08 November 1998
Over the last week, in the aftermath of All Saints', I have been thinking about some of the less-well-known saints I have known. The ones that don't necessarily get painted by famous painters, or win the Nobel Prize, or start monastic orders. The everyday, but very un-everyday, ones.
The ones that use the gifts and talents that God has generously given them for the life of the world and of the Church and of each other. The ones that the writer of the Epistle was talking to when he said, We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord. The ones for whom this was his prayer: Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
Are you thinking, That was then and this is now? Some circumstances were different then, but the basic needs of the world were the same: to know and receive the Love of Christ, most often and easily visible through the gifts and ministries of others.
Perhaps you have met a person who lives into his or her God-given gifts in a way that makes them gifts to others.
Here's one. I met her when I was doing chaplaincy training in a cancer treatment facility in the Midwest. I don't remember her name now, but I do remember her ministry. She worked in the intake section, where people came to take examinations and to be told whether the hospital staff felt they could be treated there. Many of them had been treated -- and given up on -- elsewhere, and for them this was a court of last resort.
She worked as the receptionist, and her particular gift was a gift of simple but deep hospitality to the people who came there. She treated them with a beautiful quiet gentleness.
One day we were walking out to the parking lot together after work, and I said to her, "Do you realize that what you are doing is ministry?"
She stopped in her tracks and stared at me. Apparently she had never named it for herself -- or had it named for her -- in that way. But this was one of the saints at work, doing a very real and healing ministry to the people she met day after day in that workplace, meeting those strangers, offering them (sometimes literally, sometimes in the Biblical sense) a cup of water to drink...
She would never have called herself a saint -- and would probably have been at least taken-aback if anyone else had called her one. But through her, people experienced something of the love of God in very concrete action.
Perhaps you are sitting next to a saint whose gift is music -- helping to make a joyful noise that lifts up their praise and enlivens yours. Or perhaps he takes Communion to someone unable to join us at church, exercising a gift of hospitality on behalf of the parish. Or her work with iron, polish, soap, and flowers makes our place of worship beautiful -- that work is a real form of worship. Or perhaps her gift is teaching, or his is helping with youth ministry. Perhaps he helps to fold and staple the worship booklet you're using, or she helps to distribute food at the park on Monday mornings.
There are, as the Bible tells us, many varieties of gifts. You'll be asked to pledge from your time, talent, and treasure this "stewardship season" -- really, our stewardship is a year-round matter, but we talk about it more this time of year. Your gifts of treasure certainly help. So do your gifts of your time and your talents. Fr. Dan will be talking to you soon about stewardship of time -- a matter that needs to be attended to in this hurry-up, sound-bite world. But today I would like to challenge you to think about tithing of your self as well.
What parts of the talents that God has given you are given back through worship, service, hospitality, arts, and all of the many avenues available for sharing? As we move into Advent, will you take some time to think about the gifts you have been given and how you might share them for the glory of God and the spreading of the Kingdom?
Just as you sit down to look at your fiscal resources when you pledge your tithe, I challenge you to look at the God-given strengths and skills that you may not be noticing.
Perhaps there is a gift that you have been shy about offering, or haven't recognized as a real ministry, like the receptionist in the clinic.
Perhaps your gift is being who you are, as fully as possible, as a witness that proclaims the good news just by who you are in your everyday life. Think about it -- you are a witness, of one sort or another, about the Christian life in all your days. You may not even be aware of the effects of your faithfulness to the Gospel on someone else.
Some of you have heard me tell a story of a woman I worked with at the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Olympia. She had grown up in a Protestant church in another part of the country. Like many of us, she had wandered away from the church as a young adult. Over a period of about 20 years, she had tried a variety of ways of filling what one theologian calls "the God-shaped hole" at the center of our lives. She tried various self-help programs, went to New Age workshops, studied astrology, cast about in a number of directions, always searching for a spiritual home.
Finally she began to find her way back into the Christian faith and into a church. I asked her, one day, why she had come back.
She said, "Because when I thought about it, all the people I trusted the most were Christians." Their lives, and their everyday interactions with her, had been a sufficient witness to bring her home.
I don't know if she ever told them all what their trustworthiness had helped to bring to birth -- or rebirth -- in her, but those also were part of the communion of saints, the great cloud of witnesses, the live-ers of a Way that left ancient writers saying of the early Christians, "See how they love one another."
That love is the sturdy, sometimes-challenging, sometimes-tender daily staple of Christian life and witness -- for all the saints. For the Thessalonian church, and for ours. Take the time, use your talents, be one of those folks that re-present God to the world.
When we make or reaffirm our baptismal covenant, we promise to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, and to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
When we give thanks in the Eucharist, we ask God after that deepest nourishment to send us out to do the work he has given us to do, to love and serve him as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. That's what being a saint is about. For all the saints. For all of us.
Our work, our challenge, our joy is to be a walking translation of the Good News -- and we never know when someone, through God's action of grace in our lives and theirs, may be brought home. Remember, this is not an independent project -- always and everywhere, the grace of God supports and guides our giving.
What would happen in our lives and in our community if all the saints here in this place -- that includes you! -- could live fully as walking-around translations of the love of God?
If not now, when?
If not you, who?
What will you tithe of your God-given gifts and talents, of your God-given being, today and in the coming year?
The Rev. Lois Hart
lhart@stmargarets.org
08 November 98