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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
7 November 2004“Hero Worship”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
One way of defining "saints" is to say they are "religious celebrities."
An example would be Mother Theresa of Calcutta, whom I talked about last year on All Saints Sunday and who was revered as a saint even while she was still alive. People would go out of their way to meet her even if they weren't religious.
Saints in previous eras also were famous while they lived. In the 14th century, St. Catherine of Siena was consulted by secular and religious leaders; she even offered candid criticism to the Pope.
Other churches besides the Roman Catholic Church have also hold up a few of their members as shining examples of holiness while they were alive. One Protestant celebrity today is the evangelist, Billy Graham, a founder of the modern Evangelical movement and, like St. Catherine, an advisor to political leaders.
But pointing to the renown of many saints brings up a problem: fame may not be entirely a blessing. For celebrity status can easily be trivialized into a brief moment of publicity. Like Andy Warhol's claim that in the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, religious hero worship can flourish and then decline.
As an example, one may think of a Protestant minister who preached for decades a few blocks from here: Norman Vincent Peale. While people still try to discover "the power of positive thinking," and a bronze statue of Peale has been erected in front of his church — still his once enormous reputation seems sadly diminished.
Moreover, on the rare occasions when religious celebrities are remembered beyond their lifetimes, honoring them can become spiritually dubious. Devotion to saints can degenerate into worship of persons-worship of men and women who — however holy they were — still remained human beings.
Happily, that's not much of a danger in the Anglican tradition. Anglicans are pretty much free to pick and choose the saints we're interested in. And we avoid viewing saints as substitutes for God because we remain well-aware of their human faults.
In the Anglican Communion, departed men and women need not go through a lengthy process of "canonization" in order to be remembered by the church. Individual provinces like the Church of England or the Episcopal Church in the United States simply vote to remember the person on a particular day. So Christians can be added to the Church Calendar even if they had some major character flaws along with their holiness.
Thus C. S. Lewis was recently added to the American church calendar even though he was a demanding and prickly Oxford intellectual.
For Lewis is on the calendar not because of his personal virtues but because of his writings. Along with major academic works on literature, Lewis wrote books on Christian belief, prayer, and the problem of evil. Among his most popular books were the story of his conversion and his account of his grief at the death of a woman to whom he was briefly married.
He also wrote science fiction, as well as the Narnia Chronicles for children, which subtly reflected his hard-won Christian faith.
If he could be testy and unpleasant, still, Lewis lived in the real world; he had friends like J. R. R. Tolkien; he had strong opinions. (He liked the old Book of Common Prayer, for instance; he didn't like hymns.)
Lewis is also an example of a contemporary Christian whose work has helped others to come to faith. I once baptized a 65-year-old television executive who had originally started coming to church after he had read Lewis' book, Mere Christianity.
Then, too, The Anglican idea of sainthood is flexible enough that we can apply the term informally to church members whom we have actually known. I would guess that almost every parish would have its own "saints": men and women who were so committed that other church members felt privileged just to be around them.
I remember when I came to Incarnation in 1985, the parish secretary used to refer to the long-time head of our Building Committee, John Holt, as "St. John."
Now anyone who had to work with this man learned that though he was physically tiny, he had a massive sense of the right way to do things. You argued with John at your peril! Yet he did so much for the church — from the memorial plaque to a former rector you see to your right on the church wall to the furnishings in the parish living room where we have coffee on Sundays.
Last summer, I read a draft of the soon-to-be-published history of the Church of the Incarnation. It was a humbling experience. All the things our founders and forebears did to build this church. All the money they raised, all the outreach projects they launched and carried out — ranging from a health clinic in Kip's Bay to foreign missions, to endowed beds at St. Luke's Hospital and buildings at Barnard College.
How hard they worked! Even in the various periods in our parish history when population shifts caused the congregation to dwindle. Even then, there were "saints" who kept the light of Christ shining on.
It's sobering to think of them. But it's also inspiring. Like the cherished loved ones being remembered at the altar today, our forebears prepared the way for us. They are heroes, spiritual heroes who help us to worship the God who inspired them and who continues to comfort and sustain us, today.
For, if we're lucky, remembrance of their devotion will give us a sense of the eternal destiny they found. In one of his writings, C.S. Lewis notes how difficult it is to put into words the vision of Heaven.
He writes that "How it may be for great saints and mystics I cannot tell. But for others the conception of that Vision [of Heaven] is a difficult and precarious extrapolation from a very few ambiguous moments in our earthly experience ..."
As the Bible says, "We know not what we shall be." Even so, Lewis suggests that, "we may be sure that we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences are only like penciled lines on paper. If our experiences vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape; these experiences disappear, not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blinds, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun."
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.