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This morning I want to tell you about Saint George. I don't mean George the ancient patron of England, who is said to have slayed dragons. I mean George, the one whose poetry has become the text of many an Anglican hymn. This George - George Herbert (1593-1633) - was born into an aristocratic family in England in the late sixteenth century and was blessed with abundant opportunities for worldly advancement. Instead, declining the power and influence of the king's court that could have been his, Herbert chose to live as a country parish priest and poet. He sought merely to live a life that would, in its ordinariness and simplicity, and even in his own sinfulness, point people toward God. And by all accounts, that is what he did. "Thus he lived and thus he died," wrote his biographer, Isaac Walton - George Herbert, a man "unspotted of the world, full of the deeds of almsgiving, full of humility, and of all the examples of a virtuous life." The texts of four hymns in our present hymnal are George Herbert poems, and among his other writings is found this advice to preachers: "The parson exceeds not an hour in preaching, because all ages have thought that a competency, and he that profits not in that time, will less afterwards, the same affection which made him not profit before, making him then weary, and so he grows from not relishing, to loathing." (The Country Parson, chapter 7) Which was Herbert's way of saying what Mark Twain said later, that "few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon." All things share in God's life, Herbert believed. And that's the point of his hymn which we are going to sing later this morning, Hymn #592: Teach me, my God and King,There is no better description of a saint than this. "This is the famous stone that turneth all to gold" - that God touches all things. And a saint is one who, in all things and through all things and behind all things and beneath all things and above all things, sees God. The saints are not the perfect; the saints are not the sinless. If the saints were the perfect or the sinless, then Abraham and Moses and David and Peter and Paul and Augustine and Francis and George would not be among them. The primary mark of a saint is not that he or she is utterly virtuous. The primary mark of a saint is that, even in his own sinfulness, a saint is one who points us toward the One who is the source of all things. Saints point us to God. Above all, the saints are not the successful. And when one of our fellow pastors in this city invites us to go to church because church-going people are more successful - because church-goers make more money, for one thing, he promises, and have better sex lives - when he promises stuff like that, he's just blowing smoke. In fact, says Jesus, the saints are anything but the successful. The saints, the blessed, are the poor in spirit, the abject poor, the lowly. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God," says Jesus; it is they to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs. The saints are the meek, the gentle, Jesus adds. The saints are those who mourn, and those who see the injustice in the world and who hunger and thirst for justice, and those who show mercy, and those who are pure in heart, and those who make peace, reconciling brother with brother and sister with sister, and black with white and white with black, and men with women and women with men, and rich with poor and poor with rich, and Palestinian with Israeli, and Christian with Muslim and Jew. The saints are those who are persecuted doing all that for the sake of justice and righteousness. These are the saints, says Jesus, the blessed to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs. Why do we always want to turn it around? Why do we so consistently want to see the saints as heroes, as larger-than-life human beings who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and make something of themselves? Maybe it's because, like the pharisee we talked about last week, we have an inclination toward "practical atheism?" "I can do it myself; I don't need God." But Jesus says that the poor in spirit are the saints precisely because the spiritually poor are those who know they can't do it themselves and need God to help. The poor in spirit, like all the poor, are precisely those who most clearly point us to God. They are blessed because they know their own spiritual poverty, they know they cannot pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, and therefore they know their utter dependence upon God. And that's why they are saints, the blessed. David, the great king of Israel, was, to be sure, a saint while he was leading his army in the service of God. But he was more the saint, more blessed still, when he was on his knees before God confessing his sin against Uriah. Paul the pharisee was, to be sure, a saint while he was teaching Torah in the streets of Jerusalem. But he was more the saint, more blessed still, when he recognized and confessed how deeply his sin of arrogance and self-assurance had scarred and violated God's Church. George Herbert was, to be sure, a saint while he was preaching and teaching, serving his parishes of St. Peter and St. Andrew. But he was more the saint, more blessed still, when