Isaiah 25:6-9
Revelation 21:1-6

The day after Halloween on the Christian calendar is All Saints Day.  So, are you feeling saintly today?  My guess is that the majority of people have a secular definition of what a saint is.  And the definition is that a saint is someone who does unusually good, kind deeds, the type of deeds that the ordinary, regular person like you and me would not do.  Along this same line of thinking a saint may be someone who seems to manage a difficult relationship with uncommon grace and acceptance.  An example would be like what Tom said about Jim, “If anyone has a front seat in heaven, it’ll be Jim for putting up with Helen.”  That’s a secular definition and example of saint. 

That is not the biblical understanding of saint.  The word saint as it is used in the Bible identifies a person who is set apart by God to carry on God’s work in the world.  A saint is a person who does God’s work in the world. That means you and you and you and me.  I suspect we prefer the secular definition of saint because that will relieve us of responsibility and accountability.  The biblical definition of saint means that ordinary, common, every day people like you and me have been set apart as partners with God because God has invited us into a faith relationship and we have said, “Yes.”  We have accepted God’s invitation. 

To be a saint we need to think like a saint.  Saintly thinking causes us to look at the world and see the world differently than is the accepted cultural thinking.  Saintly thinking is the kind of thinking that Jesus did that led to paradoxical conclusions like the last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Or like the statement Jesus made when he observed a defenseless, poverty-stricken woman putting two mites, the smallest monetary denomination in that culture, in the offering plate and he said, “She has given more than all the rest combined.”  That’s saintly, paradoxical thinking.  Some people call it crazy because it is so contrary to conventional wisdom but from Jesus’ perspective it is the conventional wisdom that is crazy and it is his paradoxical thinking that is wisdom. 

Saints are congruent people, people of integrity.  They are people who are outwardly what they are inwardly.  The opposite of saintliness is hypocrisy. Saints are people seeking to serve God in the world.  Saints are ordinary people who do extraordinary things because of their care for and interest in others, desiring the very best for others.  Think of a person who has been a saint to you, a saint in your life.  And also think about to whom have you been an ordinary saint.
Now let us focus on how we can learn from saints and how we can be saints.  Saintly action and activity involve remembering and foregoing and marching.

A sign on the Winchester cathedral in England says, as you enter the church, “You are entering a conversation that began long before you were born and will continue long after you’re dead.”  To be a Christian partly means that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, morally speaking.  We don’t have to make up this faith as we go.  The saints will teach us, those who have lived faithful lives for God in our midst or in generations ahead of us. Let’s listen and learn from them.  And for modern, North American people, it takes a kind of studied act of humility to think that we actually have something to learn from the saints.

Eli Wiesel stood before the Holocaust Museum, the horror of Buchenwald and Auschwitz, and said, “Remember, Remember, Remember.”  Elsewhere Wiesel wrote, “Salvation can be found only in memory” (From Kingdom to Memory). I think what he means is that if we forget, we are apt to repeat the mistakes of the past.  This illustrates the adage, “Those who don’t know history are likely to repeat it.”  Memory enables us to learn from our experiences, especially the hard ones, and to grow. *

Why do we have a day designated as All Saints Day?  The value of All Saints Day is a designated time to remember the saints, our indebtedness to them.  We remember, and in remembering say thanks to those whose gifts have made us who we are.  Most of our memories of the dear departed are happy.

But what do we do with the burden of horrible memory?  In so many parts of the world—like former Yugoslavia, in Northern Ireland, in South Africa, in many areas of the south in this country, and many other places—memory is the major engine that keeps the cycle of retribution going.  Memory of injustice breeds further injustice. 

There is great danger in forgetting past evil and injustice.  The Allied Occupation Forces in Germany after World War II forbade the Germans from erecting great monuments to the German dead after the war.  They wanted no dear memories of Germany’s past.  But the Allies did insist that some of the horrible concentration camps be preserved as physical reminders of the great evil done there.  Perhaps the issue is not whether we remember or forget, but what sort of remembering we do.

A call for forgetfulness might be a summons to smooth over wounds lightly, to act as if the injustice did not matter.  But remembering may not be helpful and may not be moral either.  If remembering only dredges up the painful past it will insure that we do not get beyond it.

Remembering is a complex phenomenon.  Our memories are selective.  We can’t remember everything.  The older we get the more there is to remember.  We are confronted with new data every day.  It seems like we have to forget some things every day in order to store the host of new and different ideas that come to us each day.  At least that’s my excuse for forgetting so many things. So often when we remember certain things, we forget others.  Often we remember the injustice someone does to us, and with the strong memory of the injustice it is not surprising that we forget the good things we have received from the very same person. 

When some very hurtful and inaccurate things have been said about me, I have at times had difficulty remembering many of the positive experiences I have had.  To remember is not to dispose of our past, but rather selectively to reconstruct it.  So the issue is not if we shall remember, but what shall we remember.  We can’t remember everything.  Hatred tends to dwell on certain painful aspects of the past, while denying other, brighter days. 

When I lovingly nurture the memory of an evil that has been done to me, I impose a story upon the life of my transgressor.  If my transgressor now behaves toward me in the future in a positive way, eventually my memory of her evil may recede into the background.  But then, on the first occasion in which she does some wrong toward me, the remembrance of that transgression springs into my consciousness in bold letters.  I say to myself, “Oh yes, this is typical of her, just the sort of thing I might expect.  She did a similar thing to me ten years ago!”

