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Weekly sermons from the traditional and contemporary worship services at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas. Rooted in Scripture and the Anglican tradition, these messages explore how the gospel speaks to our faith, our everyday lives and the world around us.
Be seated.
In 1962, historian Daniel Boorstin offered
a memorable definition of a celebrity.
"A celebrity is a person who is known for their
well-knownness."
And that was written well before social media, Facebook, Instagram, before the
age of influencers. But we know exactly what he
means. We live in a world where someone can become
famous simply because they are famous.
This celebrity's qualities, or rather lack of qualities,
illustrate a peculiar problem. He's neither good nor
bad, great nor petty. He is the human
pseudo-event. He has been fabricated on
purpose to satisfy our exaggerated
expectations of human greatness.
However, the Church, in her great wisdom, insists on a
different measure of greatness.
Those are who we call saints.
Those in whom the grace of God is revealed, those who
have earned that distinction by taking faith seriously and
at great cost, and who heroically
live
out their adoption into the family of God, and who
as examples to us are all worthy of emulation.
They show the world what all who would follow Christ
are called to be. They
show us
what we are called to be in this family of God.
We honor them because they show us something of the good life in
Christ.
And as we welcome Sam into this body of believers,
into Christ's body in baptism this morning, and on this
All Saints' Day,
the difference between a celebrity and a saint is
significant.
See, the saints aren't merely heroes that we admire.
They are a family we belong to,
and a people we are called to become.
So firstly, they're not merely heroes to admire.
If you'll look around at the stained glass here in the church and in
Ascension Chapel,
you'll notice that we're surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses,
and not just for decoration's sake.
The light by which we see in this church first
passes through the stories of saints from
scripture and history.
The stained glass invites us to think about the connection between the story
of Christ, the life of the Church,
and our own story in that life.
When bright white light shines through a prism, as you know, it's
refracted. It breaks apart into many individual colors.
Think about what happens here when the light comes through our
stained glass. It doesn't just break apart, it shines through the images of
this diversity of saints, fracturing through their
individual lives and stories. They are examples of
following Christ in different times and circumstances,
various places, callings.
The following of Christ
is not just one kind of life.
As we heard in the
St. John's revelation this morning, a great multitude that no
one could count,
John saw. From every nation, from all tribes and all peoples and
languages, they have come out of the great ordeal.
They have washed their robes and been made white in the blood of the
Lamb. In other words, they have gone through the baptism.
They have gone through baptism and been washed in the blood of the Lamb.
Through the light of Christ shining through them, we are given
concrete images of the diverse ways
Christ's light illumines the human person and
shines through them.
A monk praying in solitude, a mother raising her children,
a teacher, a bishop, a person caring faithfully for a neighbor whom no
one else notices. Not everyone is called to imitate
directly the life of St. Benedict or Julian of Norwich,
but each bear witness to the same Lord.
The point of their lives, the point of the lives of the saints, is not to draw
our attention to them directly.
It's to turn our eyes toward Christ
and his image in us, and that which he is aiming to form
in us.
So the real purpose of this feast, the Feast of All Saints Day, is not only to
remember what God has done in others, it's a declaration of
what God intends to do in each one of us.
We are expected to become like them in their
obedience, in their trust through suffering, in their looking to
Christ, the light of life.
Leon Bloy once wrote, "The only great tragedy in life is
not to become a saint."
Often we think of sainthood as a lofty and seemingly unattainable goal
that only the most holy and extraordinary men and women can
achieve. However, that's not the measure of a saint at all.
It's those who through the small obedience, the small sufferings, the
small demands to trust in the provision of Christ,
give of themselves and allow his light to shine in and
through them. To be refracted through their unique person
and to shine that light throughout all the world.
Just as in our collect says this morning, "Give us grace
to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and
godly living." Or in the epistle, "Beloved, we are
God's children now. What we will be has not
yet been revealed."
Notice two things in that line from the epistle. Two things.
One, we are God's children now.
And we are not yet what we shall be.
Irenaeus understood our life with God as one of constant growth and
maturity.
Our life is to be transformed into that likeness
of Christ so that his light is refracted
through us. Friends, that is the good life that the
saints show us.
It means sainthood is not a prize for the unusually religious.
Holiness is a vocation of every Christian.
When Jesus blesses the merciful and the peacemakers, he's not giving us
a list of impressive people to applaud for from afar.
He's showing us the kind of people his grace is making us
into,
and the true standard of a hero,
and the mark of that good life.
Today, we baptize Sam into this great communion of saints,
but we don't imagine that the work of God will then be complete when he leaves the
font.
Just as with you.
The baptismal life, our baptismal life, is just
beginning. A lifetime of being molded into the image of Christ
through love, forgiveness, prayer,
pain, repentance,
and a learning to allow the light of Christ to be refracted
through us.
But God hasn't just given us that calling and then left us on our own to accomplish
it through our own striving and our own significance,
or our own working or scheming. The good news is that through the
baptismal waters, we have been born into this great communion
of saints, a family to which we belong, a great
cloud of witnesses who continues to pray for and strengthen us.
As the collect says, "Lord,
knit together your elect in one communion
and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son,
Christ our Lord." Notice the word that's used there in that collect, knit
together. That doesn't just mean that we're doing this life
alongside or following someone else's
example, or
serving someone that is distant and separated from us in this good
life in Christ. No.
God is knitting us together.
Knitting us together in this great communion,
this one fellowship in the mystical body of Christ our Lord.
And for that reason, we carry one another
as Christ carries us,
his body, the church.
It begins in baptism, but the truth is,
we never entirely outgrow the need for the support and
the fellowship and the knitting together of the community that we've been
born into. We never outgrow this.
There are days, of course you know, when we struggle to pray,
when belief seems difficult, when the sorrow and pains that
we experience in this world leave us without words.
But notice at the baptism today. Notice how the creed is carried
out. Notice that
Sam or any baptizan, that as they emerge from the water, they don't then
proclaim this faith on their own,
saying it out of memory as a solo voice.
No, we all join in together. Every Sunday when we say that creed,
we believe. We're saying that together.
There are days when we can't say it on our own,
and the church gathers around us and prays for us.
That communion that we've been knitted alongside, knitted
into,
that the church carries our faith and our sufferings and our burden.
So here in a moment, we'll say, "Will you who witness these vows do all in your
power to support this person in his life in Christ?" What will we say?
Should we practice?
We will. We will. We proclaim this.
And then the celebrant will turn and say, "Therefore, I beseech you to join with
those who are committing themselves to Christ and renew the
solemn promises and vows of holy baptism."
And in those moments, the church prays with us and for us.
When our own voice falters, we are surrounded by the
prayers of the saints that have gone before us.
See, we're not made holy alone
in our own power. We're being welcomed into the great communion that
John saw, that great communion that though a great chasm of death separates
us, it's really only a narrow stream.
They're here among us and closer than we imagine.
This great family spanning Earth and Heaven, a people being made
holy by the grace of God.
Where is your faith this morning faltering?
Where is your strength struggling? Lean on your family.
So when you look at the saints in these windows, as the light
streams through and you see the various diverse colors, don't see only
heroes of the past. See the family to which you belong,
by which the light of Christ is being shown forth
throughout the world. See the calling placed upon your own life,
and look to the one whose light
is a refraction, the light that comes to those saints.
Look at that refraction
as an image of that eternal light of life that Christ is
forming in us.
Amen.
Amen.