he spoke to God about his own flawed inner life: "Death is still working like a mole [in me]," he says, And digs my grave at each remove:Saints are those who, even in their own sinfulness, recognize and confess the source of all virtue and power and life, the "suppl'ing grace" of God. Saints are those who therefore see their own spiritual poverty and need of God. Frederick Buechner puts it this way: "If we didn't already know but were asked to guess the kind of people Jesus would pick out for special commendation, we might be tempted to guess one sort or another of spiritual hero - men and women of impeccable credentials morally, spiritually, humanly, and every which way. If so, we would be wrong. "Maybe those aren't the ones Jesus picked out because he felt they didn't need the shot in the arm his commendation would give them. Maybe - [which is more likely] - they're not the ones he picked out because he didn't happen to know any. Be that as it may, it's worth noting the ones he did pick out. "[Jesus picked out for special commendation] not the spiritual giants, but [the ones he cites for us this morning], the 'poor in spirit' as he called them, the ones who spiritually speaking have absolutely nothing to give and absolutely everything to receive, like the Prodigal telling his father 'I am not worthy to be called your son' only to discover for the first time all he had in having a father. "[Nor did Jesus pick out for commendation] the champions of faith who can rejoice even in the midst of suffering, but the ones who mourn over their own suffering because they know that for the most part they've brought it down on themselves and over the suffering of others because that's just the way it makes them feel to be in the same room with them. "[Nor did Jesus commend] the strong ones, but the meek ones in the sense of the gentle ones - that is, the ones not like Caspar Milquetoast but like Charlie Chaplin, the little tramp who lets the world walk over him and yet, dapper and undaunted to the end, somehow makes the world more human in the process. "Not the ones who are righteous but the ones who hope they will be someday and in the meantime are well aware that the distance they still have to go is even greater than the distance they've already come." The ones like St. George, and maybe like you and me. "Not the winners of great victories over Evil in the world but the ones [like St. David] who, seeing [evil] also in themselves every time they comb their hair in front of the bathroom mirror, are merciful when they find it in others and maybe that way win the greater victory." The ones like St. David and St. Paul, and maybe like you and me. "Not the totally pure but the 'pure in heart,' to use Jesus' phrase, the ones who may be as shop-worn and clay-footed as the next one but have somehow kept some inner freshness and innocence intact. "Not the ones who have necessarily found peace in its fullness but the ones who, just for that reason, try to bring peace about wherever and however they can - peace with their neighbors and God, peace with themselves. "Jesus saved for the last the ones who side with Heaven even when any fool can see it's the losing side and all you get for your pains is pain. Looking into the faces of his listeners, Jesus speaks to them directly for the first time: 'Blessed are you,' he says. "[And] you can see them look back at him. [You can see them look back at Jesus, trying to take in the meaning of his preposterous words.] They're not what you'd call a high-class crowd - peasants and fisherfolk for the most part, on the shabby side, not all that bright. It doesn't look as if there's a hero among them. They have their jaws set. Their brows are furrowed with concentration," trying to take in the meaning of his preposterous words. Like us. "[You] are blessed when [you] are worked over and cursed out on [my] account, he tells [us]. It's not his hard times to come but [ours] he is concerned with," he tells us, "speaking out of his own meekness and mercy, the purity of his own heart." (Whistling in the Dark, pp. 18-19) These are the saints of God according to Jesus. They are us, that unexceptional crowd on the hillside that day in Galilee and this unexceptional crowd of us here in this church today. The saints are those who, like George Herbert, see God in all the ordinary things of life, especially among the poor, the meek, and the grieving, among the persecuted and those who make peace, and among those who hunger for a justice their neighbor does not enjoy and for a righteousness they themselves do not possess. The saints are those who take God seriously, those who see no salvation from our own poor quarter, but who see the Cross, and who, seeing the Cross, see God there, and who look for that salvation which comes alone from that healing water of Jesus' pierced side, the water of our redemption. All these are the saints, says Buechner, because Jesus said it first. So St. George gets the final word on All Saints' Day this year, as is fitting, in this fine reflection on Holy Baptism: As he that sees a dark and shady grove,Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom," pleads the saint from the cross by Jesus' side. It is St. George's only plea, and ours as well. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |