Allowing Your Sainthood To Surface
Sermon
Uplifting Christ Through Autumn
Sermons for the Fall Season
Object:
Today we celebrate All Saints -- historically a major festival in the church year -- celebrated internationally, and across denominational boundaries. It is a victory party for those who share in resurrection eternity.
For example, today's reading poetically portrays the total picture. It is from the closing chapters of the book of Revelation to John. The author was one of the leaders, a pastor, of a number of churches in Asia Minor (in Turkey) at the close of the first century A.D.
These churches were under intense persecution from the authorities of the Roman Empire. It was the first really major, across the board, organized persecution from Rome that had a severe impact on most Christian fellowships. Domitian was the emperor, and supposedly to unify his regional governors, he enforced the cult of emperor worship.
All citizens and inhabitants had to publicly worship and be officially recorded offering a sacrifice to the emperor.
The governors in Turkey, more so than anywhere else, strictly enforced the decree. Most people could live with the requirement and viewed the requirement as just another bureaucratic inconvenience like an additional sales tax.
Some considered it a civic responsibility like jury duty -- nothing more. After all, one could still officially sacrifice to the emperor with a smirk, a sarcastic reverence, and then go home and worship the gods of one's own choice.
But Christians saw the demand as a matter of faith and conscience. There is but one God -- defined and revealed by the Christ. To play the game of emperor worship would be apostasy and idolatry, hypocrisy and heresy -- it would be selling out one's soul.
For that position of faith, the Christians in Asia Minor at the time of Domitian paid the price in confiscated goods, lost jobs, physical abuse, banishment, separation of family members, and even execution.
The author of Revelation (the church leader John) for example, was banished to a prison island in the Aegean. It was there on Patmos that he told his poetic, sweeping vision of time and history.
History, for John, is a theatrical drama -- and the entire world is a stage -- or at least the entire world that he knew, which was the Roman Empire. In the script, the church was in mortal combat against the pagan political powers of the time -- Domitian and Rome.
Behind the drama and interaction of these characters was yet another drama -- the real drama. Heaven and hell are in action. It is cosmic war between Satan and God.
The characters have been transformed, altered. Rome is Satan. The Emperor Domitian is the beast, the dragon (and probably many of the other fantastic images used by John). The faithful Christian believers, the saints, and the church, the bride of the Lamb -- these are seemingly overpowered by the muscle, the throw-weight, the military supremacy of Rome.
But the saints, according to the script, according to John's big picture, will be ultimately victorious because the saint is in union with God through Christ the Lamb. The apparently helpless sacrificial Lamb is victorious over the powerful jaws of the dragon because the Lamb is of the eternal God. After the final, conclusive defeat of evil, the martyred saints will be (according to John's revelation) in union, in eternal fellowship with God.
Today's reading is the very poetic vision of that end time. It is a neat attempt, I think, to describe that which cannot be described -- personal union with God beyond our dimensions; a heaven; a place; a spaceless location where the saints are united; a place of light containing no darkness of separation; a total movement in a state of love; the faithful ones in eternal fellowship with God.
Quite frankly, some don't think the book of Revelation holds a lot of new insights into God or into the future for that matter.
The symbolic language and sacred numbers and formulas that riddle the book speak to and about the first and second century, but the big picture of good and evil and the ultimate victory of God and the reunion of the saints, as poetically painted by John, is right on target and a glorious vision for celebration on All Saints or any day.
But let's now attempt to draw ourselves into the picture. A campus pastor asked students in a discussion class the question, "What is a saint?"
And there seemed to be a consensus on two characteristics.
First, a saint was one who has a firm belief in God, one who has a faith relationship with God through Christ. Other people can see God's will reflected through the words and actions of these individuals.
The second criterion for a saint, mentioned by most of the group, was that the saint is one who suffers persecution for the faith.
That dual description fits in with the origin of the day. In the year 609, the pantheon in Rome was decreed a Christian church, remodeled and dedicated to Saint Mary and all martyrs.
In the year 741, on November 10, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in old St. Peter's basilica in Rome to "all the saints." In 835, Pope Gregory IV made November 1, All Saints' Day in the Western church. The grip of Domitian was broken, though, of course, none in their right mind would call this new time of civil support for the church the luminous heaven described by John, but a day was set aside to commemorate the martyred saints.
