A few years ago, Rabbi Jonathan Miller and other members of
my clergy group and I had the remarkable opportunity to visit the Mother House
of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India.
Mother Teresa's tomb is on the first floor of the Mother
House and while we observed many people praying for short or long periods at
many places in the room. The members of my clergy group and I prayed. I believe
that even Rabbi Miller prayed!
On the second floor of the Mother House is the tiny room
where Mother Teresa lived. It is deeply moving in its simplicity. It contains a
bed, a chair, and a desk. That's it. No television, no stereo, computer, no
microwave or mini-fridge, not even a radio. When she died, Mother Teresa, like
every other member of her order, owned only two saris or habits and a pair of
sandals.
Several years before her death, Harvard University gave
Mother Teresa an honorary degree, and my friend, Peter Gomes, the university
chaplain, acted as her host. Peter told me that he was excited to meet this
remarkable woman. Peter could talk to anyone about anything for as long as they
cared to listen, so he went on at length about his admiration for Mother Teresa
and her accomplishments, but she said nothing. Finally, Peter shut up, and Mother
Teresa simply said to him, "It's all Jesus."
I bring up Mother Teresa because today is All Saints'
Sunday, and if there is a saint for our time, then surely it is Mother Teresa
of Calcutta.
But Mother Teresa also creates a problem for many of us. She
sets the bar impossibly high. How can we possibly measure up to her example?
Listen to me carefully. I want to make this as clear as I
can. God calls very few of us to be Mother Teresas. God calls most of us to
marry and have children, to have jobs and mortgages. But God does call us to
participate in the kind of work that she did. We participate in that work
through our prayers, through volunteering in our free time, and above all
through our contributions and offerings. Do not forget that as we move into
stewardship season! Your pledge is your principal way of participating in the
kind of work that Mother Teresa did.
But there was another side to Mother Teresa. After her
death, when Mother Teresa's letters were published, people were startled to
learn that she had been plagued by profound doubts, sometimes even doubting the
existence of God. She had felt a sense of spiritual desolation and a disturbing
sense of God's absence.
She wrote, "In my soul I feel just that terrible pain
of loss, of God not wanting me — of God not being God — of God not existing.”
What are we to make of this? What are we to make of the fact
that this modern day saint who embraced the poorest of the poor experienced
such profound spiritual darkness and even doubted the existence of God?
The story of Mother Teresa gives me pause. It makes me
question what it means to be a saint. But maybe the problem is with the way
that we define the word "saint".
Who are the saints? Well, the answer is obvious, isn't it?
Those guys up there. By the way, have you noticed that none of our stained
glass windows in the nave depict women? Aren't they the saints? Aren't the
saints the spiritual superheroes and celebrities?
But the story of Mother Teresa gives us pause. She makes us
stop and reconsider what we mean by the word "saint." If you judge saintliness by good works, then
surely she was a saint. But if you judge it by deep faith, then perhaps not.
Let's look first at the New Testament's definition of a
saint.
In today's New Testament reading, Paul says, " I have heard of your faith
in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints." (Eph. 1.15) Paul
is NOT saying, "I have heard of your love toward the spiritual superheroes
of the faith" because there weren't any of those when he was writing. He
was saying, "I have heard of your love toward your sisters and brothers in
Christ."
Almost
every one of Paul's letters begins with a reference to the saints. Romans 1.7
says, " To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace
to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Or 1
Corinthians 1.2: "To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those
sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints ."
In the New Testament “saint” means simply any
baptized person, any Christian. The
word translated as “saint” in the New Testament is hagios or its plural hagioi,
a Greek word that means “holy”. The
saints are the holy ones, not holy because of anything intrinsic to them, but
holy because of the holy presence of Christ within them.
A second, more common, use of the word “saint” is
to denote one of the heroes or heroines of the Christian faith. Thus, we speak of St. Peter or St. Francis,
St. Mary Magdalene or St. Clare.
How do you suppose Jesus would define the word saint?
For a long time I was puzzled about why the gospel reading
for All Saints’ Day was the Beatitudes from Luke or Matthew. However, I think I know why that is. The Beatitudes are, if you will, Jesus’
definition of a saint.
[i]"Blessed are
the poor." Poverty of some kind is almost essential if we are to know
blessedness or saintliness. If you want to meet a saint, look to the
poor--those who have little that gets in the way of their experience of God.
There is an emptiness in every human heart. The saints are those who learn to
live with that emptiness, who do not fill it with anything other than God. The
saints have little pretense or deceit. The purity of their hearts allow God to
be present in a startling way.
It is not just
the radiantly holy and the astoundingly wise who are saints. Poverty and
poverty of spirit are the reasons that infants and children can be saints, too.
