The Sunday after All Saints, Year A

All Saints Sunday, Year A: Ecclesiasticus 44:1–10, 13–14; Psalm 149; Revelation 7:2–4, 9 – 17; Matthew 5:1–12
"SAINTS: WORKERS IN THE LABORATORY OF GOD, THE CHURCH”
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL; Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 (by Mr. Barney Bruce, Licensed Lay Worship Leader)

“Let us now praise famous men and women”, workers in God’s laboratory, the Church.

Have you ever thought of the saints in ages past as workers in a laboratory?

As I prayed about this sermon, and thought about the saints in the Church’s history, and yes, even the saints I have known in my own life, I think the image fits….For the saints are those people who delve into the mysteries of God, seeking to apply the wisdom that comes from God to our everyday lives.

Lab workers do the same thing: they seek to take the wisdom of the way the world was created, and apply it to everyday situations and problems.

Take, for example, some famous people from the past, who are the discoverers of things that have made human life safer, more enjoyable, and more disease-free: We could name Thomas Edison, whose laboratory is preserved at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan. Edison labored in his lab, and in the process of painstaking research, was able to take the elemental things of the world like electricity, magnetism, and other things to create the incandescent light bulb and the phonograph. Likewise, Jonas Salk worked in his lab to discover a vaccine for polio 50-some-odd years ago.

These are the saints of modern science that we can name. In secular terms, they would be saints with a big “S”.

But there are many others who work, day-by-day, whose names we do not know, but who seek to find answers to many of the problems humankind faces today. As they do so, they work with the basic elements of the universe as God designed it to find ways to relieve suffering, to make life better and safer.

Lab workers need a lab in which to work, a place were the tools of discovery are all available. They need a place where they can gather together, working together, each person’s strengths being brought to bear on the problems that lay before them. Lab workers need a place where they can share their successes and their failures. They need a place where one person’s insights can help another worker’s lack of understanding. A scientific lab fulfills many functions and many roles.

The Church is God’s laboratory. It is the place where the more seasoned explorers of God’s truth lead others. It is a place of spiritual apprenticeship, if you will. It is a place where the saints can rejoice in their successes, but openly admit their failures. It is the place where we can watch God working in each other’s lives, so that we can recognize God working in our own lives in similar ways.

The tools of discovery are to be found in the Church: God’s word written, the Holy Scriptures, are heard in each worship service, are studied for insight into the way God created human beings, and for wisdom in living in accordance with God’s commands. The Holy Spirit,enlighten s Christian believers as they seek to understand more and more of the wisdom of the God who created us, and who created everything that is.

The Church is God’s laboratory. But God does not intend for the work that is done in God’s lab to stay within the walls of the workplace.

No, the scientific lab’s reason for existence is to make life outside the lab better. Similarly, the Church’s reason for existence is to make a difference in the world outside its doors.

Many of the Church’s great lab workers, the saints we apply the title “saint” (with a big “S” to), are precisely those who made a difference outside the doors of the spiritual workplace. Consider St. Francis of Assisi, for example….Like many saints of his time and place, Francis was a shining beacon of light in an otherwise pretty dark time….Francis called Christians to return to their spiritual roots, if you will, calling them to a life that is free of ties to material wealth, to power and prestige. The Church of Francis’ day was in love with all three of these: material wealth, power and prestige.

Now it is our time in the lab. We are the modern-day discoverers of God’s timeless truths. We are called to take our place in the lab, where we read the record of the discoveries of ages past, as God’s workers in the same lab in ages past wrote down their record of discovery. We know that record of discovery as the Bible. We are called to take our place in the lab, where we study their struggles, their failures, and their successes. For we are the inheritors of their work, and we benefit from knowing their stories. There’s no need to duplicate their work, though we are called to build on the results of it.

But just as the challenges of a modern-day technician in a scientific lab are different from the workers of generations ago, so, too, are the challenges we face in the Church different from theirs.

In some cases, the challenges the outside world presents us as 21st century Christians are more complex than the challenges of years ago.

Yet the basics of the faith that sustained and empowered the saints of ages past remain the same. The way God designed the world spiritually remains constant. The challenge for us is to reapply those same principles and that same wisdom to new and more complex problems.

The saints that we remember mastered just those sorts of challenges are the ones we remember, like St. Francis of Assisi.

But Francis and the other masters of discovery were simply following in Jesus’ footsteps. For Jesus is the founder of the lab, and what we remember Him for most particularly is His ability to apply God’s wisdom in new ways, addressing deeper human concerns and needs in the process.

Essentially, that’s the “bottom line” for the Beatitudes (Matthew 5: 1 – 12), for the Beatitudes seek to lead us into a deeper understanding of the wisdom of God. At first glance, each of these sayings looks like foolishness to the world, like a puzzle that a technician might face in a scientific lab. But the disciple of Jesus discovers the truths that Jesus taught in the Beatitudes and elsewhere through painstaking and careful work in the lab that our Lord founded, the Church. Eventually, the puzzle is figured out, and the ways God intended us to follow and to know make sense.

We said a minute ago that it’s now our turn in the lab….All Saints Day is a perfect time to remember and recall those Christians who have been influential in our own lives. Would that list include a Christian parent or relative, a dear friend, or perhaps even a priest? Was a Sunday School teacher the source of God’s wisdom? Was it a grandparent or a coach the one who helped us to discover the truths of God in new and refreshing ways?

We, too, are adding to the record of God’s work in our own lives. We are writing our own chapters as we seek to apply God’s timeless wisdom to the problems and challenges we face. If we’re doing the job right, we will record our failures along with our successes. We will admit that the problems and challenges we face prompt many of the searches for answers that we seek. We will rely on the wisdom of Holy Scripture, which is the record of the saints in ages past, as we press on in our quest for wisdom and understanding. For Holy Scripture is the textbook which guides our own process of discovery. Our findings are like a student’s notebook, reflections on the textbook, the Bible, that contains the master library of the wisdom of God.

So, let us “now praise famous men and women”, the saints of God, those in ages past whose names we know, and those whose names have been forgotten, but who are known to God alone. Let us praise the saints of God in our own lives in ages past, and let us praise the saints of God with whom we rub elbows everyday.

AMEN.