Sermon: 5 November 2023 Christ Church St LuciaText: Matthew 5.1-12Theme: For all the Saints Let us pray:
O Gracious God, take my lips and speak through them; take our minds and think through them; take our hearts and set them on fire for your Kingdom’s sake. Amen.
Today the church celebrates All Saints Day. If you ask the average Christian what that means, they will probably tell you that we remember and honour holy and extraordinary people who have gone before us — most likely leaving behind them a trail of miracles and amazing acts of self-sacrifice, suffering, heroism and the like. At least this is what you would probably hear from members of the Catholic tradition. But this is a narrow definition of sainthood which undermines and excludes what I believe was the original intention of “All Saints." The early church, having survived over 300 years of persecution, wanted to remember and celebrate those Christians who had remained faithful in spite of the fear, the hostility and the very real danger of their witness to Christ. So they allocated a special day to honour all those who had endured and persevered during those violent times. My hunch is that the vast majority of these believers were ordinary folks who were probably scared out of their wits, but hung in there because of their faith. But as the years progressed the former meaning of ‘Saints’ took hold and the church added another day – all Souls – remembered tomorrow to commemorate all ordinary faithful Christians who have departed this life in Christ. But I want us to focus on what I believe was the original intent of this day and in that sense, being a “saint” has nothing to do with being special or holy or different. It was, and is, about being faithful — no matter what.
Today I want to remember an American woman, Dorothy Day (1897-1980). She wouldn’t like the title saint. Indeed she publicly attacked one flatterer saying, “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”
But if the word is to have any contemporary meaning for us, Dorothy Day needs to wear the title. Like many saints, hers is a story of conversion and transformation. Her early adult life was so wild that the church hierarchy never ceased to view her without suspicion. As Dorothy herself said, “the bottle always smells of the liquor it once held.” She was first a communist, a bohemian of the hard living Marxist set of Greenwich Village, and a militantly radical journalist. Her first stint in prison came after being arrested in a feminist demonstration in front of the White House. She was the common-law wife of an anarchist and mother of a daughter out of wedlock. Such a genesis would be regarded as colourful even today… but looking at her from the perspective of conservative mainstream church life of the 1920’s, this is shocking stuff. With the gift of hindsight, we might recognise this as promising raw material for a life of special faith, but in her own time this was not the expected trajectory for Dorothy Day. Conversion came to her in 1927 with pregnancy and the birth of daughter, Tamar. Dorothy was intoxicated with the mystery of life that she felt surging within and around her. She wrote, “How can there be no God, when there are all these beautiful things?” And to the horror of her friends she became not only a Christian, but a Roman Catholic!
Five years later in 1932, as a freelance journalist for a Catholic journal, she was covering a depression-era ‘hunger march’ in Washington, watching line after line of starving men parade past heavily armed police. She was struck with shame that the march was led by Communists not by Christians. She realised that no matter how spiritually fulfilling the church had become for her, it offered her no vehicle to respond to injustice and suffering. She went straight from the march to the nearby Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and in tears of anguish, prayed... that a way would open for her, to use what talent she possessed, for her fellow workers and the poor. Such prayers are dangerous. When she returned to her apartment, standing outside the door was a wild, dishevelled, wandering catholic scholar from France called Peter Maurin.
He’d read some of her articles and was convinced she was the one to fulfil his dream… for a newspaper of radical catholic compassion and justice.
The first issue emerged 5 months later, under the banner, The Catholic Worker. A sudden insight, a prayer and an unexpected visit, launched Dorothy Day’s career of public sanctity. It can be boring to catalogue the achievements of any person, but a little needs to be said to give a picture of one of the most inspirational Christian social movements of the 20th century. What began as a newspaper dedicated to building a just society, quickly became a movement. The Catholic Worker movement founded a series of houses of hospitality in the poorest neighbourhoods of the USA, places of welcome and sustenance for thousands. It established a chain of farms, havens where the destitute could make a new start… communities they hoped would be the seeds of a new society. Members of the movement practised voluntary poverty after the model of Jesus, a radical simplicity based on sharing whatever one had with the poor. And it was one of the few unrelenting voices for Christian pacifism during many decades of war, pioneering our current tradition of Christian non-violent protest and resistance.
As 21st century Australians, we are generally unaware of the influence of the Catholic Worker movement, but Jim Forest calls it “one of the main vehicles of God’s presence in recent history”. Indeed without Dorothy Day, “it is unlikely that contemporary Christianity would be dotted with so many occasions of hope, so many communities dedicated to the works of mercy and peace, (or) as many lives ... centred on the simplicity, poverty and vulnerability of Jesus.” The movement was built through the sacrifice of many ordinary Christians, who were prepared to work and suffer privation and persecution for the gospel — but the inspiration at the movement’s heart was the unlikely saint, Dorothy Day.
We tell stories of saints like Dorothy Day for inspiration — to encourage us to be faithful to our vocation, to give us a nudge along our own journey. Certainly, as a young man I found them so.
But in my late 20’s, I began to find them having an opposite effect. I have always felt that God has called me to do something with my life, to offer my life in service for others. And for too much of my life, I’ve felt like a failure in response to what is asked. The stories of the saints seemed to only heighten my personal disappointment. The Beatitudes of Jesus can have a similar effect. They can be seen as yet another list of things we should be — humble, meek, merciful, pure, peaceful, aflame for justice, willing to be persecuted — another catalogue of where we fall short. But in recent years I’ve come to see something new. That rather than us being failures, rejects beyond hope of any usefulness, we are actually works-in progress. Rather than getting obsessed with personal disappointment, I’ve been encouraged to concentrate on the wonder of God’s work within. All of these saintly qualities are mysteriously forming, by the grace of God, within us. As the writer of 1 John says, “Beloved we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. (But) what we do know is this: ... we will be like God.” (3.2)
The story of Dorothy Day is the story of a woman who says ‘yes’ to God. This personal response, this courageous personal choice, can never be ignored. This, however, is even more a story of the mysterious work of God… not only in her, but within each one of us. Dorothy Day ended her autobiography with these words:
“We were just sitting there talking when Peter Maurin came in. We were just sitting there talking when lines of people began to form, saying, ‘We need bread.’ We could not say, ‘Go, be thou filled.’ If there were six small loaves and a few fishes, we had to divide them. There was always bread. We were just sitting there talking and people moved in on us. ... And somehow the walls expanded. We were just sitting there talking and someone said, ‘Let’s all go and live on a farm.’ It was as casual as that, I often think. It just came about. It just happened.”
We are all called to be saints — it’s our common human vocation. We are not called cruelly to an expectation that can never be met. We are not called to a lifetime of futile striving; trying to be someone we are not. Rather we are called to relax into being God’s wonderful works-in-progress.
To say ‘yes’ and ‘thank you’ to God… as beautiful works of goodness are mysteriously brought to life within us. As Dorothy Day says, ‘it just happens’ — ordinary raw material like you and me, is transformed by grace into saints. The Lord be with you