He asked the students in the group to name some saints. They came up with a parade of first-century characters -- gospel writers, disciples, and a few names from those first few centuries in the life of the church, like Saint Francis. Then at least one person named some saints much closer to us in time, Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King, Jr.
They began to wonder if they knew any saints personally. Look again at the criteria they had set: those living their faith in Jesus Christ -- those persecuted for their Christian lifestyle.
One way to perhaps grasp hold of this concept of saint and have some real ownership of it would be to pick a saint and examine her life or his life, then see what makes her/him tick. Or because I like doing things a little differently, reverse the process, and pick a character that is or was definitely not a saint and examine the components of that life to help us discover clues as to what constitutes a saintly life or a demonic life.
Perhaps the best non-saint to dissect is that character which the author of Revelation singled out to be the personification of the devil -- Domitian -- the beast, the dragon, the anti-Christ -- Titus Flavius Domitianus, son of Vespasian, successor of his older brother, Titus. His last years were known as a reign of terror. He combined suspicion and pride into a deadly combination, killing off potential challengers.
He filled the capitol with statues of himself, announced the divinity of his father, his brother, his wife and sisters, as well as his own divinity. He required officials to speak of him as Dominus et Deus noster -- our Lord and our God. All citizens were to worship him. Uncompromising Christians were severely punished. Domitian went mad out of suspicion and hate. His wife and a handful of servants stabbed him to death at the age of 45, in the fifteenth year of his reign, in 96 A.D., the beast, the dragon -- Domitian.
Look deeper into the record with me. In one book, it was curiously noted that Domitian was efficient in making major reforms in morals and religion. Knowing that historians are often far from objective, particularly imperial historians, I dug a little deeper into the life and the times of Domitian.
I found that the devil had another side. As a young ruler, in his first decade, Domitian was surprisingly competent and just. He enforced the Julian laws against adultery, tried to put an end to child prostitution, forbade indecent public theatrical (pantomime) performances, put an end to the practice of castration, which had spread, with the rising price of eunuch slaves. He refused bribes and he honestly attempted to reduce graft in his government.
The Christian community would have supported him in all these acts of justice, but as the years went by, the pressures of the job, the threats, the temptations, the confusion of his childhood, his deadly marriage, the power, and the dark side of his human personality began to regularly surface, dominate, and take control, even to the point of him proclaiming himself as the power of life -- as God.
Domitian was all too human, because he gave up his humanity. Though made in the image of God, he tried to reconstruct himself in his own image separate from God. It was this part of Domitian that was used by John as a picture of pure evil.
As Christians, we all have a bit of sainthood in us and a bit of Domitian. A saint is a person who has been intersected by Christ, grasped by God, and who allows God's love to take the form of personal action, love in action, which the saint knows is grounded in the authority of God.
I think that traditionally on All Saints' Day we have tended to look too deeply into the past to find our saints or perhaps have looked too far away from home. Today I would like us to look within.
A saint is one who has been intersected by Christ and is in a faith relationship, which perhaps we cannot define or pin down, but a faith exists despite our doubts. That probably describes you!
A saint is one in which God's will is obvious in one's actions. When you allow the love of God to surface in your life, in your interaction with others, you are meeting the qualifications of a saint.
Those actions, by nature, will often flow against popular opinion, peer pressure, accepted behavior, and the prudent man economic theory. Those actions flow against persecution in many subtle, and not so subtle forms, and will drive you into the last category of sainthood -- one who is persecuted for the faith.
But before we get too satisfied with ourselves, let's put all this into perspective, because I know you and I know myself all too well, and there is also a lot of Domitian in us all. We are a most glorious and motley mix of saint and sinner -- children of God; halo and cloven feet but always under the umbrella of God's love and grace, and in need of his gift of bread and wine.
We are called to allow our sainthood to dominate our lives -- to allow our sainthood to break the surface of our relationships in loving interaction more times than not.
In other words, All Saints is our day -- a day to celebrate and share with Christians past and present. It is a day where no boundaries are valid. It is resurrection now. Time, space, racial, cultural, regional, and economic distinctions hold no power. All Saints is a Christian claim that in communion today around the world, we have a taste of that luminous new city of God proclaimed by the author of the book of Revelation -- Christians together called to allow our sainthood to surface.
