Ephesians 1: 11 – end, Luke 6: 20 – 31
There are many useful things in the Parish Office here in church. One of them is a book about saints. In this is an A to Z of patron saints. So I can tell you that if you are an accountant, your patron saint is St Matthew. If you’re an actor or a dancer it’s St Genesius of Arles, who’s rather less well-known, or St Vitus. If you’re a broadcaster you clearly need special help, as you have the Archangel Gabriel as patron, not a saint at all. Civil servants and politicians are allocated St Thomas More, and so it goes on through the alphabet. So if you want to come and tell me what you do after the service, I can let you know who your saint would be.
But although it’s All Saints Day we’re not thinking about patron saints today. In our collect we asked God to “grant us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living that we may come to those inexpressible joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you.” The collect encourages us to think of the saints as examples of holy living, and so they are. However, our reading from the letter to the Ephesians takes us one stage further. Paul says “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints,” (Ephesians 1: 15). Here he uses the Greek word hagious which means those who are ‘set apart’, ‘sanctified’ or ‘made holy’. This is also the word used at the beginning of his letter which is addressed to “the hagious, the saints who are in Ephesus”. This is the word which Paul uses for all the Christians in Ephesus. For him, it isn’t a class of ‘super Christians’ who are just very good at being very good. By implication then we can say that God has called all of us who believe in Jesus to be saints. We are all set apart, all made holy by Christ. This is an exciting thought, but also, perhaps a daunting one; we may feel, often, that we don’t live up to our sainthood!
But again our passage from Ephesians is very encouraging. Again it takes us one stage further. Paul says that the Ephesians, when they heard the Gospel and believed in Jesus were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1: 13). The same thing is true for us. We have the Holy Spirit living within us. Amazingly, as Paul says, the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in us is the same power which raised Jesus from the dead and seated Him in glory (Ephesians 1: 19 – 20). That’s some power! Paul prays that the Ephesians may be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that they come to know Christ, to know “the hope to which they have been called” and to know “the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe” (Ephesians 1: 19). We too may need to remind ourselves of these things. Just like the Christians in Ephesus, we already have within us all the resources we need to live as hagious, holy, set apart for God. Just as in the times of the first Christians we, the church, form the body of Christ on earth. We are the place where God dwells and where His purpose for Creation comes to its fullest expression. ( Ephesians 1: 23)
This may all sound highly idealistic but completely removed from reality. Paul takes us off to the theological heights in Ephesians, and perhaps our feet lose contact with the ground. It’s by looking at our Gospel passage that we see the possible practical consequences of our calling to be holy and set apart, to be saints. Luke sums it up pithily as “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” What would it mean if we really put ourselves in other peoples’ shoes? If we really saw everyone we meet as a human being of equal value with ourselves. Jesus must have seen people this way. Last weekend, walking along the street in Finchley I noticed a man sitting on the pavement begging. Usually I ignore such people and tell myself that giving to a homeless charity is a much better, and sufficient response. But for some reason I saw this man as a person. Suddenly I cared about the fact that he was sitting begging. By this time I had walked a long way past him – but I felt compelled to turn back, go back and give him some money. He thanked me very politely. We could argue that my response was still an emotional one – that buying him a sandwich might have been better for him or directing him to a charity if I had known where to send him. But my point is that for some reason I saw this person in the way that God sees him – as unique and valuable – and I wanted to help. It was very inconvenient and made me feel quite uncomfortable. I also prayed for him as I walked home. But I couldn’t help reflecting that if I had been sitting there – perhaps having lost my home and my work, I would have wanted people to be generous. “Do to others as you would have them do for you”.
Our Gospel passage also tells us that we are to expect hardship as the norm, to consider ourselves blessed if we are poor, hungry and distressed. To rejoice if we’re persecuted for our faith and to be concerned if no one has a bad word to say about us. So how do we relate this to the relative comfort of life in Hampstead? We may not be poor in financial terms, although we’re not all wealthy, but there are different kinds of poverty. I’ve often thought about how busy we are if we are serious about our faith, how little time there sometimes seems to be for other activities, how for many of us involvement in church means taking time away from our families. Perhaps if Jesus was standing here now he would say “Blessed are you who are time-poor” because you are busy for the kingdom of heaven.
I read or heard somewhere that when the R C church is considering canonising someone it looks at their life, not to see if they are perfect, because after all only Christ was without sin, but to see if there is enough evidence of holiness there. The church recognises that even the holiest people, those we call saints and set up as examples, may be flawed. The important thing is that their lives demonstrate the grace of God in a powerful way.
So, do we know the hope to which we have been called? Do our lives demonstrate the grace of God? Do we expect God to use us for His purposes? We may look to our patron saints and to the examples of the great Christian saints of the past. And we give thanks for them today. But we are the current generation of saints, the cutting edge of sainthood as it were. It’s what we allow God to do through us which makes Christ’s body live on earth. Let us pray for a spirit of wisdom and revelation that we may see the riches we have in Christ and that we may live in the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Then we shall truly be following in the footsteps of the saints.