Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

"Saint" is a word like many in the English language,

or any other language, for that matter …

It’s one that all of us use at some time or another,

but we don’t always mean the same thing by it.

Obviously, if you’re Roman Catholic,

you have a certain understanding about "saints"

and their statues in your church,

and their status as heroes of the faith from the past,

who have been remembered for various reasons,

and who in the present

help your prayers get to God’s ears.

My former spouse, Tom, who grew up in New Orleans,

remembers that when the city first got its professional football team,

there was a huge outcry when the choice was made

to name them the "Saints."

One or more Catholic nuns made the statement that,

so long as the team chose such an inappropriate and sacrilegious name,

they would certainly never meet with any success.

And who knows,

since they’ve never yet been to a Super Bowl,

maybe she was onto something …!

But in that tradition,

there are certain fairly specific criteria for calling a person a "saint,"

and most professional football teams

probably aren’t going to make the cut.

Even so, we among ourselves

mean different things when we use the word "saint" to refer to someone.

Often, we use it to refer to someone who has died.

And that’s kind of the sense the church uses for All Saints’ Day,

when we commemorate those who have gone before,

particularly remembering those we have lost in the past year.

Other times, though, we refer to someone, dead or alive, as a "saint"

when they have done something good that’s out-of-the-ordinary,

something we think we’d probably never be able

to bring ourselves to do.

"That Mrs. Jones is a saint!

She’s taught the junior-high Sunday school class for thirty years!"

"Did you know that Carlos does all the yard work for his elderly neighbors,

and he won’t accept a penny in payment?

He’s a real saint!"

And sometimes, we use the word by way of thanking or complimenting someone

who has done something kind for us:

"Thanks so much for coming to my rescue when my car broke down.

You’re really a saint!"

However he use the word,

whether Protestant, or Catholic, or none of the above,

we usually think of a "saint" as someone at least a little bit

out of the ordinary,

or at least, someone who has done something out of the ordinary.

Being "a saint" is somehow in contrast

with being a normal, everyday sort of sinner-type person.

You’d never, for example,

look at Zacchaeus the tax-collector up in his tree,

and say, "now there is a saint of God."

And yet, Jesus saw something there that the others didn’t see.

How did he know who Zacchaeus was, anyway?

He wasn’t "from around these parts," as we might say.

Did Jesus see someone who, despite being wealthy and successful,

was willing to make a fool of himself climbing up in a tree

to see who Jesus was?

Did he see in that gesture a cry for help,

a desire for change, an openness to doing and being something different?

How did Jesus know that Zacchaeus was a saint,

disguised as he was, as a despised tax collector,

pawn of the hated Roman government?

How do we know Zacchaeus is or was or became a saint?

By his response to Jesus’ call.

"Hurry and come down,

for I must stay at your house today."

He hurries. He comes down.

And in response to the grumbling of the crowd, he announces,

"Half of my possessions I will give to the poor,

and if I have cheated anyone of anything,

I will pay back four times as much."

He knows.

He knows that once he was lost, but now is found.

He knows that Jesus called to him,

not because he was a saint,

but in order to make him a saint.

He knows that from this moment on,

everything must be and will be different.

That is a saint.

I suspect that sometimes we use the word "saint"

to try to set people apart as extraordinary,

because then it gives a way out for us who are ordinary.

You can’t expect me to do what Mrs. Jones does …

why, she’s a saint.

You can’t expect me to be a Mother Teresa …

look, even the Catholic Church is about to make a saint out of her.

Those people are somehow special …

and thank God for them! but don’t expect us ordinary people

to be able to do such things.

But that’s exactly the point.

A "saint" is someone who

has responded to God’s call on his or her life,

which has resulted in extraordinary things.

Not extraordinary people,

but extraordinary response to the call of God.

I don’t see any indication in our story

that Jesus put any pressure on Zacchaeus at all.

He didn’t ask, "How is it that you live in the nice part of town?"

"How can you afford all the nice things you have?"

He didn’t say, "Zacchaeus, I hear all these people grumbling that you’re a sinner;

do you have anything you want to confess to Me?"

He simply saw Zacchaeus,

saw, perhaps, what was missing in his life,

and invited himself into that life.

Zacchaeus did all the rest in response.

He became a saint,

by responding to Christ’s call on his life.

And notice what also didn’t happen between Jesus and Zacchaeus:

Once Zacchaeus made what amounted to his confession of sin

and confession of faith, all in one breath,

Jesus didn’t say, now leave everything and follow me to Jerusalem,

or, now, go live the rest of your life tending to the lepers,

or, great, now I need you to go teach the junior-high Sunday school class!

Jesus knew that the response Zacchaeus made

was the response Zacchaeus needed to make.

Different from anyone else’s,

suited to his own life, and his own particular favorite sins,

and his own need for healing.

Such is Christ’s call to any one of us

to become a saint.

It is not a call to become something that we are not,

someone that we are not,

something out of the ordinary.

It is a call to heal what is broken in our lives,

to change what needs to be changed,

and to become whoever and whatever we need to be

and God needs for us to be.

Zacchaeus had been a prisoner of wealth …

perhaps he had even started out his tax-collecting job

thinking he’d be different from the others,

but gradually, the power he had corrupted him.

Or perhaps he was always greedy, even as a child,

and had never felt like he had enough.

Or maybe he grew up in poverty,

and swore he was never going to suffer like that again.

Either way, the call to sainthood for him

comes as a call to let go of that need for material stuff,

to make amends for times when he has misused his position …

and even more, to make a contribution toward

the creation of a just society.

Think about that:

when our hero says that he’s going to give half of everything to the poor,

there’s no suggestion made that they are poor

because Zacchaeus has taken something that is theirs.

He is not, in this case,

making amends for something that he has done wrong,

but is simply making a redistribution of wealth.

If that seems extraordinary or even outrageous to us,

perhaps it’s because we’re not yet entirely comfortable

with our own call to sainthood.

We, here, are among the faithful who have responded to Christ’s call on our lives.

That makes us saints,

or at least, pre-saints … potential saints … saints in training.

But unlike what we often fear,

the call to sainthood does not mean

giving up everything we hold dear,

or becoming something we are not,

or taking on a task we hate because "God needs it done."

It may mean re-evaluating everything we hold dear,

and releasing some of it.

It may mean becoming more of who we are,

and better at it,

and relinquishing other heavy expectations we’ve placed on ourselves.

It may mean taking on a new task

and discovering that we don’t hate it after all …

or discovering a new use for our gifts that we didn’t even know about.

The call to sainthood means being prepared for God to change us

both in ways that we thought would be scary

only it turns out they aren’t,

and in ways that we never even dreamed about.

It means admitting that, without God, we are lost;

and inviting God to find us wherever we are,

and either bring us home, or come to our house for dinner.

It means being willing to let God put us to work

in ways that may well look extraordinary to others,

but which we have come to know are just God’s own peculiar ways

of putting our unique selves to work.

Who am I calling a saint?

Zacchaeus.

Mother Teresa.

Mrs. Jones in the junior-high classroom.

You.

Me.

All God’s chillun’

As soon as we accept Jesus’ invitation,

and follow where he leads us and needs us.

So let us come down out of our sycamore trees,

if we’re still up there waiting,

and join him on the journey.

Amen.

© 2007 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)