It is All Saints' Day -- our day. Amen.
For example, today's reading poetically portrays the total picture. It is from the closing chapters of the book of Revelation to John. The author was one of the leaders, a pastor, of a number of churches in Asia Minor (in Turkey) at the close of the first century A.D.
These churches were under intense persecution from the authorities of the Roman Empire. It was the first really major, across the board, organized persecution from Rome that had a severe impact on most Christian fellowships. Domitian was the emperor, and supposedly to unify his regional governors, he enforced the cult of emperor worship.
All citizens and inhabitants had to publicly worship and be officially recorded offering a sacrifice to the emperor.
The governors in Turkey, more so than anywhere else, strictly enforced the decree. Most people could live with the requirement and viewed the requirement as just another bureaucratic inconvenience like an additional sales tax.
Some considered it a civic responsibility like jury duty -- nothing more. After all, one could still officially sacrifice to the emperor with a smirk, a sarcastic reverence, and then go home and worship the gods of one's own choice.
But Christians saw the demand as a matter of faith and conscience. There is but one God -- defined and revealed by the Christ. To play the game of emperor worship would be apostasy and idolatry, hypocrisy and heresy -- it would be selling out one's soul.
For that position of faith, the Christians in Asia Minor at the time of Domitian paid the price in confiscated goods, lost jobs, physical abuse, banishment, separation of family members, and even execution.
The author of Revelation (the church leader John) for example, was banished to a prison island in the Aegean. It was there on Patmos that he told his poetic, sweeping vision of time and history.
History, for John, is a theatrical drama -- and the entire world is a stage -- or at least the entire world that he knew, which was the Roman Empire. In the script, the church was in mortal combat against the pagan political powers of the time -- Domitian and Rome.
Behind the drama and interaction of these characters was yet another drama -- the real drama. Heaven and hell are in action. It is cosmic war between Satan and God.
The characters have been transformed, altered. Rome is Satan. The Emperor Domitian is the beast, the dragon (and probably many of the other fantastic images used by John). The faithful Christian believers, the saints, and the church, the bride of the Lamb -- these are seemingly overpowered by the muscle, the throw-weight, the military supremacy of Rome.
But the saints, according to the script, according to John's big picture, will be ultimately victorious because the saint is in union with God through Christ the Lamb. The apparently helpless sacrificial Lamb is victorious over the powerful jaws of the dragon because the Lamb is of the eternal God. After the final, conclusive defeat of evil, the martyred saints will be (according to John's revelation) in union, in eternal fellowship with God.
Today's reading is the very poetic vision of that end time. It is a neat attempt, I think, to describe that which cannot be described -- personal union with God beyond our dimensions; a heaven; a place; a spaceless location where the saints are united; a place of light containing no darkness of separation; a total movement in a state of love; the faithful ones in eternal fellowship with God.
Quite frankly, some don't think the book of Revelation holds a lot of new insights into God or into the future for that matter.
The symbolic language and sacred numbers and formulas that riddle the book speak to and about the first and second century, but the big picture of good and evil and the ultimate victory of God and the reunion of the saints, as poetically painted by John, is right on target and a glorious vision for celebration on All Saints or any day.
But let's now attempt to draw ourselves into the picture. A campus pastor asked students in a discussion class the question, "What is a saint?"
And there seemed to be a consensus on two characteristics.
First, a saint was one who has a firm belief in God, one who has a faith relationship with God through Christ. Other people can see God's will reflected through the words and actions of these individuals.
The second criterion for a saint, mentioned by most of the group, was that the saint is one who suffers persecution for the faith.
That dual description fits in with the origin of the day. In the year 609, the pantheon in Rome was decreed a Christian church, remodeled and dedicated to Saint Mary and all martyrs.
In the year 741, on November 10, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in old St. Peter's basilica in Rome to "all the saints." In 835, Pope Gregory IV made November 1, All Saints' Day in the Western church. The grip of Domitian was broken, though, of course, none in their right mind would call this new time of civil support for the church the luminous heaven described by John, but a day was set aside to commemorate the martyred saints.