The newborn child, hungry and curious, has such an enormous capacity for God.
If we have eyes for it, infants can show us the mystery and wonder of God. The
sick, too, can be saints, and also the elderly; they show us the mystery and
wonder of God.
Jesus also says, "blessed are you who weep
now, for you will laugh”. We live in a
world where feelings, in general, and sadness and depression, in particular,
are suspect and not exhibited in public. Men, especially, are schooled to show
little expression and feeling.
We also live in a "feel good"
culture. "Drink Budweiser, eat
Doritos, drive a Mercedes, and you will feel good and be happy". Fairy tales end "and they all lived
happily ever after", but that isn't the way life works.
What if the ability to feel deep sadness is a
prerequisite for feeling great joy?
The saints are complete persons who feel the full
range of human emotions. The saints are
those who can "weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who
rejoice".
Finally,
according to Luke's version of the Beatitudes, Jesus says, "Blessed are
you who hunger, for you will be filled." But in Matthew, the Beatitudes
are different. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied."
This
is one of Jesus' most outrageous statements. Jesus
was a Jew, and to a Jew, righteousness, zedeqah, meant something very
specific.. Righteousness was literally
"to do right by", especially to do right by the poor and hungry,
widows and orphans. So when he said,
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, he was literally
saying, "Blessed are those who long for the hungry to be fed and the
homeless to be housed, for in the end, they will not be
disappointed". Of all Jesus'
claims, this may be the most extraordinary.
Righteousness is not at home in the world in which you and I live, but
Jesus announces the coming of a new world of righteousness and justice. The saints are those who long for the
appearing of such a kingdom, who never lose heart and are never satisfied with
anything less.
Another definition for saint that I want to offer
involves a very concrete example of holiness.
In the early part of this century, Henry Joel Cadbury came to teach New
Testament at Harvard Divinity School.
Cadbury was one of the great New Testament scholars of our century and
was at work on what became the Revised Standard Version of the Bible when World
War I broke out. A pacifist, Cadbury
would not fight in the war but instead volunteered to work with the Quakers
caring for the wounded and dying on the battle fields of Europe. In the midst of the war, one of Cadbury’s
students came across his professor bandaging a wounded soldier. “Dr. Cadbury,” the student exclaimed, “Why
aren’t you back at Harvard translating the New Testament?” “I am translating the New Testament,”
Cadbury replied. He was translating the
New Testament not from Greek into English but from the printed page into human
life. I think that may be the best
definition of saint. A saint is one who
translates the New Testament into a life of love and service.
Finally,
I want to offer the devil's definition of a saint, or at least the definition
from The Devil's Dictionary by 19th century American humorist, Ambrose
Bierce: "Saint - A dead sinner revised and edited."
Unfortunately,
that is the definition of saints that we get most of the time. We get the
saints revised and edited. We get the expurgated and abridged version. That's
the version of Mother Teresa we would have gotten if someone had not defied her
own wishes and published her private letters and journals. But I'm so glad that
we learned of her doubts and struggles, because I struggle with the same
things, and I know that many of you do, too.
I
have moments of profound doubt and uncertainty. Am I good enough? Is God
listening? Why is there suffering and evil? Why aren't my prayers answered?
Mother
Teresa's story reminds me that the saints struggle with the same things that I
struggle with. She reminds me that the church is not a museum for spiritual
celebrities; it is a hospital for poor sinners just like me.
Former
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams wrote, "…that the saints in heaven rejoice over their sins, because through
them they have been brought to greater and greater understanding of the endless
endurance of God's love, to the knowledge that beyond every failure God's
creative mercy still waits.” (A Ray of Darkness, p. 52)
All Saints’ Day exhausts and unsettles me. However, you define saint, I find it
difficult to imagine myself among those “saints triumphant [who] rise in bright
array”. More often than not, I choose
self-aggrandizement over service; my heart and mind go in a thousand different
directions, rather than being fixed on God’s kingdom; and if my life is a
translation of the New Testament, then it must be in an unknown tongue. But I have to keep reminding myself and keep
reminding you that sainthood is not our accomplishment; it is God’s gift. We follow where Christ and the saints lead,
knowing all the while that we will stumble and fall. You see, the Devil’s Dictionary had it partly right: Some
saints are dead sinners revised and edited, but all saints are forgiven
sinners, just like us. The saints
remind us of what we are capable of if we will only open ourselves to the power
of God who makes all things new and raises us from death to life abundant and
everlasting.
[i] The next two
paragraphs are paraphrased from "Saint Carlton is lowest" by the Very
Rev. Sam Candler.
