Based on Isaiah 5:5-7, Hebrews 11:39 – 12:2, Luke 12:51-56, Psalm 80
Since the beginning of Christianity, more than 10,000 saints have been recognized/canonized in Roman Catholicism and an unquantified number in the Orthodox churches. You may be doing the math in your heads right now, and yes, that’s about 30 saints for each day of the year. The Protestant revolution moved us away from canonization, and we can probably count on one hand the number of folks who are looked at as saintly. Those would be Martin Luther King Jr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nelson Mandela, Benjamin Tutu, and Gandhi.
Why did the Church decide to consider some people “saintly”? Afterall, didn’t the Apostle Paul write in a couple of his letters that all believers in the Christ are saints? Don’t we refer to elders in our churches who are wise, compassionate, kind and generous as saints? It turns out that the most likely explanation for the 10,000+ canonized saints is that every-day folk need a human standard to model. We all are supposed to model our lives after Jesus and try our best to grow into his mind and heart, but that is setting the bar really high! It is helpful to have folks who believe in Jesus and who have persevered in their faith to inspire and serve as an example.
However, there are some of the saints that I would not want to imitate such as St. Neot who did his daily devotions while neck deep in a well and thus became the patron saint of fish; or St. Simeon the Stylite whose faithful perseverance gift to all of us appears to have been his ability to sit on a pillar for decades at a time. Possibly the most challenging to imitate is Saint Denis of France, patron saint of headaches, who was a bishop who converted pagans to Christianity. This so angered the pagan priests that they cut off his head. The story goes that after his beheading, the body picked up his head and carried it for many miles, while the head preached a sermon. That certainly is faithful perseverance, but difficult to put into practice!
Our scripture readings for today give us some direction and inspiration about how we might cultivate faithful perseverance. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews is detailing the persevering faith of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, David and Samuel in the verses before our reading today. He goes on to tell us that while none of them had easy lives, they all persevered through their deep faith and trust in God. The writer exhorts the persecuted believers to “…run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith….”
Speaking of Jesus, he has a challenging teaching today within this section of Luke which deals with persevering in the face of crisis. Jesus is telling us that he came to bring division, even within families. This we know to be true, and we are in a long line of believers who lived this reality. Jesus is telling us that we must leave behind our old ways of being and understanding in order to embrace his way of seeing and understanding the world and the times. We must faithfully persevere in our following of Jesus, even though this belief is becoming less mainstream with each passing year.
Faithful perseverance is on full display in the reading from Isaiah. The prophet speaks the judgement of God on the chosen people. God has tended to them ever since the exodus from Egypt – just like a vineyard owner faithfully tends and protects his vines from all dangers. Now, says the LORD, those protections will be removed, and the vineyard will be destroyed. God’s people Israel will know hard times and exile both from the land God gave them and from God’s presence. In the face of this self-induced calamity, they will have to recover their faith and return to God – who will be waiting for their return.
In order for the people of the 10 Tribes to return to God following their destruction and removal by the Assyrians, they will need to recapture the faithful perseverance of the Patriarchs. They will need to hear those stories told and tell those same stories to the generations that would follow them. They would need to celebrate the festivals, especially the festival of the Passover. Some of us have been watching Season 5 of “The Chosen” in our bible study time. It is Holy Week in this season and Jesus is leading the seder dinner. Part of the seder liturgy is singing the Dayenu also known as “It Is Enough”. This song tells of the faithfulness of God and God’s amazing grace.
The Dayenu can help all Judeo-Christian believers remember the great acts of God’s love and mercy and to use those stories to persevere in the faith in God in spite of whatever is happening in the world around us. Here are excerpts from the Dayenu: “If God [He] had taken us out of Egypt and not made judgements on them; [it would have been] enough for us. If God [He] had made judgments on them and had not made [them] on their gods; [it would have been] enough for us…If God [He] had given us their money and had not split the Sea for us; [it would have been] enough for us. If God [He] had split the Sea for us and had not taken us through it on dry land; [it would have been] enough for us…If God [He] had supplied our needs in the wilderness for forty years and had not fed us the manna; [it would have been] enough for us. If God [He] had fed us the manna and had not given us the Shabbat; [it would have been] enough for us… If God [He] had given us the Torah and had not brought us into the land of Israel; [it would have been] enough for us. If God [He] had brought us into the land of Israel and had not built us the ‘Chosen House’ [the Temple; it would have been] enough for us.
Retelling God’s great acts of love as described in the Bible help us to remain faithful, as do the stories of those who some branches of Christianity call saints. Saints like 16th-century Roman Catholic reformer Bartolomé de la Casas, whose antislavery activism in the New World echoed Jesus’ pronouncement, “if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.” Female saints such as Perpetua and Felicity, the third century North African martyrs who defied a death-loving culture, help us to understand that faithful perseverance is not just the purview of men. Importantly, the imprisoned Perpetua recounts her pagan father’s pleading with her to recant her Christian faith. She asks him, “Do you see - for example - this vessel lying here as a little pitcher or as something else?” “I see it as a little pitcher,” he replies. “Can it be called by any other name than what it is?” she asks. He says no. “Nor can I call myself anything else than what I am,” she concludes, “a Christian.”
We don’t know such persecution and oppression due to our religious beliefs in the U.S. However, there are many Christians around the world who are persecuted for their faith – along with our Jewish brothers and sisters. Because of this we often take our faith for granted, we can be intentional about it or not and it doesn’t seemingly affect our daily lives. Yet Jesus calls to us from our Gospel reading today to be aware of what is happening in the world around us and how the world needs our faithful perseverance. Many have fallen away from organized religion over the last three generations – many have never heard the good news of Jesus nor the mighty acts of God. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to share the good news and to tell the stories of how God is active in our lives and world.
In order to practice faithful perseverance, we need to have an understanding of how our spiritual ancestors persevered in their time. We need to remember the example of those every-day saints in our own lives who shared their stories and helped build our faith. Even though we are Protestants and don’t pray to the saints of the Roman Catholic Church, we can read the stories of Christian saints to learn from them how to live out our faith. This knowledge might just inspire us to put in the time and effort required to build our relationship with God and with our neighbors – to put our faith into action in ways that build up our neighbors and bring the kingdom of God a little closer to our world. To be models of faithful perseverance in our day for those who will follow. May God make it so, amen!