Children of God first...

Some people love it, and some people hate it, but we know we can count on hearing it every November. It’s that very precious, very Victorian litany of the saints: “One was a doctor, and one was a priest, and one was killed by a fierce wild beast …”

If you’re familar with this hymn, you know that there’s not any reason, no, not the least, why you shouldn’t be one too.

This is all well and good, but as for me, I can think of literally thousands of reasons why I shouldn’t be a saint. Mine is not a deficit of faith, or courage, or humility. Every morning, I wake up feeling hopeful: I greet the new day with gratitude and rejoicing, I feed my cats and pretend I am St. Francis, I say Morning Prayer and feel, truly, like one of the saints of God. All is right with the world.

Then I leave my house. And I have to deal with the other saints of God.

That’s my problem.

This is the great paradox of sainthood: We can’t get there alone. We know that we glorify God by doing His work in the world, by feeding each other, sheltering each other, comforting each other, forgiving each other. Yet if you are at all like me, other people are what drive you right off the fast track to glory. If you’ve left your own house lately, you know that the peacemakers are blocking traffic on your way to work. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness won’t stop hassling you with clipboards. When you get home, you have voicemail messages from the meek and the mourners and the poor in spirit, who always seem to need you when you’re most exhausted. And the pure in heart just make you feel bad about yourself.

I would say that I only feel this way in my worst moments, but if this is true, I have a lot of worst moments.

And this, of course, is where we fall back on grace.

Because nobody is a saint of God all the time. Because nobody always feels patient and brave and true, no matter what that song may say. Because no matter how boundless your devotion to Christ, and how deep your reserves of compassion, there will come those moments where you reach the end of your fuse. You find yourself raising your voice or saying those words or doing that thing that you swore you had done for the last time.

When this happens, you can beat up on yourself for not being saintly enough.

Or you can take a deep breath and say to yourself these words from John’s letter: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

We can be saints of God later. We are children of God first.

If we can believe that John was writing this letter to us, for us, we can listen when he calls us beloved. “We are God’s children now,” he says; but “what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: When he is revealed, we will be like him.”

All Saints’ Day is a chance for us to suspend our disbelief and trust that when Christ is revealed, in the world and in our hearts, we will all be like him. We, too, will be robed in white; and we will worship before the throne of God; and we will be guided to springs of the water of life.

And if we do find a way to offer this generosity to ourselves, to believe that we have some hope of sainthood even when we feel exhausted and small, it becomes somehow easier to extend that hope to others. Once we ease up on our own unsaintly souls, we are free to notice tiny moments of goodness in everyone else. The punks and the peacemakers and the poor in spirit. Our impossible bosses and our demanding families. Also that guy who drives 45 in the passing lane, and the woman who always seems to be in front of you in the Fred Meyer checkout line, trying to buy a Snickers bar with a personal check.

Saints of God later, children of God first.

On this All Saints’ Day, may we find it within ourselves to make one more brave attempt at virtuous and godly living -- and to accept that, by the great miracle of our birthright, there is a kernel of sainthood in us all.


Homily delivered by Cat Healy for All Saints Sunday