Singing the Song of the Saints of God

November 01, 2020

All Saints' Day

These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

 A few days ago, President Trump tweeted a letter of support he had received from thirteen very senior Ultra-Orthodox rabbis from Brooklyn and its environs. The letter was written back in the summer and was composed in a spirit of gratitude for the President’s comments that he had stated that ‘houses of worship and religious institutions should be considered essential’.

 The thirteen signatories describe themselves as being “those that pray for your success and seek your welfare”, and in their final paragraph, they call on God to “lift up higher and higher…President Donald J. Trump”. All of this makes the letter intriguing to read, but what caught my eye most significantly was the assertion of these deeply learned rabbis that, “God rewards each of us ‘measure for measure’ - we are recompensed according to the nature of our deeds.”

 I am no expert on Judaism, but in Christian terms, the sense of transaction implicit in the words of these rabbis could not but remind me of what is often called ‘the prosperity gospel’, associated with such uber-wealthy TV evangelists as the late Oral Roberts, or, more recently, Joel Osteen of the Lakewood Church in Houston, who, I am told, once wrote to the members of his church that, “God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us…”.

Now Lakewood Church is not in the kind of ecclesiastical tradition that we enjoy as Episcopalians, and which to some degree we share with our sisters and brothers in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, and the word ‘priest’ is not be one which its members use for their pastors or clergy. But it is, I think, the nearest word to describe Mr Osteen that we have in that dated but still much-loved hymn we just heard on the virtual lips of our choristers.

To the best of my knowledge, Mr Osteen is not a doctor or a shepherdess. I am not aware that he has served in the armed forces, so he’s probably not a soldier - and unless there have been some extraordinary goings on in Houston in the last 24 hours or so, I don’t believe that he has recently been ‘slain by a fierce wild beast’. But today is the day we are called to sing - to sing ‘of the saints of God’, and thus it falls to us once again to remind ourselves just what it might mean to be saintly.

Because, as Lesbia Scott, that English wife, mother and author from last century reminds us so delightfully, “They lived not only in ages past, there are hundreds of thousands still…”  and, indeed, she gives us a good number of clues about what it might mean to be a saint. Thus we learn that the saints of God are “patient and brave and true”.

We are told that the saints would toil and fight and live and die “for the Lord they loved and knew”. We are told that “the world is bright” because of the “joyous saints who love to do Jesus’ will”. And most importantly, perhaps, when Lesbia Scott made her own children and many generations of Sunday School children sing this precious song of the saints of God, she told us that sainthood is aspirational: “there’s not any reason - no, not the least, why I shouldn’t be one too.”

After all, as another preacher - a slightly unlikely one, perhaps, to whom I will return in a couple of minutes - as another preacher has remarked, “You don’t have to be of high station to be a good [person]…”

That’s certainly true. But - if you aspire to being a saint - you do, perhaps, have to have some clue as to what you are talking about. And you do, perhaps, need to follow the well known advice that originated with Aesop some centuries before Christ, you do need to be careful what you wish for…

Because, while Lesbia Scott was quite correct that there need be no reason why you and I “shouldn’t be one too”, being ‘a saint of God’ - being one of the great multitude we celebrate on this great feast of All Saints - being a saint does not require the financial worth and status of a Joel Osteen, but it nevertheless comes at a price. A price which is hinted at in those most famous words of Jesus that help us define what it means to be blessed. For, as we were just reminded, God’s blessing is found amongst the poor in spirit, the meek, it is found with the pure in heart, with those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and with those who mourn.

And Jesus also tells us that God’s blessing is a personal matter and not just an abstract one: “Blessed are you…” says Jesus - blessed are you - if you get flak from the world for being ‘a saint of God’. Blessed are you when you are attacked - verbally or physically - because you are prepared to live out the costly Good News of the kingdom of God. Because that, according to Jesus, is being ‘prophetic’ - that is what the life of faith is about - that is what being saintly is all about. 

Pope Francis recently wrote a letter about how to live the life of faith to the 1.3 billion members of his worldwide flock. Inspired by the writings and the life of Francis of Assisi, whose name Cardinal Bergoglio took to be his papal name when he was elected, this ‘encyclical’ (to give it is churchy name) runs to more than the 141 words of the Beatitudes. It runs to more, even, than the 194 words of Lesbia Scott’s hymn.

But, when all is said and done, this pastoral letter is simply Pope Francis’ attempt to ‘sing a song of the saints of God’. And while the Bishop of Rome has no authority in the world of Episcopalians and Anglicans, his words deserve careful attention from any who seek to follow Christ.

Appropriately enough, the encyclical was released to the church on the feast day of Francis of Assisi, October 4^th. I do not know if the proximity of this date to the US election was a factor in the pope’s timing, but he is - at least in one sense of the word - unashamedly political, for the fifth chapter of the encyclical is entitled “A better kind of politics” - by which he means a kind of politics “truly at the service of the common good”. Thus he calls for action - for political action - to bring about an end to global hunger and to human trafficking, to name but two issues he addresses in this missive. 

The Pope is clear that it is not the place of the Church to remain ‘on the sidelines’ of politics. Without pursuing party politics, he is crystal clear that all of life has a political dimension, and for him, “the task of politics…is to find a solution to all that attacks fundamental human rights”. The encyclicalruns to 287 rather dense paragraphs, but, in summary, it is a song of generous love in community, and an attack on self-interest and all that tears apart the common good. It is, in short, a song of grace - a song of the saints of God.

