What makes a saint?

It was the feast of All Saints, 1517, that prompted one of the most influential spiritual crises ever.  For it was at this time that Martin Luther drafted his famous Ninety-Five theses, his challenge to the religious authorities of his time, and posted them on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg.  This Church was preparing for its great annual festival, where its precious relics would be displayed; it was ready to welcome pious Christians from miles around who would call upon the aid of saints and angels, those holy people whose lives were so special, whose merits were so great, and whose material remains were now housed in Saxony.  But Luther was sceptical, wondering if those ancient saints could really help him, and critical of the way their relics were often exploited.  The theses he posted just before the great feast were complex and technical, designed for academic debate.  But really they were about one simple question, a question that had consumed his thoughts for months now.  How, he wondered, can it be that human beings gain God’s favour?  Or, what does it take to be one of God’s saints?

Luther’s question touched a deep nerve in the society around him, for it goes to the heart of the gospel message and to our human need for relationship with God.   That desire to be found acceptable in God’s eyes, to be one of God’s people, can be seen all the way through the Bible and into our own present times.  And it is a desire that Jesus acknowledges and takes seriously, indeed it shapes the very opening of his central sermon, recorded in both Luke and Matthew, and given to us in our reading today. Here, as he begins his teaching to the people, Jesus explains who it is that is blessed in God’s sight, who it is that has God’s favour.   ‘Blessed’, he says, ‘are the poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.’  Not those who are wise or kind or prayerful, though perhaps they may be these things too.  Rather, it is to those who are poor that Jesus points first as the people precious in God’s sight.

Jesus’s words are designed to shock and surprise us, to challenge our dearly held assumptions about what favour and success might look like, about what God might want from us.  It is not what we have or what we can offer God, not even our friendships or relationships with others, that gain us God’s favour or make us blessed.  Rather, it is poverty, a recognition of our want and our need.

It is tempting to spiritualise this poverty, and of course that is what Matthew will do in his version of the beatitudes.  Luke does not; for him it is axiomatic that God is on the side of those who have nothing, whose suffering is material and physical in the here and now.   Throughout Luke’s gospel Jesus will insist that God’s concern is for the marginalised, the oppressed, and the vulnerable – it is here that we will find the saints.  And conversely, it is those who live in comfort and confidence who are most distant from God, cut off from the grace of God to save and heal.   For this division, between poor and rich, is also the division between those who will listen and those who will close their ears, between those Jesus addresses as his teaching continues, and those who are content with their own resources, assuming that God will be, too. 

But what does it mean to listen to Jesus’s teaching, to be open to God’s riches?  It means loving our enemies and sharing what we have, not for any benefit to ourselves but simply because that is what it is to be blessed, to live in the presence of God.  What God calls us to is a way of life and relationship grounded not in our own merits or possessions, not in mechanisms of exchange or satisfaction, but anchored instead in divine love, in all its abundance.  And this means to understand our selves not through what we have or what we can do, but in the light of God’s generosity, of God’s riches and grace.  And it is to allow that grace to shape our lives, to enable our own generosity, our own love for each other, and not to demand anything in return. 

To Martin Luther, struggling so hard to be holy, to follow in the footsteps of the ancient saints, Jesus’s words were a comfort but also a challenge.  As he prayed and studied and reflected, he came to believe that nothing humans could do could win the favour of God, however holy or saintly they were – and to find in this faith a great source of hope.  He came to realise that Jesus Christ had done all that was necessary and that God’s grace was not conditional upon our merits.   Luther understood that we cannot impress God with our riches or status or even our holiness, and eventually he learned to let that struggle go.  But, as our gospel passage tells us, what we can do is listen, listen to Jesus’s words and allow ourselves to be drawn into a new kind of life, a life where what is precious is not what we own but the gifts that God gives us.  A life where our value comes not from the affirmation of others, but from the joy of God’s love.  A life measured not by the success we enjoy now but the hope that we cherish, hope for the day when God’s kingdom will be fulfilled.             

That hope can be lonely, setting people against the prevailing cultures and values, especially where our world values status and accumulation, fragile cycles of fashion and fame.  And Jesus takes seriously the difficulties it may bring.  As he tells the crowds, it is not those who are feted and praised who are blessed, but the rejected and the excluded – and soon his disciples will learn just what rejection and exclusion can mean.  But the good news of the kingdom also brings together new communities and creates new relationships, that will last through time and space.  As St Paul explains to the Ephesians, God draws God’s people together into the Church, into the body of Christ; and God invites us all to share together in hope and in holiness, through grace and faith.       

Today it is that community we celebrate, on the feast of All Saints.  It is a day to rejoice in the fellowship of the Church throughout all ages, to be inspired by the lives of those who have gone before – and to reflect as well on our own selves, on our priorities and relationships.  Yet Jesus’s words remind us too that God calls us not as heroes or saints, not for anything we can do or achieve, but simply as finite creatures, open to God’s love.  And it is in that loving dependence that we find our own freedom, and perhaps too our place in the company of saints.