Good morning, Friends! Did you all enjoy the extra hour of rest this morning? Or have an extra cup of coffee? Or just enjoyed being able to take a little more time today?
Today is a special day for many Christians. No, it’s not because of the end of Daylight Savings Time. This is the first of November, which many Christians celebrate as All Saints Day.
All Saints Day is a day to remember the great Christians who are now in Heaven. They lived amazing lives of faith. They’re examples to all of us, and their stories inspire us.
The saints include the first disciples of Jesus, the apostles and messengers, who started churches and went through unbelievable hardships. The saints include teachers and poets, healers and religious leaders. Some of the saints died in prison; other saints went on long pilgrimages, or inspired people by their preaching and prayers.
But the apostle Paul seemed to think that ordinary people could be saints. In his letters, he wrote:
“To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints. . .”
“To the church of God which is at Corinth. . .called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. . .”
“To all the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful. . .”
“All the saints greet you. . .”
It’s as though Paul, and the people he wrote to, expected that to be a saint would be the ambition of every ordinary Christian.
Today our Scripture reading is from the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. The writer of Revelation has a vision, where all the saints are gathered, and where everyone is in the new Heaven, praising God together.
I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.
And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:
“Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!”
Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes – who are they, and where did they come from?”
I answered, “Sir, you know.”And he said, “These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, “they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,’ nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd;
‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’
‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”Revelation 7:9-17
This is such a powerful vision. It’s all about Heaven. And it’s all about God, and Jesus. And the writer seems to expect that we are going to be there, along with all the people, from every country, in every time, who have tried to be faithful and done what they could.
Saints are people who have decided to let God’s light shine through them. We look at them, and we see God.
I want to share for just a few minutes this morning, about some of my own favorite saints. They’re all different. And yet they all have something in common, something which brings them together.
The first saint I want to talk about is one you’ve probably heard of. He was from Italy, and he lived about 800 years ago. He was born in a rich family – his father was a silk merchant. Growing up, he had everything. He loved fine clothes, going to hear music, reading poetry, eating well. His favorite food, he said, was shrimp pie.
When he was 21, he joined up with a military expedition, a war against a nearby city. He was captured, and he was a prisoner of war for over a year. That sobered him, and he started taking life more seriously.
He always loved to travel. He made a pilgrimage to Rome. He went on foot, and he begged for his food along the way. When he got home, he had a vision. He was living like a beggar or a street person, camping out in a ruined church which had fallen to pieces. In his vision, he heard Jesus tell him, “Rebuild my church.”
His father was so angry that he beat him, tied him up, and locked him in a storage room. His father hauled him in front of the bishop, and told the bishop he was disinheriting him. Instead of giving in, he stripped himself naked, and the bishop wrapped him in his own cloak.
He changed his name, to Francesco or Francis. “Francesco” can mean “the French guy,” because he loved French music and poetry. But Francesco can also mean the free man, because now he was free.
Francis lived like a beggar for the rest of his life. He gathered stones, and he rebuilt the ruined church. He cared for the sick people he found on the street. He especially reached out to care for people with leprosy, who were treated like they were dead, even though they were still alive.
He gathered others around him, who were attracted to his way of life. They called themselves “the little brothers,” because they were different from the monks in the monastery. They had no home, and they lived on what people gave them, and they preached about the love of God, wherever they went.
Francis loved nature. In all the statues and pictures of him, he’s always shown with a bird, resting in his hand.
There’s a story about how he tamed a hungry wolf who was terrifying a town. He made the wolf promise to stop eating people, and he made the townspeople promise to bring food to the wolf, so they could live in peace together.
Francis wrote songs and poems. In one of his prayer-poems, he wrote:
Most High and glorious God,
Bring light to the darkness of my heart!
Give me right faith, certain hope and perfect charity.
Lord, give me insight and wisdom so I might always discern
Your holy and true will. . .
