The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, the 5th Chapter
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
When I was growing up, Christmas Eve was HUGE… because PRESENTS! We’d eat our Swedish Christmas dinner, then, my sister and I would do the dishes, because PRESENTS couldn’t be opened until the dishes were done and my mom was tricksy that way! Then FINALLY… the PRESENTS! Oh, yeah, and after that we’d all go to church… whatever! But PRESENTS were the thing! We opened them one person at a time around the circle. When it was my turn I always unwrapped like a hurricane, with paper and bows flying everywhere! My mom though, always unwrapped her gifts savoring every moment... appreciating the bow, commenting on the paper, really taking time to fully admire the gift. It was TORTURE! Waiting through all that painfully slow present-savoring before it could be my turn again! It was awful! Later in life I began to appreciate the deep, savoring, unwrapping of gifts, mostly because it was fun to torture my kids in the same way my mom tortured me!
This week I’ve been thinking about the difference between Big-S saints like St. Francis who took care of the poor or St. Christina the Astonishing, who could smell sin… really, she could smell sin! I’ve been thinking about the difference between those Big-S saints and little-s saints who are like the people whose names we read this morning and the people sitting here today… little-s saints like you and me. We little-s saints got to be saints simply because God says we are! It’s one of the things we celebrate in Baptism…that God has made us each into a saint… Simply and only because God says, “It is so!”
But knowing there are both Big-S Saints AND little-s saints got me wondering. How do you go from being a little-s saint to a Big-S Saint? The answer, I think, might be in how we unwrap and savor the gift of being made little-s saints by God. I think too that maybe those “Blessed Are’s”… the Beatitudes we just read… are God’s instructions for unwrapping and savoring that gift. Some folks seem to really, really be able to savor that gift. Like my mom did with Christmas presents, these people carefully unwrap the gift of being made a little-s saint and in doing that, they don’t just see the gift, but they also see the beauty, care, compassion and love in which that gift was wrapped. They take time to watch the way the bow shimmers in the light. They carefully open the box and hold their gift of sainthood up to the light and REALLY SEE what God has given them. They MARVEL at it! They revel in it… but even more than that… these are the folks who don’t shove that gift into the back of the closet... they love that gift so much that from that day on, it goes with them everywhere and becomes a part of everything they do in their lives.
The better we’re able to do that… to unwrap, savor, cherish and pass on that gift… the more we experience the fullness of the gift we’ve been given. I think it’s the folks who are able to do that very, very well that we all end up recognizing as Capital-S Saints… they didn’t start with anything more than the rest of us. They are simply the ones who have been able to make the very most out of the same gift of little-s sainthood that we’ve all been given in Christ.
When those folks, who unwrap and savor that gift find themselves poor in spirit, they are the ones who are somehow able, in that moment, to be thankful for it! Thankful for the reminder that it isn’t their spirit that transforms the world, but the HOLY SPIRIT that moves creation toward the Kingdom of God! When those folks experience life’s greatest losses, somehow they find a way to be thankful. Because in those moments where they miss the embrace of the ones they’ve loved so deeply… they find a way to be thankful that their loss allows them to feel God’s embrace more clearly.
They are the people who find joy in NOT being the biggest and the most important, but in knowing that God made them to fit perfectly right where they are in every moment. They are the ones who have a hunger and a thirst for making the world work right. They are the ones who, by looking so closely at the gift they've been given, are able to see God’s heart beating inside them and with that, are then able then to see God’s heart beating in everyone around them as well. They are the ones who understand the power of bringing people together in a world that seems bent on spinning people apart. They are ones who, in seeing themselves as saints, are able to see everyone around them as saints as well.
The Big-S Saints don’t have a different, better, or more wonderful gift than you and I have as little-s saints. We all begin in the same place with the same overwhelming gift, as little-s saints of God! As this day proclaims, we are indeed, All Saints! The difference between little-s saints and those Big-S Saints, is that they have taken the time… a little more each day… to more clearly SEE the beauty of the gift they have been given. They have over and over again, unwrapped that gift’s next layer… going deeper and deeper every day, discovering more and more of God’s love, compassion and generosity wrapped inside. They are the ones who fall so fully in love with the gift of little-s sainthood, that they can’t help but to take it with them everywhere they go… take it a little further into the world every day… share it a little more widely every day… and give more of it more deeply to the people they meet along the way.
You and I… we’re the little-s saints… made saints as a gift from God. May we see more clearly the beauty of the gift we’ve been given. May we unwrap more deeply the layers of the gift we’ve been given. May we fall so fully in love with this gift we’ve been given, that we carry it farther, share it more completely and in doing all that, live into the name God has already given us… the name of saint! Amen.
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