I’ve written about it before, but it’s a conversation I come
back to over and over in my own faith development. It’s my long and protracted
though definitely friendly argument with my across-the-hall neighbor from my
first year of seminary, Tim Ferguson. After a few weeks of Morning Prayer from
the BCP (remember, the 1662 version in England), we found ourselves at
loggerheads over the primary identity of a Christian. I like to think of us as
sinners, and he likes to think of us as saints.
Back and forth, back and forth—we argued. I love the line in
the old confession “miserable offenders” and “there is no health in us.” He
didn’t like that at all. “God made us good—very good,” he would counter, but I
would cling to my Augustinian understanding of human nature and respond, “But
after the fall of Adam the taint of original sin has been passed down to us.”
We both knew it was silly but fun. We both enjoyed taking a hyperbolic position
just to get a rise out of the other.
Still, though, it illuminated something in my own
theological bias. I came to know the love of God as one who recognized his own
depravity. That love reached down and yanked me out of my sin. I suppose that
others might have discovered the saving, forgiving, redeeming love of God in a
place of blessing. Maybe that’s the difference—I don’t know. But I do know that my understanding of
holiness—of sainthood—comes not from a place of internal goodness but from an
imputed righteousness that is given by God through our faith.
As I prepare to preach on All Saints’ Sunday, I’m thinking a
lot about sainthood. No, I don’t mean the saints whose names often adorn church
buildings or whose legends we still tell our children. I mean the sainthood—the
holy identity—that is given to all God’s beloved. Those are the “saints” or the
“holy ones” to whom Paul addresses his letters. We are saints. By virtue of our
redemption, we are all saints.
But we’re sinners, too. And that’s the real beauty of it.
Sainthood is not unattainable. (Well, actually it is if we’re talking about the
do-it-on-your-own sense of individual attainment.) Sainthood is given to those
of us miserable sinners who know what it means to be called to holiness. It’s
probably a good thing that parishioners hear their clergyperson reminding them
of their sinfulness on a regular basis. There aren’t many other cultural
institutions that will tackle human brokenness head-on like that. But it’s
imperative that our preachers also remind us that, despite our sinfulness, God
has made us his holy people—his saints.
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