially affluent places, are full of older people.
As saints, those set apart, we have a great hope
‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled’
‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh’
And if you are rejected here, for Jesus’ sake, ‘Rejoice and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven’.
Karl Marx described religion as the opiate of the people – a drug to stupefy them so that they did nothing about the current situation in which they lived.
I think I would describe it in a different way. The more powerless a person is, the less a person has, the more clearly they can see the other world.
We live in this world, but for another world.
We are ambassadors of that other world, and our churches should be embassies of that world
We long for that kingdom where there will be no more pain, suffering, hatred, sickness or death, where there will be truth and justice and peace and love
We pray for that kingdom to come
3. Saints are called to see others in a new way
Jesus teaching here is radical.
Basically he is saying here that we are to look at others as if they were like us – not in the sense that they will like the same things as us, or react in the same way as us, or have the same interests, customs, habits or feelings as us – that is to deny their uniqueness, and does not respect the difference of the other.
But we are to see them as people like us, in that they were created by the same God, as beloved by God as we are beloved. And we are to see them that in communion with Christ we are all part of each other, that we need them as they need us.
The command to ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’ is simply the second great command put in different words, ‘Love your neighbor as if they were one of your own’.
It is the same as when Paul writes, “In humility regard others as better than yourselves; look not to your own interests but to the interests of others’ (Phil 2.3-4)
And Jesus teaching is radical, because he is telling us to love not only our neighbours, but to love our enemies, to bless (to do good) to those who curse us.
As someone said,
To do evil to those who do good to you is devilish
To do good to those who do good to you is human
But to do good to those who do evil to you is divine.
That is what Jesus is calling us to do here
But I want to add a proviso.
This can only begin to happen when our hearts are being changed, when we know that we are forgiven and accepted in Jesus, beloved children of God, when we are confident in the love and mercy of God, in the hope of heaven, when we see the sovereignty of God over the whole creation
Without that transformation, this command to do to others as you would have them do to you, is meaningless – ‘I want to be left alone, so I’ll leave them alone’ – or terrifying (we dump our ego on the other person), or it becomes an unbearable burden, ‘an onerous list of ethical commands’ that people put on themselves
So what is a saint?
A saint is one who has begun to know his or her poverty, our brokenness before God, and in our brokenness have turned to God
A saint is one who has begun to glimpse the hope that is set before us – the hope of the other world
A saint is one, who with the help of the Holy Spirit, is beginning to look at this world, and at other people, with the eyes of God, with the eyes of mercy and justice and love.And one day, when the veil is removed, when the curtain is drawn back, we will see the true vision of the saints in glory