Is it easy to be a Saint? I wonder if any of us could do it?

Take St Notburga – could you do what she did? She was a cook in the household of Henry and Ottilia of Rattenberg, living in the Tyrol around the turn of the fourteenth century. She was so devout that she would give the leftovers to the poor rather than to pigs as Ottilia had commanded her to do. One day Henry became suspicious of her and ordered that a bag she was carrying when she was leaving the cast should be searched. Miraculously the leftover food in the bag had turned into sawdust, but nevertheless she was sacked by Ottilia anyway. Would you risk losing your job to do the right thing?

Or could you be like St Marcella. She was a high born roman noble woman who converted Christianity at the end of the fourth century. Following the death of her husband, she was pursued by a number of wealthy influential suitors, but turned them all down and gave away her entire fortune to the poor before committing herself to an austere life in the service of Christ. Could you give away everything you have and forsake your closest relationships for your faith?

Or how about St Richard Gwyn of Wrexham. He was a catholic at the time of the reformation and was threatened with ghastliness if he did not conform to the Church of England. He took to making up rude, comic songs about the vicar for which he was clapped in irons. He then rattled his chains during sermons which so annoyed everyone that he was convicted of high treason and was hung, drawn and quartered in Wrexham’s beast market. Whether you agreed with St Richard or not, could you stand up so strongly for what you thought was right?

Most Episcopalians are familiar with the church year: that great cycle of prayer and liturgy that takes us from Advent, through Christmas and Epiphany, on to Lent and Easter, and into the long stretch of Sundays after Pentecost. Fewer among us might be familiar with the cycle of the saints’ calendar. While most of the saints and great lights of the Church have a special feast day or celebration assigned to them, it is rare that they get a mention in church on Sundays for the simple reason that the assigned Sunday liturgy nearly always takes precedence, though here in East Sutherland we have had a few saints days kept on a Sunday when permissible – some of you might recall that we remembered St Bartholomew back in August, and later this month we’ll learn more about St Margaret of Scotland. But as I said, there aren’t many Sundays where we are able to ‘keep’ the particular saint’s day.

It is, in some ways, a pity, because there is always much we can learn from the lives of the saints. Some were great scholars; others were illiterate. Some were ancient; others modern. But what is particularly striking about the calendar of the saints is that it is a bit of hodge-podge – messy and unpredictable. In the calendar of the blessed, saints come and go in no particular order. Ninth-century saint follows twentieth; European, Far East; young, old; and so on.

Just this month, for instance, ancient Willibrord, whose feast is kept on the seventh of November, hobnobs with Reformation-era, Richard Hooker, of November third, and medieval Hugh of Lincoln, of November seventeenth. It must make for some very interesting conversations in high places.

The calendar of the saints mirrors our own lives in many ways. People come to us in no particular order. We probably did not choose the particular members of our church community, for example. Friends and future spouses appear seemingly out of nowhere, and we do not get to choose the people without whom we would not be here: our own parents.

Those described as blessed, or saints, in our gospel text today are also a pretty diverse range of characters,  perhaps an unfortunate and desperate one. They are not particularly popular, or well-off, or prosperous. They are the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the despised. If they have anything in common, it is perhaps that they are those people who are not in control of things. They are those who are often described as ‘victims’ or ‘vulnerable’.

I’m not sure that there are many of us, including martyrs and saints, who actively want to be victimised, used, manipulated, cheated, or made to look a fool. And certainly, our scriptures do not require that of us. We read the daily papers and we shake our heads as we learn about all the evil things our fellow human beings are capable of, including the shedding of innocent blood. I imagine that we certainly do not want such things to happen to us – no matter how committed we are to the Gospel.

But somewhere in our fear of being hurt or made a victim we may, if we are not careful, also lose our ability to be vulnerable; to take a chance on another human being, on life, on God. Because if we dare to open ourselves to others it is quite possible, some might say likely, that we will get hurt. But, you know, unless we are willing to take that risk, we may find ourselves living lives of fear and loneliness -in other words, lives that can be devoid of human warmth and caring and love.

So, the saints do have something in common, in spite of their variety and age and culture. They have learned to become vulnerable, to be fully human, and to take chances on others, even when it may seem to go against common sense or their own self-interest. And like it or not, each of us will also be given plenty of opportunity to experience this vulnerability in our own lives – at work, at home, among friends, and sometimes at church as well.

So what about being blessed? What about being a saint? We can determine our state of saintliness and blessing by our willingness to be open to the needs of others. Sainthood becomes not so much some unattainable goal of moral excellence as it does a way of life marked by commitment to others and their needs.

We will not always be good. We will not always get it right first time. We will fail. We will have plenty of reasons to witness and to accept our own vulnerability. But then we are in good company. After all, what words other than ‘vulnerable’ and ‘committed’ should we use to describe a God willing to become one of us with all the messiness of our self-doubts, and strings of failures, and hurts, and even death?

It probably does not take much effort to be poor, grief-stricken, or hungry. But being blessed – well that is something else. That involves a radically different way of seeing the world. It requires a worldview that embraces the poor, and the exiled, and the remnant, and the refugee. Not just because our Lord asks us to do this in the gospel, but because we should recognise ourselves in the very least of those we know. We should recognise that our saintliness and blessing comes only in embracing wholeheartedly and without reservation all those others in need of God’s blessing.

Is it easy being a saint? I am afraid it is more difficult than we ever thought. Difficult, that is, if we try to do it through our own power and with our own wisdom and cleverness and effort. But it is paradoxically easy when we hold on to the blessed cross of Christ that forever committed God to the world; the cross that consecrates us in the blood of the Lamb, who gave himself that we might live. Blessed be God in all His saints, both living and departed!