From a sermon preached at Roker URC,Sunderland
Reformation Sunday, 31 October 2010
When it comes to St Margaret of Antioch, the names sake of a parish church in Durham, built in the mid 12th century and this year celebrates its 850 anniversary, so little is known about the Saint that it is rather hard to find fault. She was alleged to have killed a number of demons disguised as dragons. Though I suppose one might at least argue that her habit of killing and bursting dragons was environmentally unfriendly and she was a danger to wild life; clearly not somebody Chris Packham and Kate Humble would want to interview on BBC2s natural history programme Autumnwatch. And it’s no different with our modern saints. Take Mother Teresa of Calcutta, revered by the late Malcolm Muggeridge in his book Something beautiful for God. One of her former nuns was writing about what an aggressive, domineering old woman she was. I can well believe it. I’ve noticed that quite often people who achieve real good in this world, in the synod and in the cathedral where I work are rather aggressive and domineering; they have to be to fight for what they know is right. But of course that’s not the point. What made Mother Teresa a saint wasn’t that she was a nice, cuddly, Hollywood-type of nun, heaven forbid a Woopi Goldberg Sister Act lookalike, but probably the fact that she was a feisty old biddy with a bit of an ego problem - but one who was determined to show the dregs of Calcutta something of the mercy God had shown her. Talking of ego problems, and a little aside here, I have discovered that some of the Bishops of Durham had serious working relationships with their often notorious Deans, not that they could ever be considered Saintly material, but I do hope the former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, will leave his brain to theological research. The irascible and controversial Bishop Henley Henson for example, came into the public eye in 1892 after an outburst at a diocesan conference in which he referred to dissenting Protestant churches as “emissaries of Satan!” As Bishop during the Great Depression, Henson preached at court and lunching afterwards at Buckingham Palace, King George V happened to ask his granddaughter Princess Elizabeth what she had liked best at the zoo on their visit the previous day. “The rhinobottomus” she replied. Henson at once said: “Thank you, my dear Princess for giving me such a word which so adequately describes my Dean.” When a lady asked him at a dinner party if he had seen the play “Pigs in Clover,” he replied: “No, but I have seen the Dean of Durham is bed.” Meow! Meow! .....Poor Dean James Weldon! Or take Martin Luther King. He’s one of my great Christian heroes of all time. I took his book “Strength to Love” along with my 8 gramophone records to my desert island, Mombasa, when I worked in East Africa in the early 70s. He did more than anyone for racial peace and justice, his message has empowered the oppressed all over the world and his sermons and speeches are so moving and compelling that I don’t doubt Christ was speaking through that man as through a loudspeaker. But at the same time, if you read accounts of Martin Luther King’s private life, it seems he had so many extra-marital affairs you wonder he ever found strength to climb into a pulpit!
And of course here in the cradle of Christianity we are surrounded with the memory of three of the northern regions greatest Saxon saints Aidan, Hild and Cuthbert. Only Oswald died as a martyr; yet all of them truly laid down their lives for the sake of Christ. They brooked no compromises when it came to giving everything to this project of embracing and living Christianity and seeing it planted, rooted and established across England. Not only that, but this outpouring of vision and energy was an expression of a civilisation at the height of its achievements, as witness the books and artifacts from Northumbria's golden age of the 7th and 8th centuries, some of them in the Cathedral at Durham. The peoples of the North East do not honour our northern saints because of ancient Northumbria, however favoured we are to live in this beautiful region with its ‘passionate places, passionate people' as the strap-line puts it. That would be to fall into the trap of nostalgia. The saints I have mentioned, and the many others of the Saxon era whom Bede names, and buried in the Galilee chapel at the Cathedral speak with their own authentic voice about the central values of the Christian faith not only as a set of beliefs but as a lived experience forged in the vicissitudes of ordinary life.I have amusingly mentioned some saints to illustrate the fact that saintliness is not the same as perfection, which belongs only to God. Amongst the canonized saints, we can now add the 1st Australian saint, Mary MacKillop, a Melbourne-born nun who worked with needy children, and recently canonised with other saints in St Peter's Square in front of some 50,000 people. Pope Benedict declared on the 17th October 2010 that these new saints "throughout the Church (they) be honoured devoutly among all the saints".The saints are chosen not because they were perfect all-rounders, but because they had one outstanding gift or virtue which shone through them so brightly that the people who knew them couldn't help feeling, "God really is in this person." And it's important for us to remember this, because not many of us are good all-rounders either. Most of us are pretty mediocre in general, and probably all of us have some extremely dusty corners which we'd rather not have inspected. But all of us also have some particular gift through which God can be seen, and which is, if you like, is our special potential for saintliness.That's why scripture calls all of us saints, not only the ones the Church has canonized. St Paul often addressed his letters to "the saints at Ephesus", "the saints at Corinth" and so on. He was certainly under no illusion that they were perfect, since half the time he's telling them what a useless, good for nothing lot they are. BUT he still calls them saints, holy to the Lord, because Christ has counted us all holy, and given us all some gift that we can contribute to the whole body of his Church.