There’s only one problem. While it can be easy to sing about it, when it comes to doing more than singing, grace does not always make you popular. That is why Jesus had to end the Beatitudes by saying, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you…” And that is why John - that John who had such an extraordinary revelation from which we read a few minutes ago - that is why John found himself being quizzed about the true nature of that great multitude that was robed in white. For, as the elder explains to him in his vision, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal…”

None of which is to say that the only way of being a saint is to be persecuted or martyred. As Lesbia Scott reminded us, “You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea…” But the song that the saints of God are called to sing - and thus the song that can also be sung about the saints of God - that song is the song of those who truly understand what it means to know grace and to live by grace.

Which is the problem with any kind of theology which descends to the transactional. We should remember that the Haredi, or Ultra-Orthodox community are a minority within Judaism. A wise rabbi here in Chicago explained to me that the Jewish understanding of how God rewards us for our deeds is a good deal more nuanced than that expressed in the letter to the President, and reminded me that the political viewpoint of the Haredi community does not typify that of the wider Jewish community in the United States.

And I am sure you do not need me to tell you that the so-called ‘prosperity gospel’ is a travesty of the Good News of Jesus Christ - because transactional theology is the polar opposite of a theology filled and fueled by grace. Which means that if Mr Osteen aspires to sing a song of the saints of God, I hope he understands that he might need to find new lyrics. And if he wants to know to whom he might look for inspiration in finding the right song to sing, he could do worse than turn to the example of the late Reverend Clementa Pinckney.

Clem Pinckney’s song was a song that explicitly wove together an attempt at what the pope’s encyclical calls ‘better politics’ with the life of the church, for he was both a state senator in South Carolina, and the senior pastor of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston - positions he happily held in tandem until that fateful evening in June, 2015, when he and eight of his church members were gunned down as he led a Bible study. You’ll recall, I am sure, that the ‘unlikely’ preacher I quoted just now, was the preacher at his funeral - Barack Obama.

In this remarkable sermon, President Obama reflected on Senator Pinckney’s work representing “a sprawling swath of the Lowcountry, a place that has long been one of the most neglected in America.  A place still wracked by poverty and inadequate schools; a place where children can still go hungry and the sick can go without treatment.”

President Obama preached for around 35 minutes or so. He spoke of the difficulties the senator faced - of how, “His position in the minority party meant the odds of winning more resources for his constituents were often long.  His calls for greater equity were too often unheeded, the votes he cast were sometimes lonely.  But he never gave up.  He stayed true to his convictions.” And because he knew the song of the saints of God, President Obama was justly able to say that despite these hurdles, Senator Pinckney “would not grow discouraged.”

President Obama also spoke about Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who committed the nine murders. He spoke of how this deluded young man who was ‘blinded by hatred’, “failed to comprehend what Reverend Pinckney so well understood - the power of God’s grace.”

President Obama’s sermon was, to my mind, one of the most important pieces of oratory heard in recent years both within and well beyond the pulpit of a church. But sometimes words are not enough, and at the end of the sermon, when words were not, on their own, adequate to sum up all that needed to be known about Clementa Pinckney and his murder - to sum up what it means “to have come out of the great ordeal” and to wash robes “in the blood of the lamb”, President Obama stopped talking, and he sang. He sang the ageless song of the saints of God, for he sang about grace - Amazing grace - how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost and now am found, was blind - but now I see.

And the power of song resonated out from that extraordinary liturgy. One person it reached was Zoe Mulford - an American folk-singer now living in northern England - who was so struck by this remarkable moment she wrote a song about the Charleston massacre and the funeral which followed. She wrote a simple song, with the briefest of refrains: “the President sang Amazing Grace”. So powerful was Miss Mulford’s song that it was rapidly performed by a number of more famous artists such as Joan Baez and the Kronos Quartet, and you may well have encountered it across social media in recent weeks.

And when asked about her motivation in writing the song, Mulford remarked, “We need to do more than sing - but singing is a start.”

Which, of course, is why Lesbia Scott wrote hymns for children. Because children grow up, and they take their songs with them as they mature. And that is why you and I are called to ‘sing a song of the saints of God’ - because you and I are called to aspire to be saints of God, which means singing the song and then living the life of the saints of God. 

And so, on this day of all days - this day when we celebrate how that call to sainthood was sung and lived in such a great multitude “that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages…” - on this day of all days, God sends us out to keep that grace-filled song alive and audible.

God sends us out to sing on the streets, and in homes, and in offices, and in schools and colleges, and in places of wealth and in places of poverty. God sends us out to meet people “in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea.”

God sends us out to sing of God’s grace wherever we might find ourselves - including, let’s be absolutely clear, in the voting booth - because the song of God’s grace is the song of the saints, and the world needs to hear it so very urgently. For it is the song that reminds us that we are blessed, it is the song that reminds us that we are loved, and it is the song that reminds us that whatever the world may throw at us - we are not alone. 

For, as John saw in that great revelation, when we sing that song we take our place as part of that great multitude that no one can count.

And if we sing that song well, then one day, when our church is fuller and our streets are fuller - one day as we are singing the song of the saints of God, someone will hear that sweet music, and walk into the back of our cathedral. And they’ll look at us as we are, gathered in these pews: women and men, old and young, black and white, gay and straight, strong and weak. They’ll look at us, and they’ll say to one of the ushers at the back, “Who are these? Where have they come from?”

And I hope and pray that they’ll hear the reply, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

What song will they hear you singing today?