Transcript
“Beloved, we are God’s children now.” Please be seated.
We are St. John’s Church, as in, we belong to St. John. But who is St. John? When I first got here, I asked that question. Well, specifically, I asked which St. John, because depending on the church and how you count, there’s at least 126, maybe over 200, saints named John. And while our notes — our vestry notes — indicate when we began to call the church St. John’s Church, we don’t have written record for which John.
But we have a stained-glass window. It’s actually right here behind me. You’ll see it when you come up for communion. And while this is mere deduction, we are supporting the idea that St. John’s Church is indeed named after St. John the Apostle. The stained-glass window depicts a man standing tall in the middle, holding what we can guess is a Bible, and the words “The Word was God” depicted on the pages, which is from the prologue of John’s Gospel.
At the bottom is the Last Supper, and at the top is a man huddled with a woman, looking up at three crosses, and the words “Behold thy mother,” which is what Jesus said to the disciple whom he loved while hanging on the cross, according to John’s Gospel — which would imply it is John the Apostle who is the disciple whom Jesus loved also.
There aren’t many Episcopal — other Episcopal churches named for John the Baptist, or really any of the other St. Johns. But who is St. John? Well, he is one of the twelve apostles, mostly attributed with writing the Gospel named John. Maybe also wrote the three epistles according to John, and possibly Revelation, although most modern biblical scholars think probably not.
He was born into a family of Jewish fishermen, and his big brother James was also an apostle. It was John that was called the Beloved Apostle, and he was leaning on Jesus during the Last Supper, and who witnessed the Transfiguration on the mountaintop, and who was asked to keep awake while Jesus went and prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.
And who experienced the overabundance of fish when Jesus said to try the other side of the boat. Interestingly, John is claimed to have outlived all the other apostles, and supposedly is the only one to have died from natural causes, sometime around the year 100 — which means 1,926 years later, we’re still talking about him and naming things for him, and that’s pretty impressive.
And perhaps that’s one of the reasons why John is a saint. In fact, to become a saint today, you have to have done at least two miracles, as well as lived a saintly life. But John the Apostle really didn’t do any miracles. I mean, he certainly witnessed a bunch, but instead John the Apostle became a saint through ancient universal church tradition.
And while his saint day is actually December 27th, we’re usually a little busy around that time, or maybe recovering from being busy. So instead, we can celebrate him today on All Saints’ Day, the day the church sets aside to honor all the Saints in the church. And you can’t see my manuscript, but I wrote that “Saints” with a capital S.
Well, part of the Reformation was to pull away from the veneration of the saints — basically an attempt to claim that everyone is a saint, since we are baptized in the communion of saints, which, mind you, is a line directly from our Episcopal baptismal liturgy. We celebrate All Saints and All Souls separately, honoring those who are recognized as being, quote, “extra special” this morning at our All Saints’ celebration, and honoring all those whom we love and have died this evening at our All Souls’ Evensong.
So now, this morning, we are honoring those Saints with a capital S who did big miracles or literally walked with Jesus — hence St. John. But we, you and me, we might not be able to aspire to be Saints with a capital S, and that’s okay. I’m not sure any of us really needs to aspire to perform miracles — acts that violate the laws of nature.
Also, though, if you have that need, or if you have performed a miracle, let me know, because I totally want to see. Anyway, we might not have to aspire to be Saints to still feel inspired to live saintly lives. And the good news is, Jesus literally tells us over and over again throughout Scripture how to live saintly lives.
And in today’s gospel reading, he states some very concrete ways to live a saintly life, commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, or the Beatitudes. This passage from Matthew is literally Jesus telling the disciples how to live according to God’s will — how to live saintly lives. The first couple are about how we feel in this life, and then it gets into how we can live.
Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. This is how we can live closer to God with saintly lives according to God’s will. Let us hunger and thirst for righteousness. Let us be merciful. Let us be pure in heart. Let us be peacemakers.
We don’t have to perform some massive miracle that violates the laws of nature. We can simply live according to God’s will. And once we figure out how to do that, once we strive in all we do to live according to God’s will, then we are living in love. Because here’s the thing throughout Scripture: love isn’t just a feeling.
Instead, love is an action. Last week I said it was a choice. Today I’m saying it is an action. It is something done. God loves us not because God feels a certain way toward us, but because God acts in ways that reflect the love God has for each of us. After all, we are called children of God not because God likes us, but because God gives us love.
That’s according to the epistle, the First Letter of John. The New International Version of that passage has that first line reading as “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” I like that version much better. You can almost feel the love as God lavishes it upon us.
And yet we are children of God not because of what we do, not because of some great miracles we can or cannot perform, not because of anything we are responsible for. Instead, we are children of God because God has chosen us. God has chosen to act — to love us. And there’s no timestamp on it either. It’s not “We are children of God because God loves us once we say or do or whatever it is.” We are God’s children now. God loves us in the immediate and in the absence of all time, through the actions God takes towards us.
That list of things we can do to live saintly lives? Yeah, it’s a good idea, but God’s love is not dependent on that. Instead, we respond to God’s love by doing those actions: acting towards God, towards our neighbor, and towards ourselves. So while, yes, to become a Saint, capital S, like John the Apostle, or Vincent or Nicholas or Francis or Christopher, or whichever is your favorite saint, we need to work on our miracles.
But to honor the label we already have as children of God, we don’t have to do those big violations of natural law. Instead, we can be loved, and love, and we can live into the label we already have: the label of God’s children. Be meek. Be hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Be merciful.
Be pure in heart. Be a peacemaker, and know that as you live into this call — the call to live saintly lives — you are also choosing the action that is love. Love toward God. Love toward your neighbors. Love toward yourself.
“Beloved, we are God’s children now.” Amen.