Celluloid Saints

Michael Jackson Chaney
Nov 3 · 7 min read

The Feast of All Saints — November 3, 2019- Year C

The Modern Saints by Gracie Morbitzer, www.themodernsaints.com

This has been a busy week. We started with Pride last weekend, Pastor Kevin Veitenger was ordained to the diaconate on Thursday (he’s officially “Rev Kev” now) and I had a big week with the Savannah Film Festival. I even got to watch a few movies. I’ve always loved the movies. I love a good story. I like to be introduced to new characters on the screen and watch them develop over a couple of hours. Whenever I find myself in conversation with actors or filmmakers or real movie lovers the conversation seems to turn to character. What makes us tick? What inspires us and impassions us? What strengths do characters demonstrate? What weaknesses do we have in common?

Some of the movies I saw this week introduced me to complex characters. Terrence Malick’s new film, A Hidden Life, told the true story of Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter, who faced the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II. The Two Popes stars Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict and Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis; it’s a film that shows us the flaws in these real people as well as their virtues. Sea of Shadows is a documentary about environmental activists attempting to save a species of endangered whales. The Cave is a heart wrenching documentary of an underground hospital in Alepo, Syria during wartime. These are stories about extraordinary people in extreme circumstances that take a bold stand against injustice.

And then, there’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the story of a journalist and Mr. Rogers. Yes, that Mr. Rogers. There’s a wonderful line in this movie that comes from Fred Rogers wife, Joanne. She says that we should be careful treating him as a saint. Sainthood makes the things he does seem unattainable for others. He was a flawed human being like everyone else. He experienced sadness and anger.

Great stories point us to the complexity of what it means to be human. We can find inspiration in characters, fictional or real, across the great diversity of our world that inspire us to action through ordinary acts of love. Many of these characters are our modern-day saints. And it’s important to remember the old Irish proverb that goes: “Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.”

What does this mean? It means we aren’t perfect. None of us. But we all have the potential for goodness.

Today is All Saints Sunday. All Saints Day is November 1, the day after Halloween. Halloween literally means “all hallows eve”, the night before All Saints Day. When Christianity took over Europe Halloween got conflated with the Gaelic festival of Samhain that marks the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter, the “dark half” of the year. This is how we got ghost and vampires and trick or treating involved. It’s all good fun but I want to focus on what All Saints Day means as well as the day that follows, All Souls Day. All Souls Day is November 2 and it’s the day we remember all of our beloved who have departed this earthly realm. We honor those that have died. This is very similar to dia de los muertes, the day of the dead celebrated in Mexico. We took our kids to see an awesome movie called Coco last year. It’s a wonderful animated film that shows how we keep those that have died close in our hearts.

So, yeah, I’m a sucker for a good saint. When I was at St Paul’s they liked to celebrate their feast dates and observe them in the daily office. They even have these saint cards laying around — saint cards are like trading card for Catholic saints, their picture on the front, and their stats and like, spiritual powers listed on the back…one of my favorites I don’t have a card for… St Dymphna. Not exactly the most famous of the saints but there you go. I guess I’m just a hipster and into esoteric stuff. Saint Dymphna was the daughter of a pagan Irish king and his Christian wife in the 7th century. Sadly, she was murdered by her father. But before her death she is said to of founded a home for the ill and many crazy people reportedly became a lot less crazy around her.

That’s right…St. Dymphna is officially the patron saint of the nervous, the patron saint of the emotionally disturbed, the patron saint of the mentally ill, and the patron saint of those with neurological disorders.

That is to say, she’s my kind of saint.

Today we observe the day set aside in the church year to remember the saints. But not just the ones who have trading cards since it is technically All Saints Sunday and not just Some Saints Sunday. To be clear, this isn’t like a cult of saints or anything…we don’t need special saints to intercede for us because God listens to them more since they were just basically better Christians than we are. What we celebrate when we celebrate All Saints is not the superhuman faith and power of a select few but is God’s ability to use flawed people to do divine things. We celebrate all on whom God has acted in baptism, sealing them, as Ephesians says, with the mark of the promised Holy Spirit. We celebrate the fact that God creates faith in God’s people, and those people through ordinary acts of love, bring the Kingdom of Heaven closer to Earth. We celebrate that we have, in all who’ve gone before us, what St Paul calls such a great cloud of witnesses and that the faithful departed are as much the body of Christ as we are.

It is quite a thing, really. That we are connected to so many. Connected to so much faith. So many stories. So much divine love. Especially in this day and age of alienation and trying to find community and belonging in smaller and smaller ways. I mean, I may think that the basis of me being connected to other people is in having theology or political beliefs or denominational affiliation or neighborhood or musical taste or Facebook groups in common. But none of that is what connects me to the Body of Christ. What connects me to the body of Christ is not my piety or good works or theological beliefs. It’s God. A God who gathers up all of God’s children into the church eternal.

So, today let us remember all the deeply faithful and deeply flawed saints of God’s church through whom the glory of God has been revealed is being revealed and will be revealed. Let us remember Mary Magdalena and Peter the fisherman and the glorious disciples. Let us remember St Dymphna, St Frances and Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr.[1] Franz Jägerstätter and Jonathan Daniels. Today let us thank God for gathering so many into the church eternal, some of whom still light our own paths. Some of whom are gone. People we’d rather have with us than on our own litany of saints.

What can we do but also give thanks for this table we are about to gather around — a foretaste of the heavenly banquet around which the saints are already gathered. We give thanks that around this table we are tied to the whole communion of saints — united with all who have ever received bread and wine and told it was Jesus and it was for them. We are joined here with angels and arch angels cherubim and seraphim — we are joined with the church on earth and the church in heaven and all who have called on the name of God. And we are connected to God.

And we’re also giving thanks for those simple acts of love. That’s all saintly acts really are — just really simple acts of love. And that we give thanks for all those who have come before us handing on the faith and being used by God for simple acts of love. Building homes where the crazy can be less crazy, giving food to those who hunger, being a listening presence without judgement.

These are the gifts of the spirit.

Jesus’ great joy is in sharing the presence, the gifts, of the spirit. And we’re all invited to do the same. We’re all invited to be saints of God.

Out of all of the complex hymns written over the ages my favorite hymn in the hymnal is a simple one, “I sing a Song of the saints of God”[2].

It was my grandmother’s favorite too. We sang it at her funeral and I always get a little choked up when I hear it.

It originated as a children’s hymn but it gets straight at what being a saint is all about.

They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
And I mean to be one too.

[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/11/778/

[2] No, one was not slain by a fierce wild priest.

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