In one of his songs, he praised “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon,” “Brothers Wind and Air,” “Sister Water,” “Brother Fire” and “Mother Earth.” That song has been translated again and again for 800 years, and we still sing it today. It’s a hymn we know as All Creatures of Our God and King.
Francis was the first one to set up a Nativity scene, like the ones we still set up today.
During the Crusades, he tried to be a peacemaker between the Christian army and the Muslim leaders. When the war ended and the Crusaders went home, the Muslim leaders put some of Francis’ followers in charge of the holy places where Christian pilgrims came to visit. The Muslim leaders called him a friend of God. Pretty good title to have.
He caught malaria while he was in the Holy Land, and an infection which eventually made him blind. He died when he was only 45, and he told his brothers to “follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, and walk in His footsteps.”
Now I want to tell you about another one of my favorite saints. This one is a woman, and she was a Quaker. Her name was Elizabeth Fry.
Like Francis, Elizabeth Fry was born into a wealthy family, and she grew up in England in a large home in the country. Her father was a banker, and she was brought up with lots of bright clothes, family parties and books.
Her family were Quakers and they went to meeting every week, but she says that much of their religious practice was “outward” – it was for show or out of tradition, and not out of any deep religious belief.
When Elizabeth Fry was 18 years old, a visiting Quaker minister, William Savery, came to her meeting. He called it “the gayest meeting of Friends he was ever at.” She was deeply moved by his messages. She felt that she was being called to a deeper religious life.
She also recognized that it would mean big changes, and that her family might not understand at all. She was right!
Her father packed her off to London to stay with relatives. Her father hoped that in the big city she would forget this religious nonsense, and go back to being her normal self. She met William Savery again in London, though, and they wrote letters back and forth. After a few months, she began to wear simpler clothes and to let people know that she was going to be a real Quaker and a real Christian.
Back at home, she started reading her Bible and by praying regularly. She also started a school for poor children in the neighborhood, which met in an unused room in her family’s home. The family called them “Betsy’s Imps”, but they let her continue.
Later, she wrote: “I can say one thing – since my heart was touched at 17 years old, I believe I never have awakened from sleep, in sickness or in health, by day or by night, without my first waking thought being how best I might serve my Lord…”
For about 10 years, she stayed at home and had a family. She and her husband eventually had 10 children. She was a firm but pleasant mother. She learned her Bible very well.
Then in her 30’s, she started a ministry she would stay involved in for the rest of her life. She started visiting women in prison.
At Newgate, which was the largest prison in London, all the women prisoners were locked up together in one big room. Convicted criminals were in the same room with those who were waiting for their trials. The male guards often raped the women prisoners. If a woman had small children, often the children were kept in prison with her. There were constant fights among the prisoners. Almost none of the prisoners could read, none of them had any money, and most had never gone to church of any kind.
Elizabeth Fry set up classes in reading and sewing. Each class of 10 women their own leader kept order in their own groups. Elizabeth Fry organized the women prisoners so effectively that the authorities were astonished.
She got the women prisoners to agree to their own rules. The rules prohibited the prisoners from begging from visitors, and created a common fund to share equally and buy necessary things for everyone. Elizabeth Fry also established a committee of women from outside the prison who would visit regularly and see that the improvements were kept up.
She wrote: “Much depends on the spirit in which the visitor enters upon her work. It must be the spirit, not of judgment, but of mercy. She must not say in her heart, I am more holy than thou; but must rather keep in perpetual remembrance, that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. Great pity is due from us even to the greatest transgressors among our fellow-creatures – in meekness and love, we ought to labor for their restoration.”
The change was so astonishing that within one year, Elizabeth Fry was invited to testify before the British Parliament, and tell them what she was doing. She was the first woman ever to be invited to testify in this way.
At that time in the early 1800’s, many prisoners in England who weren’t executed were transported to Australia, for 7 years or more. Because there was no provision for returning them to England, it was almost like a sentence of death.