By this remembering, I am not only locking my transgressor in the past, but myself as well.  This is the cruel side of my lovingly nurtured memory.  When the past is vividly remembered, it is not the past, but the present.  A remembered wound is still a painful wound. 

You’ve heard it said, perhaps you have said it, “Time heals.”  I tell you it is not so.  Time does nothing but pass.  What we do in the passing of time may lead to healing or may lead to keeping the wounds open and bleeding. 

It is impossible for some evildoers to be reconciled, as long as there is vivid recollection, total recall, and photographic memory.  Likewise, it is impossible for wounds to heal and for us to go forward without the grace of foregoing our right to seek retribution.
           

Miroslav Volf has written, “No final reconciliation will take place without the redemption of the past, and the redemption of the past is unthinkable without forgetting.  Indeed, only those who are willing ultimately to forget will be capable of remembering rightly.”

I know the conventional wisdom that instructs, “Forgive and forget.”  However, I don’t know how that is possible unless the person suffers from amnesia.  I think the word that better describes what is needed and what is helpful to all concerned is, “Forgive and forego.”  A part of the process of forgiving is foregoing the right to retaliate or the right to seek retribution. 

After we have forgiven our enemies, after we have turned away from our seething hatred that devours from the inside, there is still one last, long step to be taken before there is reconciliation.  Somehow we must forego the right to retaliate.  All the stars may line up in our favor to justify our right to retribution.  Foregoing that right enables us to move forward in life.  Grasping for retaliation or retribution, even when justified, locks us in the past.

We say we don’t want to forget until injustice has been undone.  We don’t want injustice merely swept under the carpet.  Elie Wiesel must mean this when he speaks of our determination to remember the Holocaust as a moral act.  Injustice must not be swept away through thoughtless amnesia.

But the accomplishment of justice in this life is no easy matter.  One of the most misnamed places in many towns is the Criminal Justice Center.  It is a euphemism for jail.  The name—Criminal Justice Center—implies that within these walls justice is being done.  Those who committed injustice may be punished and incarcerated there but is that justice?

Somehow the past, the painful past, has to be redeemed.  We cannot go back and erase the past.  As Thomas Aquinas said, even God “cannot make the past not to have been.”

The prophets of old constantly ask God to “remember.” “Remember, O Lord, what you said to our ancestors, how you promised to . . .”

There is something else God must do, and God does. God forgoes the right to require us to pay retribution for our sins. God does not forget us. God forgives and forgoes.   

If you have ever had a crime committed against you, and that person was apprehended, convicted, and sent to jail, did you really feel that justice had been done?  I doubt it.           

I heard of a well-known judge who declared—at a conference on Christians and the legal profession—“Justice is probably too much to ask of our courts.  We can get you some financial remuneration.  We can get you a little punishment or a lot, but we probably will not be able to deliver anything close to justice.  The American public is asking more of our court system than it was ever designed to do.”            

Sometimes the only way to defeat injustice is to forego the right of retaliation and retribution.  And what happens when we forego the right of retaliation and retribution?  We start marching. 

In my mind Louis Armstrong and New Orleans popularized “When the Saints Go Marching In” like no one else and no other place could.  However, rather than focusing on when the saints go marching in, we need to focus on when the saints go marching.  When saints go marching, resistance goes up. When saints go marching, some people get angry.  When saints go marching, false accusations abound.  When saints go marching, troubling waters are stirred. When saints go marching, storm clouds gather.

There is another set of results when saints go marching.  When saints go marching, barriers come down.  When saints go marching, the hungry are fed. When saints go marching, children are provided health care.  When saints go marching, wars cease.  When saints go marching, those in the prisons of prejudice, hatred, and poverty are set free.  Why aren’t the hungry fed?  Because saints aren’t marching.  Why are we still stuck in a war in Iraq?  Because saints aren’t marching.  Why are there hate crimes?  Because saints aren’t marching.  Why are people trapped in poverty?  Because saints aren’t marching.

Am I naïve?  Am I foolish?  Am I crazy to think if a few saints started marching that all the ills of the world will be cured?  No, I’m not crazy or foolish or naïve to think this.  I know that if a few saints start marching, even with great resistance some things will begin to change for the better.  There is enough food produced in the world right now to eradicate hunger.  We are simply doing a horrible job of distribution.  There are people from this congregation who regularly serve food at the Good News Community Kitchen.  We need to keep doing that and while some saints are marching to do that we need to be marching to Chicago and Springfield and Washington and ask, “Why is there a Good News Community Kitchen?  Why does it exist?  Why does it continue to exist?  What are we going to do so there is no longer a need for Good News Community Kitchen?  We need some saints marching to close down Good News Community Kitchen because systemic causes that make it necessary have been removed. Come on all you saints of Glenview.  Start marching. It’s time to start marching, marching to feed the hungry, marching to free those imprisoned, marching for justice, marching for peace.  It’s time to start marching.  It’s the saintly thing to do.

*Material in the center of this sermon from Pulpit Resource, October, November, December 2006, p. 26 ff.