He asked the students in the group to name some saints. They came up with a parade of first-century characters -- gospel writers, disciples, and a few names from those first few centuries in the life of the church, like Saint Francis. Then at least one person named some saints much closer to us in time, Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King, Jr.
They began to wonder if they knew any saints personally. Look again at the criteria they had set: those living their faith in Jesus Christ -- those persecuted for their Christian lifestyle.
One way to perhaps grasp hold of this concept of saint and have some real ownership of it would be to pick a saint and examine her life or his life, then see what makes her/him tick. Or because I like doing things a little differently, reverse the process, and pick a character that is or was definitely not a saint and examine the components of that life to help us discover clues as to what constitutes a saintly life or a demonic life.
Perhaps the best non-saint to dissect is that character which the author of Revelation singled out to be the personification of the devil -- Domitian -- the beast, the dragon, the anti-Christ -- Titus Flavius Domitianus, son of Vespasian, successor of his older brother, Titus. His last years were known as a reign of terror. He combined suspicion and pride into a deadly combination, killing off potential challengers.
He filled the capitol with statues of himself, announced the divinity of his father, his brother, his wife and sisters, as well as his own divinity. He required officials to speak of him as Dominus et Deus noster -- our Lord and our God. All citizens were to worship him. Uncompromising Christians were severely punished. Domitian went mad out of suspicion and hate. His wife and a handful of servants stabbed him to death at the age of 45, in the fifteenth year of his reign, in 96 A.D., the beast, the dragon -- Domitian.
Look deeper into the record with me. In one book, it was curiously noted that Domitian was efficient in making major reforms in morals and religion. Knowing that historians are often far from objective, particularly imperial historians, I dug a little deeper into the life and the times of Domitian.
I found that the devil had another side. As a young ruler, in his first decade, Domitian was surprisingly competent and just. He enforced the Julian laws against adultery, tried to put an end to child prostitution, forbade indecent public theatrical (pantomime) performances, put an end to the practice of castration, which had spread, with the rising price of eunuch slaves. He refused bribes and he honestly attempted to reduce graft in his government.
The Christian community would have supported him in all these acts of justice, but as the years went by, the pressures of the job, the threats, the temptations, the confusion of his childhood, his deadly marriage, the power, and the dark side of his human personality began to regularly surface, dominate, and take control, even to the point of him proclaiming himself as the power of life -- as God.
Domitian was all too human, because he gave up his humanity. Though made in the image of God, he tried to reconstruct himself in his own image separate from God. It was this part of Domitian that was used by John as a picture of pure evil.
As Christians, we all have a bit of sainthood in us and a bit of Domitian. A saint is a person who has been intersected by Christ, grasped by God, and who allows God's love to take the form of personal action, love in action, which the saint knows is grounded in the authority of God.
I think that traditionally on All Saints' Day we have tended to look too deeply into the past to find our saints or perhaps have looked too far away from home. Today I would like us to look within.
A saint is one who has been intersected by Christ and is in a faith relationship, which perhaps we cannot define or pin down, but a faith exists despite our doubts. That probably describes you!
A saint is one in which God's will is obvious in one's actions. When you allow the love of God to surface in your life, in your interaction with others, you are meeting the qualifications of a saint.
Those actions, by nature, will often flow against popular opinion, peer pressure, accepted behavior, and the prudent man economic theory. Those actions flow against persecution in many subtle, and not so subtle forms, and will drive you into the last category of sainthood -- one who is persecuted for the faith.
But before we get too satisfied with ourselves, let's put all this into perspective, because I know you and I know myself all too well, and there is also a lot of Domitian in us all. We are a most glorious and motley mix of saint and sinner -- children of God; halo and cloven feet but always under the umbrella of God's love and grace, and in need of his gift of bread and wine.
We are called to allow our sainthood to dominate our lives -- to allow our sainthood to break the surface of our relationships in loving interaction more times than not.
In other words, All Saints is our day -- a day to celebrate and share with Christians past and present. It is a day where no boundaries are valid. It is resurrection now. Time, space, racial, cultural, regional, and economic distinctions hold no power. All Saints is a Christian claim that in communion today around the world, we have a taste of that luminous new city of God proclaimed by the author of the book of Revelation -- Christians together called to allow our sainthood to surface.
It is All Saints' Day -- our day. Amen.
