Text:
Hebrews 11:32-12:3
All Saints’ Day Ordinary
People, Extraordinary Lives In the name of him who for the joy
set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right
hand of the throne of God, dear friends in Christ: Last week during our worship we celebrated
Reformation Day, so called because it’s the day on which Martin Luther nailed
his famous 95 Theses to the door of the church of the Wittenberg castle. This was the act that ignited the spark that
when fanned into flame by the Holy Spirit caused the Light of the Gospel to
shine more brightly in the Christian Church than it had for centuries. Today we celebrate All Saints’, a day on which
the people of God draw inspiration and encouragement from the lives of those
who have gone before us in Christ and who now rest from their labors in glory
with him. Now, these two celebrations, Reformation and All Saints, we
observe every year at this time (the end of October and first of November). On
the surface, they don’t seem to be very much related; but it turns out that they
are. You see, Luther very deliberately
chose the Eve of All Saints’ as the day to post his incendiary theses against
the sale of indulgences. There were two
reasons for this. First, he knew that
there would be a big crowd of people gathered the next day for the All Saints
observances, and he wanted his theses to get maximum exposure. So part of it was publicity. But an even bigger reason was that he was
opposed to what most of those people would be coming to do in It happened that Luther’s prince and patron of the
university where he taught theology owned one of the most complete and
elaborate collections of relics in
all of But maybe you’re wondering why someone would want any of this stuff. Again, two reasons: one, because people are naturally
superstitious and they thought of relics as sort of holy good luck charms. Some were thought to ward off evil spirits or
disease, for example; others were said to have the power to work mighty
miracles. Now, that sort of nonsense is
bad enough; but even worse from a theological point of view – and why Luther
was so opposed – was the second reason:
it’s what people were instructed to do with the relics. You know that he was against the sale of
indulgences, which were official documents that the Church said cancelled the
penalty of sins. By buying an
indulgence, people were told that they could knock off so much time of their
sentence in Purgatory. Well, another way
to achieve the same result was to venerate the relics of saints. That is, you could stand in front of a relic,
look upon it reverently while contemplating the life of the saint connected to
it, and pray to him or her for intercession.
The idea was that the saint up in heaven would look kindly upon you for
your admiration of their life and sacrifices, and answer your prayer by turning
to Jesus and saying, “A friend of mine needs a favor. Can you reduce his sentence in Purgatory a
bit?” And relics were assigned relative
values depending on what class they were and how close the saint in question
was to the top, so to speak. So, for
example, a genuine lock of hair from Saint Peter, say, would be worth much more
than a splinter of wood from a chair that St. Tobias allegedly sat in
once. And so ten minutes venerating the
former would be worth a huge reduction of time in Purgatory, while the same
time spent venerating the latter, not so much.
And saints could also be called upon for help in their specialty
areas. Now, with all this in mind, what happened on All Saints’ Day
was that Luther’s prince made his magnificent collection of relics available to
the general public. Normally they were
locked up for his personal use – like I said, they were worth a fortune, so
they had to be kept under lock and key; but on All Saints he very generously
opened the doors so that everyone, all his subjects from the highest of nobles
to the lowliest of peasants could, for a
reasonable fee, take advantage of the grace and forgiveness the church
promised to those who would spend a few moments directing their religious
devotion to these trinkets and shriveled human remains. So the whole thing was part carnival sideshow,
part really bad theology, and part taking advantage of people so desperate for
help they’d be willing to look for hope in just about anything. And people from all over the kingdom came
crowding to take advantage of it. It broke Luther’s heart to see people so deceived (as indeed
he himself had once been) by such foolishness.
Having rediscovered for himself several years earlier the simple truth
of the Gospel – the truth that God forgives sin freely for Jesus’ sake on
account of his innocent suffering and death for us – he wanted everyone to
share the joy, peace, and certainty he had come to know in Christ. He also wanted people to know that we have
but one advocate with the
Father, the Lord Jesus, God’s own Son, and that through him we have direct
access to the throne of grace. God hears
and has promised to answer our prayers for Jesus’ sake. We don’t need layers of middlemen giving
their approval. And so in posting his
Ninety-five Theses against indulgences on the Eve of All Saints, Luther was
trying to kill two very bad birds with one stone – or, to be more precise, with
one stroke of his hammer. We, of course, are the spiritual heirs of his work to set
the church back on its proper Christ centered course. And living as we do with the benefit of his
spiritual insights almost five hundred years later, it’s hard for most of us to
imagine what it would be like to grow up with and firmly believe the sort of
superstitions and teachings that were once common in the church. But that isn’t to say they’ve been entirely
eliminated. It pains me to say that
while the worst abuses are not so flagrant or common anymore, at least not in
this country, the basic doctrines in the Roman Church concerning relics, who
the saints are, and what function they now serve hasn’t changed. And even in our own circles there’s still
some confusion. Just this last week I
read about an LCMS pastor who resigned his call and left for the Eastern
Orthodox Church (along with about a third of his congregation) in part because
he thinks we’re wrong for not praying to the saints. Because of this I thought it would be good for
us to spend the time we have left this morning answering some basic questions
like: What is a saint? How does someone become a saint? And what role if any do the saints play in
the lives of believers today? The Roman Church answers these questions by saying that the
saints make up a very small percentage of the total number of Christians. And what they are is the cream of the crop,
so to speak. They are people who led
especially holy and God pleasing lives, and who died or at least suffered
substantially because of their faith; or, if they weren’t persecuted, who at
least performed verifiable miracles.
