Sunday, November 1, 2015 | All Saints’ Day| 8:00 a.m.

Beyond and Within

Matt Helms
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 146
Ruth 1:1–18
Revelation 21:1–6a

Though lovers be lost
love shall not;
and death shall have no dominion.

Dylan Thomas

When you hear the word saint, whom do you think of? For me, my mind almost immediately flashes to the icons and golden halos within great medieval paintings, continuing on through the names of the evangelists and leaders of the early church. St. Peter, St. Irenaeus, St. Francis of Assisi. Before long my mind begins to wander into the present, even to people who aren’t officially canonized. Figures like Gandhi or Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King Jr.—people who reshaped the world around them into a better, kinder place. These figures are inspirational to us, leading lives that we aspire to but ultimately feel as though their level of greatness is somehow beyond our grasp, as though their sainthood is almost unapproachable, like a golden halo in a medieval painting. They are the select few, people whose exemplary lives set them apart from our ordinary ones and whom we can only look at and read about in awe.

But when we use the word saint in our Reformed tradition, we acknowledge that there are more than just a chosen few. We each have saints in our own lives, people who may not be saints to anyone else but us, but people who have indelibly shaped our lives for the better. We all have different lists and different stories, people who have shaped us in powerful and meaningful ways who will never have stories written about them and who will never be canonized and yet when we think of a modern-day saint, their images come to mind. I think about my grandfather, who ran away from an abusive home when he was growing up and poured everything he had into making a family of his own filled with love and support. He was humble and honorable, one time returning money from his paycheck back to his employer because he realized he had been overpaid by a dollar and a few cents and didn’t think it was right to keep it. I think of Patrick, my childhood pastor growing up, or my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Angelo, who helped bring me out of my shell by showing how much she cared for me. I think of the kids at our Children’s Chapel who learn that other kids around the world struggle to get food and clean water each day and they want to do something to help.

All Saints’ Day, in our Reformed tradition, is more than just celebrating figures whose holy lives seem beyond us. It’s also a celebration of all those who imbue daily life—ordinary life—with a touch of holiness and transcendence and remind us that God’s kingdom is being built among us.

When you hear the word saint, whom do you think of? We live in a tension between holy saints and ordinary saints: those who seem to go beyond the limits of what we imagine we’re able to do and those who quietly reshape God’s people in subtle but real ways. We see this tension within our two scripture lessons from today: one from the ordinary faithfulness of a woman named Ruth and one from a transcendent vision written by John of Patmos.

It may seem strange to hear a passage from the Book of Revelation in the Fourth Church pulpit given the book’s common association with apocalypse and the Left Behind novels, but the theme of transcendent hope is one that matches beautifully with our own associations with All Saints’ Day. This day is an opportunity to give thanks for all the men and women who have come before us, building a better world and changing others through the ways that their lives intersected with them, and to express the hope that we have that they are now with God. In this passage, John writes of a new heaven and a new earth being created—or perhaps we should say “completely remade.” It is a passage, on the surface at least, strictly about the beyond, about both heaven and earth moving beyond the present and into something more—the same hope that often gets lifted up during All Saints’ Day liturgies.

But although it’s known more for its four horsemen imagery and unusual metaphors, the history and context of Revelation muddies this interpretation about the passage being strictly about the beyond. Thought to have been written in the later stages of the first century, the author would have witnessed numerous persecutions under the emperors Nero and Domitian. In fact, the 666 code name of the great beast is widely believed by scholars to be a Hebrew numerical code spelling Nero’s name. For John of Patmos and the audience that he was writing to, the world as he knew it desperately needed to be remade. He and his community were suffering, and in many ways this vision—bizarre as it may sound to our ears—was a message of comfort. God is coming to make all things new, he writes, but an even greater reassurance comes halfway through our lesson. “The home of the Lord is among mortals,” John writes. “He will dwell with them and they will be his people. God himself will dwell with them, and he will wipe every tear from their eye.” Rather than a story strictly about transcendence beyond our everyday, ordinary lives—about being made holy or set apart—this story is about the God who is with his people even in the midst of heartache and pain. This story is not just about the beyond; it is also about the within, a tension between the world to come and the world at present.

This tension exists within our first lesson from Ruth, as well. On its surface, Ruth is a story about an everyday, ordinary woman whose love for Naomi and for God is transformative for the two of them. This faithfulness overcomes the devastating loss of their spouses at the outset of the book and it leads to the creation of a new family. But transcendence is also contained within Ruth’s famous words: “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—and there I will be buried.” In these words, there is a sense of holiness being created amidst the everyday actions of their lives. This unbreakable and unshakeable bond of creating a new family has brought something new into being, a paradox of ordinary transcendence. The surrealist French poet Paul Eluard once remarked that “there is another world, and it is within this one,” a quote that reminds us of the ways in which we each carry our sainthood with us, as we have the power to shape and reshape the world around us, even as God does the same.

Ruth is not referred to as a saint in any sort of formal way, but her story represents a side of sainthood often not written about or remarked upon: a quiet decision to reshape both her and Naomi’s lives though mutual companionship. We often ascribe sainthood to those who do bold and glamorous things that change our world, but the truth is that the seemingly small, quiet decisions like the ones that Ruth makes end up having an equally large impact. In the genealogy of Ruth, we learn that her eventual relationship with Boaz—something that never would have existed had it not been for her decision at the start of the story—leads to the birth of a great-grandson named David, the king who would lead Israel into a period of unprecedented prosperity and worship. God’s kingdom is not just about something transcendent in the beyond; it’s also something that is being built right here on earth, often in the quietest of ways and in the smallest of our actions.

These passages may seem to hold very different views about how a saint would act, but at their core they express the same thing: newness and renewal are something beyond, but they are also something that we participate in within. Revelation looks at a broken world and imagines something better, not just in the future but with God with us in the here and now. Ruth responds to heartbreak in the here and now by creating something that transcends the present. Is God’s kingdom in the here and now, or is it in the world to come? Is sainthood something that is beyond our daily reality, or is it shaped by each of our actions? And what do we do if the answer to both questions is yes?

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is asked a question by the Pharisees about when exactly God’s kingdom would be coming. He responds by saying that the kingdom’s coming cannot be observed, that there are no clear signs about when it arrives. Instead, Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is among you.” And elsewhere in Luke, Jesus compares the coming of the kingdom to a mustard seed or yeast, both nearly invisible, and yet over time each will grows and shape in ways that one could almost never imagine. God’s kingdom is already here, but paradoxically not yet, and all the saints who participate in building it are caught in this paradox between transcendent holiness and ordinary actions.

In a few minutes, we will be reading the names of all those from our church family who have gone to be with God this past year—saints not in the sense of perfect behavior but in the sense of belonging in a real way to God’s family. But this day is a reminder to each of us that we too are saints within God’s family, not just those who have gone before us or those who have lived exemplary lives that feel like they put ours to shame.

When you hear the word saint, who do you think of? I’m sure the last person that many of us would say would be ourselves. And yet as John of Patmos proclaimed in Revelation and the entire biblical witness proclaims, God is both beyond us and within us. Saint is an intimidating title, one that most of us would refuse to hold, but it is through each of us, small mustard seeds or yeast in the context of our city and world, that God’s new kingdom comes into being.

Today we remember all those who have gone beyond while acknowledging how they continue to be our example within, but we also know that we will be the saints for the entire next generation of Christians after us. God is building a new heaven and a new earth, working with us humble saints in places both big and small, in the here and now but also in the kingdom to come.

When the next generation hears the word saint, who will they think of? Let us live our lives knowing that it may be us, bringing God’s kingdom into being until God’s work is indeed done and all is made new. Amen.