St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen, Jersey City NJ
November 5, 2017
Year A: All Saints’
Sunday
Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10, 22
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12
God’s Holy Team
On
Wednesday night I watched a little bit of the seventh and final game of the
World Series, between the LA Dodgers and the Houston Astros.
If
you follow baseball at all, you know that this was a particularly exciting
World Series, with lots of twists and turns, but ultimately the Astros won, earning
the first championship in the team’s history, and a good boost for a city
that’s had a rough time of it lately.
Watching
the game, I thought about how much excellence was on display, as some of the
best players ever to play baseball battled it out. Pitchers were hurling incredibly
fast pitches, on average well over 90 miles per hour. Somehow, hitters were sometimes
actually able to make contact with those balls, which must look like just a
blur as they race towards them over the 60 short feet from the pitcher’s mound to
the batters’ box. And, fielders were able to run, dive, throw, and catch, able
to make exceptional and exciting plays.
Thanks
to extraordinary natural ability and a lot of practice, even the worst players
on these teams are far more excellent than pretty much anybody else, at least
when it comes to baseball,.
In
recent years baseball’s popularity has faded a little bit (for one reason, it’s
probably too slow for a lot of people today), but when I was a kid it was still
the “national pastime” and most of us boys played Little League baseball.
Some
of my teammates were really good, and a few even had dreams of playing in the
big leagues. And, then there were others who were not so good at this at all.
There were those who went out onto the field each game just hoping that they wouldn’t
embarrass themselves too much.
Want
to guess which group I belonged to?
Well,
honestly, I think may have been the worst.
I
don’t think I had much natural ability but I did try, at least somewhat. I can
remember playing catch in the park with my patient father, and practicing on my
own in our backyard with a device called “Johnny Bench’s Batter Up,” which is a
little hard to describe but was basically a ball tethered to a pole. The idea
was you would whack the ball and then it would swing back in the opposite
direction and you’d try again, and again, and again.
But,
despite giving it a try, and despite being told that I sure looked like I should be able to hit the
ball (good stance, good swing), when it came time for a real game with another
kid pitching to me, even at speeds much less than 90 miles per hour, my
eye-hand coordination would fail me, and I just couldn’t hit that ball to save
my life.
And,
eventually, with some embarrassment and regret, I quietly dropped out of Little
League and put it behind me.
Well,
today is All Saints’ Sunday, the day when we give thanks for the holy women and
men of Christian history, those who’ve been officially recognized by the Church,
and also those unofficial saints who have been the holy people in our own
lives, people whose saintliness may only be known to a few, or maybe even known
only to us.
And,
you know, I love the saints. Growing up as a Roman Catholic, their images,
their statues were all around me. I still love learning about them. I love
preaching about them at our weekday services, sharing stories of their
faithfulness, prayerfulness, generosity and their courage, awed by their excellence
in Christian living.
But,
I wonder if there’s a bit of danger for us in honoring the saints – and that
danger is thinking of them like they are kind of like the spiritual version of
those major leaguers playing in the World Series, thinking of the saints almost
like they’re super-humans, while meanwhile, you and I feel like we are the spiritual
version of the uncoordinated kid in the backyard hacking away at Johnny Bench’s
Batter-Up, trying, but with no chance of ever hitting the ball in real life.
Honoring
the saints is great, but there’s the danger of thinking that they are somehow in
a different spiritual league, that their Christian excellence is beyond us,
and, so we shouldn’t bother trying, and maybe even consider dropping out.
But,
the truth is, as children of God, we all have the natural ability to be saints.
As
children of God, we all have the natural ability to practice our saintliness in
our everyday lives.
And,
the really good news is that being a saint is really about simply allowing
God’s goodness and love – God’s excellence – to shine through us.
You
know, in baseball, or any other sport, or any other endeavor, our success is a
result of some combination of natural ability and practice.
And,
that’s true in the Christian life, too.
As
children of God, we all have the natural ability to be saints. And, it’s
through practice that we allow God’s excellence to shine through us.
Practice
when we’re on fire with our faith and, especially, when we’re not so into it.
Practice
in the good times and, especially, the not so good times.
Practice
is praying when God feels so very close and also when God feels very far away.
Practice
is giving of ourselves when we’re feeling full and generous and giving of
ourselves when we feel like we have nothing worthwhile to offer and would really
prefer to keep what we have for ourselves.
Practice is
sticking close to one another, sticking close to St. Paul’s, especially when the
foundations of our world seem to be shaking and cracking, even when violence
and hatred are on the loose, even when we worry about health and money and work
and our kids, and so much else.
You
know, this past week someone asked me about my vision for St. Paul’s.
Although
it’s a question I’ve been asked before, I don’t have a stock answer. But, I
talked about the things most of you have heard me talk about a million times: a
vision of St. Paul’s as a church that serves not only itself but offers itself
in service to the community, a church that feeds people, feeds people with delicious
food, good art, and a warm welcome for absolutely everybody.
But,
just like I used to replay my Little League strikeouts in my mind, I’ve been
replaying that answer, too.
And,
if I could get a do-over, I would add that my vision of St. Paul’s is that
we’re a team – a team with lots of different players each with our own
strengths and weaknesses, a team where all of the players are encouraged and
able to allow God’s excellence to shine through us, a team where we work
together to build the downside-up kingdom revealed by Jesus in the Beatitudes,
a team where all of us have the opportunity to be saints.
So,
today we give thanks for all the saints, the holy men and women who allowed
God’s excellence to shine through them, the saints who’ve been recognized by
the Church, and also those who have been saints in our own lives, people whose
saintliness may only be known to a few, or even just by one.
We
give thanks for them and honor them and, yes, we stand in awe of them.
But,
meanwhile, we have all that we need to be saints.
You
and I.
Right
here and right now at St. Paul’s.
We have all
we need to play in the spiritual major leagues
We have all
we need to be on God’s holy team.
Amen.
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