These miracles could have taken place either before their death, or
after death in response to someone praying to them. And the Roman Church has a fairly involved
process of determining who is or is not a saint that can take anywhere from a
few decades to several centuries to complete.
It begins with reviewing eye witness testimony, collecting stories about
a person’s life, examining alleged miracles to see if they’re genuine, and
other steps which, if everything checks out, may lead to what’s called beatification
– which is kind of like being on deck for sainthood. Then after still more investigations and
deliberations and a long cooling off period, the Pope may eventually canonize
the person, at which time they become a saint of the church. If someone achieves that last step, then they
are by definition someone whose life was so holy and full of good works that he
or she had more merits than sins to their credit at the time of their death, so
they get to skip Purgatory and go directly to heaven. There they join what’s sort of a club of the
super-sanctified who can hear prayers that are addressed to them and relay them
on to the Lord, with whom they carry a lot more weight than regular Christians. In addition to that, the extra credits the
saints earned in life by their good works can be assigned to those who pray to
them. That’s the idea, anyway. And hopefully you recognize some serious
problems with it. But to drive the point
home, I’d like to give you an example of how this kind of understanding can
lead to dangerously unchristian attitudes and behaviors. It’s the true story of Saint Pedro Claver who
lived in You see, what this whole approach
does is make the saints into little versions of the Savior. They become partners with Christ in helping
you get to heaven. That devalues and
denigrates the work of Christ for us on the cross, as if he and his
righteousness were not all we need to stand before God in holy innocence. That, of course is the biggest problem
because it overthrows the very foundation of the Gospel. But beyond that, when the saints
are seen in this way, they’re not really like the rest of us. In life they had something, certain gifts or
powers that we haven’t got; and so they end up being understood as class of
beings between us and God. They are on a
different level than the rest of us. So,
we can admire them, we take advantage of them by asking for their help or
having their good works counted to our credit; but we can’t be like them. How very different is the biblical
understanding of the saints and their role that we heard in today’s Epistle
reading. There’s a scene in the Wizard of
Oz that I’m sure you’re familiar with.
It’s where the four companions are waiting to see the Wizard, and the
Cowardly Lion is explaining the value of courage to them. In the process, he asks a series of questions
like, “What makes the Elephant charge his tusk, in the misty mist and the dusky
dusk? What makes the Muskrat guard his
musk?” His answer is always the same: “Courage!”
You remember the scene? Well it
wraps up with him asking, “What have they got that I haven’t got?” To which his friends immediately reply,
“Courage!” And the Lion responds, “You
can say that again!” In the passage we heard from Hebrews,
the writer is using the same technique as the Lion, but in the opposite
sense. He’s been running down a long
list of Old Testament saints, people like Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Joshua –
the great heroes of the Bible, and he’s been recounting the remarkable stories
of their lives. And at each point he
explains what it was exactly that gave them ability to do the mighty things
they did for the Lord. “By faith” he says over and over
again. “By faith Noah built the ark”,
“by faith Abraham left for the Promised Land and offered up his son, Isaac” and
so on. The section we heard picks up as
he’s wrapping up by naming Gideon, Barak, Samson, and others, who “through
faith conquered kingdoms, shut the mouths of lions, withstood the furnace
flames, routed armies, faced persecution, torture, and death in horrible ways. And how’d they do it? Through faith, that’s how.” The implied question at each point is, “What
did they have that you haven’t got?” And
the answer is, “Nothing. Not one
thing. All they had was their faith,
which is the same thing you’ve got.” His
whole point is that these renowned saints were ordinary people just like you,
sinners saved by grace through faith – and just look at the extraordinary
things the Lord was able to accomplish through them through the same faith you
have. The upshot is that the Lord means
to do extraordinary things with you through your faith. In fact, what he suggests is that
you have more than they did. They had
faith in a promise yet to be fulfilled; but they didn’t know exactly how the
Lord would do it. They knew that the
Lord had promised to send a Savior; they had certain puzzle pieces of prophecy
– but not one of them could have imagined the complete fullness and majesty of
what happened when God sent his Son into our flesh to bear our sins on the
cross. This perfect and overwhelming
display of God’s justice and sacrificial love for lost mankind was a hidden
mystery that they trusted in even though they couldn’t envision or comprehend. But you
do know how the Lord did it. Your
faith is based not on a Savior yet to come; but rather on one whom God already
sent. It is now history, and you have,
in a sense, seen the Savior work salvation for us on the cross. And now in worship you celebrate this, and in
the Sacrament of the Altar you touch and taste it and so receive its blessings
to yourself to strengthen your faith. In
light of this, the writer of Hebrews is saying that if the Old Testament saints
did extraordinary things armed only with their murky faith, how much more can
the Lord do through you whose faith is founded on the full revelation of God in
Christ? But it
isn’t just great big spectacular deeds we’re talking about. The point is that through faith in Christ you are a saint of God. And the things you do in faith are therefore extraordinary
deeds – the work of saints – made so by Christ in whom you trust. Look at it this way: by faith you get up in the morning and go
about your business, you eat breakfast, get the kids ready for school, do your job in whatever calling God has placed you, you
rest, you play, you do everything else that has to be done. And all those things you do are made
extraordinary; they are sanctified and made pleasing to God through your faith
in Jesus. And as you live this
extraordinary life through faith, the saints of God who have gone before serve
as both models and witnesses to what the Lord can do and ultimately will do
with you when you too are received into the company of those who now rest from
their labors. Therefore, since we are
surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that
hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance
the race marked out for us. Let us fix
our eyes on Jesus, as did the saints who went before, and through faith in him,
let’s live extraordinary lives as his saints here and now. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |