Minnesota Landscape Arboretum October 10, 2024

“Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bushel basket. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others,  that they may see your good deeds  and glorify  your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:15-16

I’d never noticed George’s limp before he left a crowded meeting.  But, in that moment, I saw both his vulnerability and his place in the communion of saints.  

I thought of his determination and commitment,  in spite of significant health problems,  to make the world a better place . . . And  the wisdom with which he tackled problems of hunger and self-sufficiency.

In my mind’s eye, I saw him as one in that long, long, line of witnesses through the ages, of saints whose lives have blessed others . . . Part of an unbroken chain of faithful followers of Jesus.

If we are fortunate, throughout our lives, we will encounter people who challenge us to goodness, who inspire us to generosity and whose lives are filled with  compassion, kindness and love.

Among us are those who reflect the light of Christ shining in and through them.  Some continue among us today, and others like George, have passed from this life to carry on their work in another.

We call them saints, through whom we have experienced  something of the essence  of God.

Frederick Buechner writes, “To be a saint is to live not with the hands clenched to grasp, to strike, to hold tight to a life that is always slipping away the more tightly we hold it; but it is to live with the hands stretched out both to give and to receive with gladness. To be a saint is to work and weep for the broken and suffering of the world, but it is also to be strangely light of heart in the knowledge that there is something greater than the world that mends and renews. Maybe more than anything else, to be a saint is to know joy. Not happiness that comes and goes with the moments that occasion it, but joy that is always there like an underground spring no matter how dark and terrible the night. To be a saint is to be a little out of one’s mind, which is a very good thing to be a little out of from time to time. It is to live a life that is always giving itself away and yet is always full.” Frederick Buechner, Sermon “To Be a Saint”, The Magnificent Defeat 1966