The women who were being transported to Australia were loaded with heavy chains and irons in case they tried to escape, and carried in open wagons to the ships, while the crowd screamed at them and mocked them. Elizabeth Fry persuaded the authorities to let her try taking the women prisoners to the transportation ships quietly, in closed carriages, without any irons or chains, if they would promise not to try to escape.
Once she began this, she personally visited every ship of women prisoners before they left for Australia, until transportation was finally abolished in 1843. She visited 106 ships, and 12,000 female prisoners.
Each woman prisoner was given sewing materials, a Bible, sturdy work clothes, glasses if she needed them, and reading materials. Each ship also had reading classes for the women and for any of their children who were transported with them.
Elizabeth Fry also worked to find out about the conditions that women prisoners lived in once they reached Australia, which were just as bad as they were in England. She worked with her brother-in-law, who was a member of Parliament, to force the government to build proper barracks or dormitories. And she organized volunteers who helped to find the women jobs with decent families.
It was a very thorough and comprehensive effort – not a patchwork of ideas, but a complete system of care. She also worked tirelessly to abolish capital punishment or reduce the number of crimes which could be punished by death, and to get rid of the transportation system entirely.
Toward the end of her life, she wrote: “I want to see the fruit of the Spirit in all things, more devotion of heart, more spirit of prayer, more real cultivation of mind, more enlargement of heart towards all; more tenderness towards delinquents, and above all more of the rest, peace and liberty of the children of God. . .”
I know you’ve all been listening for a long time, but I want to tell you about just one more of my favorite saints. He isn’t someone you’ve ever heard of. He was a member of the first meeting that I served, back in my late twenties.
His name was Artie.He lived about three blocks from the meetinghouse.
Artie went to Vietnam, and it really messed him up. He may have had PTSD, and he certainly had a drinking problem. He couldn’t hold a job, and he lived with his mom, in a tiny, worn-out house that was literally falling down around them.
I was always welcome at their home, with its old kerosene stove and the oilcloth-covered kitchen table. They lived on nothing – Artie’s disability and his mother’s Social Security.
But every time it snowed – up there in the mountains, we had 12 or 14 feet of snow, every winter – Artie would come over to the church and help . After a big snow fall, the snow would come sliding off the roof like an avalanche, and there would be 5 or 6 feet of snow piled up in the driveway.
Artie would shovel the snow that even the plow couldn’t handle, and he would chop patiently through as much as a foot of ice. Any time I was away, Artie would come and check on the meetinghouse, and mow the lawn, and rake the leaves. Any time we had a chicken pie supper, Artie would come and help, and he’d bring a bunch of his war buddies with him and they’d fill a table, to support the meeting.
The big part of the story, though was that Artie was terrified of water. Our town was on the big Hudson River that flows through the whole length of New York.
Artie liked to go fishing, but he never went in the water. I don’t know if it was just respect for the river, or if the fear was something from his childhood, or if it was something he brought back from Vietnam. Even if it was just a small local pond, Artie never set foot in the water.
One summer day, he went fishing. And a little way up the river were a couple of little kids, playing by the river bank. Somehow, they fell in the river. The current was really strong and really fast and the river was really deep. It was near a big waterfall, and those kids were either going to go over the waterfall, or into a tunnel and into the powerhouse.
Artie saw them coming downstream, and something happened. He went into the water, which was over his head. He was terrified, but he hung onto an overhanging branch with one hand, and with the other hand he reached out and caught those two kids, and he pulled them back to shore.
Even days later, he was white and shaking from the experience. He said he wasn’t a hero, but everybody else in town thought he was, even the people who thought he was no-account.
Jesus once said, “No one has any greater love than this, than to lay down their life for their friends. . .”
Artie wasn’t perfect. But none of us is. But even if he wasn’t perfect, he still managed to be a saint that day.
All three of these people – Francis of Assissi, Elizabeth Fry, and Artie – were different. But they all had moments of great love, which shone through them.
In their own way, they’re all saints. And their lives challenge us, to remember all the saints we’ve met, and to try to be like them.