So it’s mistake to treat the saints as if they were perfect. And in my reformed catholic and liberal way of thinking might I suggest perhaps this morning add another radical thought - it's an even worse mistake to treat them as if they were dead (please don’t mention this or write to the synod moderator).Too often when we talk about the saints you get the impression that they are just historical figures, dead heroes from long ago. But that's not what we mean when we from time to time recite the creed and say - “we believe in the Communion of Saints.” You can't have communion with historical figures who are dead and gone. Communion is a here and now experience, a relationship, not with dead people but with living brothers and sisters in the family of God.
And how can you have communion without communication? You can't commune with somebody you don't talk to, and the communion of saints simply means the saints are there to talk to. Come and sit with me in the shrine of St Cuthbert at the Cathedral and see how many people are praying/talking with/to our Northern Saint.
It's a very good tradition, sadly neglected now, to choose a name saint or a patron saint, not only as an example but as a friend to talk to, a brother or sister in Christ whose prayers you can ask. Mother Theresa of Calcutta took her name from the young child, St Thérèse of Lisieux, the 19th-century French Roman Catholic Carmelite nun whose relics were brought to England and Wales last year for a national pilgrimage. Edith Piaff was known to have a photograph of St Thérèse by her bedside and the late Princess of Wales was reported to have often lit a candle in her memory. During the unprecedented month-long tour of England and Wales of the relics of this young saint it is estimated that some 150,000 people visited her reliquary, some 100,000 candles were lit and 50,000 pink roses left for the saint Catholics know as "the little flower of Jesus". In Ireland, three-quarters of the overall population turned out to see her remains – that’s nearly 4 million people! All this in an age when we do not go to church! And talking of recent events in the Roman Catholic Church, you may remember Deacon Jack Sullivan, whose cure from a serious debility of the spine in 2001 was accepted by the Pope as a miracle resulting from John Henry Newman’s intercession, a fact mentioned at the beatification of Cardinal John Newman recently. Cardinal Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict at Crofton Park, on his recent September state visit to Britain.Within the Body of Christ we are all one, whether we happen to be this side of the grave or beyond. As the hymn says, we have "friends on earth and friends above," as another hymn states we are all lead by that “kindly light.” We can talk to the saints and can pray for all the departed, and we can be sure they pray for us. If you really believe in the resurrection, death doesn't count, and down the centuries countless Christians have drawn immense support from a living sense of friendship, a fellowship with the saints, friends and family who have gone before.
And if people try to tell you that bothering with saints is superstitious, or idolatry, or just for Roman Catholics, I hope you'll tell them it's nothing of the kind. It simply follows from our faith that in Christ, death can't divide, we are members of one another whether here or beyond. That's why in some churches we have pictures, stained glass, icons of saints in church, and how many URC chuches have taken their name form St Andrew or St George, just around the corner we have a St Bede URC! It's really just the same as having photographs of friends and relatives on earth. We don't worship the photo, but it helps us by reminding us there's someone there who loves us and cares for us. It's the same in Church. We don't worship saints or pray to them in the same sense as we pray to God. But it’s good to know they are there, that they do care for us, and that we can ask for their prayers just as we ask for our friend's prayers on earth.
Whether we can see them or not, we are surrounded in this life by the saints - all those who were made members of his body by baptism, all who have conquered death in him, and who, because they are in him, still live, and live forever. And they - wonder of wonders - are part of us and we of them.
Holy, Holy Holy – all the saints adore thee! The saints are all around us. As the 16th century poet, Edmund Spencer says in his poem Faire is the Heaven which I read earlier and which I conclude:- Faire is the heaven where happy soules have place
In full enjoyment of felicitie;
Whence they do still behold the glorious face
Of the Divine, Eternall Majestie;Fairer than all the rest which there appeare
Though all their beauties joynd together were;
How then can mortal tongue hope to expresse
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?
The Great Cloud of WitnessesAmenRevd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across the Northern Synod
