SAINTHOOD FOR DUMMIES

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from Luke 6:20-31

November 4, 2007

Luke 6

²⁰Then he looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,

for yours is the kingdom of God.

²¹ “Blessed are you who are hungry now,

for you will be filled.

“Blessed are you who weep now,

for you will laugh.

²²“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you^£ on account of the Son of Man. ²³Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

²⁴ “But woe to you who are rich,

for you have received your consolation.

²⁵ “Woe to you who are full now,

for you will be hungry.

“Woe to you who are laughing now,

for you will mourn and weep.

²⁶“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

²⁷“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.

I know you are asking yourself, “How can I get to be a saint?” So here are some ways for the average person to achieve sainthood.

You can just buy it on the Internet! At www.sainthood.com their founder says, "Let's face it, becoming a real saint is just too difficult for people of average (even above average) goodness. If Mother Teresa is still waiting, what chance do the rest of us have?” At Sainthood.com, you nominate a friend or relative by supplying a "saint name", what he or she is a "Patron Saint of..." and your reasons the person deserves this honor. After an order is complete, the new "Cyber Saint" will receive a Proclamation of Sainthood certificate or even their own personal Cyber Shrine.  If the customer sends a photo of the new saint by e-mail, the photo (complete with halo!) will appear on the shrine and certificate. One of the early Cyber Saints, St. Page of Lochmere, said: "Being made a saint was truly amazing. I have my Proclamation of Sainthood certificate hanging in my office and I insist my friends use my ‘proper title’ when referring to me now." Sainthood Certificates start at $24.99 and Cyber Shrines at $9.95. So there you have it!

For those who wish to take sainthood a little more seriously, you can go the route established by the Roman Catholic Church. Unfortunately, the first step is to be dead. But we will all achieve that one day, so, so far so good. But you have to be dead for 5 to 50 years before the process can even begin. Then you have to be nominated by your own church or community to the bishop with compelling reasons for sainthood. The bishop decides whether to forward your name to Rome where, if it is accepted, a tribunal is convened back home and witnesses are called. You must have shown to have been virtuous, devout, religious, and characterized by love, kindness, prudence, and other virtues. If you pass this step you are called a Servant of God. The report about this is translated into Latin and sent back to Rome where nine theologians scrutinize the evidence and, if a majority approves, they send it on to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. If they approve, then your case goes to the Pope who decides if you can be beatified and be called Venerable or Blessed. Miracles are needed for the last step to sainthood to be completed. Miracles must be attributed to your intercession with God on behalf of the one praying. If these miracles can be proven, then the Pope makes the final call and you are canonized as a saint. Sainthood is the NBA of the religious world, very few make it.

Can’t something be done to achieve saint status without all that institutional and political maneuvering? Yes, you can simply be perfect. Of course, that gets a little difficult when Jesus gives commandments such as “love your enemies.” We have a tendency to bomb our enemies, can’t wait to get at them with high explosives. We would like to jack the jaw of the gal at school who is bad-mouthing us or the guy at work who undermines every project we undertake. Tough task this enemy-loving. But Jesus keeps laying it on. “Do good to those who hate you.” What? Do good to those who love you, we got that. Do good to those you don’t even know; we can stretch enough to deal with that one fairly well. But to do good to those who hate us, who are working against us, who would hurt us if they got the chance—wow, that’s a hard road to walk. “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other cheek as well.” The Kingston Trio put it this way:

“He hit that Reverend like the kick of a mule

and to my way of thinking it took a pure fool

to turn the other cheek to that lumberjack,

but that’s what he did, the Rev. Mr. Black.

He stood like a rock, a man among men,

and he let that lumberjack hit him again,

and then with a voice as kind as could be,

he cut him down like a big oak tree when he said,

‘You got to walk that lonesome valley; you got to walk it by yourself.’”

I don’t know how many of us could do what the Rev. Mr. Black did or how many of us can do everything that Jesus commands us to do. We can do fully some of what he asks us and we can do partly all of what he asks, but none of us can do perfectly everything that our Lord demands. So is there no hope for us in our saintly quest?

I think there is in Jesus’ brief line that gets to the heart of sainthood and good living: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” That is a gauge that we can understand. In the early 1930s several years of drought turned the Midwest into a dust bowl just as the economic effects of the Great Depression were reaching their worst. The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history. By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states. With their land barren and homes seized in foreclosure, many farm families were forced to leave. Some historians say thath fifteen percent of the people living in the state of Oklahoma moved to California. Migrants also left farms in Kansas, Texas, and New Mexico, but all of these refugees were generally referred to as "Okies". Imagine that you were one of them, one of these Okies. You load everything you own onto a flatbbed truck and drive west with no certain destination, no one waiting to take you in, no one with money to spare for you in these tough times, but plenty of unscrupulous orchard owners wanting to pay you pennies a day to pick their crops and then take them back for rent on the shack you were given to live in. If you were one of these American refugees, how would you want to be treated? What kind of people would you hope to find at the end of your journey? There was nothing for you back home, no way to make a living, no food to eat, no way to care for your family. Would you not have been praying to be met with kindness and understanding? In an odd twist of fate, children and grandchildren of those refugee Okies are now legislating against the migrant laborers who flood California today. How are you and I treating those today who are fleeing hopeless poverty in other jobless, barren lands? “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

The young couple spotted a lonely college student lingering after church, obviously hungry for some human companionship. All they had waiting at home for lunch were two small pork chops. But they took the student home anyway and one engaged her in conversation in the den while the other carefully cut the meat off the two pork chops and divided it into three portions. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” At the peak of traffic hour she sat on a side street for half an hour waiting for someone in the constant line of cars to let her out. They needed to get home, but so did she. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” It was a hectic day at work and she was feeling the mounting frustration of knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to get through the got-to-do items on her desk. And then he came in with tears in his eyes and that I-need-to-talk look on his face. What should she do? “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Mother Teresa, or as she is now called on her progress toward sainthood Blessed Teresa, was fond of repeating that the greatest poverty is to be unwanted, to have no one to take care of you. But if we strive to live by this golden rule spoken by Jesus, then our communities and our nations will be full of saints. If we strive to live by this golden rule spoken by Jesus, then we, God’s saints, will be full of holiness. Just simply by treating others as if they were us. A simple formula for sainthood.