This All Saints Sunday,
we remember St. Jerome,
a bad 5thCentury theologian,
who did a questionable job
translating the Bible into Latin
while abusively maligning the women
who cared for him.
But he once removed a thorn from a lion’s paw,
so they became fast friends.
We remember Sts. Sergius and Bacchus,
officers in the Roman army
until they admitted they were Christians.
Then Emperor Maximian forced them
to parade in drag through the streets
before executing them.
Speaking of being in drag,
there was the 4thCentury St. Pelagia.
She started out as an exotic dancer
with the stage namePearl.
After her conversion,
she changed her real name Pelagia
to its male form, Pelagius,
dressed as a man,
and lived in Jerusalem as a monk.
3rdCentury St. Calistus began life as a slave,
then after his emancipation launched
his highly successful career as a thief.
Later he became the Pope,
and decreed that penitent sinners,
including murderers,
were welcome in the Church.
St. Odo of Cluny was a 10thCentury monk.
who instituted many church reforms
– most importantly requiring monks
to wash their underwear every Saturday.
Some saints were notably kind, good,
and generous.
Others, not so much.
Some were smart
– like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
Others not so smart.
Some, like Joan of Arc, shaped history.
Others, like Jean-Baptiste Vianney
lived simple lives far removed
from the world’s great affairs.
Saints are not necessarily moral heroes
who got it right.
Many were deeply flawed.
Some were downright nuts.
So why do we celebrate them?
Collectively, the saints represent
the communion of sanctified humanity.
They are not sanctified
because of their individual virtues but
because they joined together
in a holy bond.
Tertullian, the first theologian to write
about the Trinity, said,
A Christian alone is no Christian at all.
Just so, sainthood is about communion,
relationship made holy because
it is a partnership in God’s mission.
Ritually, we join that relational network
when we sing the Sanctus.
In Heaven, the saints and angels perpetually sing
the music of the spheres, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
So we say, “Therefore we join our voices
with angels and archangels
and all the company of heaven.”
Then live that holiness in our relationship
with each other.
The Communion of All Saints is the spiritual unity
of all believers.
But within that unity
there is a lot of personal diversity,
that can be hard to manage.
Augustine despised Jerome’s Latin translation
of the Bible, and accused him
of ruining the faith.
Paul wrote this about Peter
whom he called Cephas,
When Cephas came to Antioch
I opposed him to his face
because he stood condemned.
In 12thCentury France, Peter Abelard
and St. Bernard of Clairvaux
wrote beautifully of divine
and human love.
But they loathed each other.
Bernard devoted himself single-mindedly
to destroying Abelard’s academic career.
If the world is supposed
to know we are Christians by our love,
no wonder the world is confused.
So is this talk of the Communion of All Saints
pious rubbish?
It may well be rubbish.
Or it may be that God is at work in our conflicts,
using our stumbling, messy relationships
to sanctify our souls and transform us
into the unlikely agents of God’s mission.
Maybe, as the saying goes
God rides the lame horse
and carves rotten wood.
Maybe God does not choose to live
in a commune of blissed out airheads,
but rather in a community
of flesh and blood people
with all the faults and foibles
that make us human.
In case that is true,
we might want to consider today
what it means to really be Church
and how to go about it.
Really becoming the Church,
changes both our expectations
and our behavior.
On both fronts, we can learn something
from community organizing.
I am delighted that you are working to create
a broad based community organization,
because that’s a way we can learn
how to be Church.
As for expectations, perhaps we are lonely;
so, we come to church
looking for soul mates,
intimate personal friends.
Maybe we find a few. Maybe we don’t.
Most of church people are not going
to fit for us in that close personal way.
Some of us will even irritate each other.
What we can offer is,
in the language of community organizing,
public friendship.
Public friends may not want to go out for a beer
or share their darkest secrets.
But public friends can work with each other.
We share a common mission so
we are willing to hear someone’s story,
to understand where they are coming from,
to find out what they have at stake
in a situation.
We can trust them to be honest with us
because we are honest with them.
When Jesus commands us to love one another,
the word we translate as lovemeans
something far closer to public friendship
than personal friendship.
It’s more about being partners than buddies.
We may be blessed
to make some personal friends in Church.
But that’s gravy.
The proving ground of our faith
is the public friendships,
the partnerships in mission.
To establish a network of public friendship
for God’s mission,
there are three basic steps:
First, we need to all know the mission.
The catechism states the mission in broad terms:
“to restore all people to unity with God
and each other in Christ.”
We have spelled out the specifics
in the Five Marks of Mission.
Every member of the Church needs
to know the Marks.
If you don’t already know them,
just Google “Five Marks of Mission.”
Then write them on your doorposts.
Tattoo them on your arm.
Repeat them when you wake up each morning.
Second, we can work out the ground rules
for our relationships.
A small congregation in Utah was declining,
aging, and torn by perpetual conflict.
They negotiated a behavioral covenant.
They made their expectations explicit
and put them writing.
Seven years later,
they were the largest Episcopal Church
in the state.
The guide for that is Behavioral Covenants
in Congregations by Gil Rendle.
The third step is the spiritual discipline
of surrendering our preferences
to the gospel mission through
intentional relationship practices
like praying for each other,
listening to understand instead
of planning our reply,
speaking to someone we don’t know
each Sunday and learning something
about them.
It includes trusting the leadership,
forgiving each other when we stumble,
subordinating our own favorite projects
to the common good
of the whole Church.
Community is built brick by brick
through the years
by such relational actions.
This isn’t easy.
It takes intentional persistent effort fueled
by God’s grace.
Why would we undertake such an arduous task?
Because it will grow our souls
and enlarge our lives.
It will expand our capacity
for joy and appreciation.
It will bless those around us
and make us a channel of blessing
instead of a pit of need.
And it will, with God’s help,
change our world into the godly home
our Creator earnestly and desperately
wants for us all.
Let us pray:
God we are so used to seeing ourselves
as individuals with personal destinies.
Remind us that we are made in your Triune image,
the image of community.
Help us to love each other and be made one as
you are one.
Whisper your love to us
that we may whisper your love to the world.
Amen.
(Common Payer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals)
