St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
November 6, 2022
Year C: All Saints’ Sunday
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31
“To Be a Saint Means to Be Myself”
By now, I’m guessing that at least some of you are starting to get tired of hearing about the silent retreat that I went on a couple of weeks ago.
You may be asking, “Hasn’t he caught up on talking yet?”
To which I answer, almost.
Retreats are different from vacations, but in both cases you can return and have to catch up on so many tasks that it feels like you need a vacation or a retreat from your vacation or retreat - or that your getaway never happened at all.
But, for whatever reason, my retreat has been sticking with me, helping me feel more grounded, even when there’s so much anxiety and fear all around.
For my retreat I visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. It’s a Trappist monastery that first became well known to the wider world thanks to its most famous monk, the writer Thomas Merton.
Merton, who was born in 1915, was an adult convert to Christianity.
In 1938, while Merton was finishing a Master’s Degree at Columbia University in New York City, he was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church.
And not long after his Baptism, a friend of his named Bob Lax asked Merton what he wanted to become.
That can be a hard question to answer and Merton struggled a bit to come up with something until he finally said, “I don’t know, I guess what I want to be is a good Catholic.”
But his friend corrected him, “What you should say is that you want to be a saint.”
Merton thought this was crazy talk – how could he, a just-baptized Christian, getting such a late start on the road of faith, ever hope to be a saint?
But Merton’s wise friend explained, “All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don’t you believe God will make you what He created you to be, if you consent to let Him do it? All you have to do is desire it.”
Well today, on All Saints’ Sunday, we have a lot going on!
We’re celebrating the saints whose holiness has been recognized by many and officially acknowledged – holy women and men like the Virgin Mary, St. Thomas, St. Paul, St. Francis, and all the rest.
At the same time we’re also giving thanks for a vastly larger group, all the baptized, all of those who died and rose again with Christ in the water of Baptism, just as Teddy and Frankie will in just a few minutes.
And today is also an opportunity to remember the people who have been saints in our lives, the parents, grandparents, godparents, teachers, mentors, friends, and others who first shared the faith with us – the people who taught us, often through their quiet example, just what love, mercy, forgiveness, and generosity look like.
And there’s one last most important thing that we are meant to remember today on All Saints’ Sunday.
We - you and I - are already saints – this is what we are made for – this is who we really are.
Later in life, after he had entered the monastery and reflected more deeply on the idea of sainthood, Thomas Merton wrote this:
“For me to be a saint means to be myself.”
“For me to be a saint means to be myself.”
Merton didn’t mean that to be a saint we should just act normal – you know how we say to a person who’s nervous about an interview or some other big event, “Just be yourself!”
No, Merton is talking about something much deeper – to be our true selves – to be the loving and generous people that God created us to be.
Often this is not so easy.
And, in fact, there are many of us who maybe never really know who we are – or maybe we forget – or maybe we would just rather not know, since our true identity can be inconvenient and downright costly.
In my time here with you, it has become kind of a running gag that I love Baptism - that as a priest there’s not much I like better than baptizing people.
And that’s the absolute truth – I hope you can tell I’m not faking it – but I’ve also hoped that my excitement would be contagious – that you would also feel the joy of these days – that you would see that Baptism isn’t just a nice little ritual we do with and to children, the quiet ones and the ones who scream their heads off.
No, Baptism is a big deal because it’s here and now that we are reminded of who God made us to be – the person we really are.
For me to be a saint means to be my true self, a person who gathers here with other saints to ponder God’s Word, to pray together, to break bread.
For me to be a saint means to be my true self, a person resisting evil but, when I mess up, quick to repent and return to the Lord.
For me to be a saint means to be my true self, a person proclaiming by word and example the Good News.
For me to be a saint means to be my true self, a person seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving my neighbor as myself.
For me to be a saint means to be my true self, a person striving for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of every human being.
For me to be a saint means to be myself – my true self – with God’s help – always and only with God’s help.
I don’t need to tell you that, especially these days, there are some powerful forces at work, tempting us to be other than – much less than - who we really are.
But when we, with God’s help, really are our true selves – when we love one another, including the people we’re not too sure about – when we strive to even love the people we’re told we should hate and fear – when we are our true selves, then Jesus’ beautiful vision of the Kingdom starts to become more real.
And when we who are rich and full and laughing remember the poor and the hungry and the mournful – when we stand beside them and love them and serve them as beloved brothers and sisters, then Jesus’ beautiful vision of the Kingdom starts to become real.
At the start of my sermon, I mentioned that the grace of my recent retreat hasn’t faded very much, so far.
I’m not sure why exactly, but I wonder if it’s because I find myself here, surrounded by so many people who strive, with God’s help, to fulfill their baptismal vows – to be the loving and generous people God created them to be.
After today’s 10:00 service, many of us will have lunch with our guest from Afghanistan, Hizbullah.
Or, actually, I should say that Hizbullah is our first guest from Afghanistan, because last week we welcomed guest number two, a fine young man named Abdul.
When I think of the courage, generosity and creativity and persistence of the little team that has stepped into the unknown and welcomed Hizbullah and now Abdul and has cared for them and gotten them off to such a good start – and when I think of the people who have worked so hard to prepare a beautiful feast for us later today - well, no doubt they will recoil in embarrassment and modesty, but this is saintly behavior for sure, moving us a little closer to the Kingdom of God.
So, you know, St. Thomas’ may not be a quiet monastery in the Kentucky countryside, but this is a holy place where many people answer God’s call to be our true selves.
To be a saint means to be myself.
Amen.
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