All Saints
6 Nov 2022
In the 1600’s there lived a Carmelite monk who took the name Brother Lawrence. Before his entry into monastic life he had been a reluctant soldier and a footman to the king’s treasurer. Brother Lawrence was not the sort of saint to which most of us would aspire, but in reality, most of us are very much like him in our deeds and, I would pray, in our spiritual life.
He was born in France and at the remarkably young age of 18 came to understand the nature of God as the one who makes all things new and who takes us from our spiritual death and brings us to new life. Despite living through the horrors of the 30 Years War, he gained and retained the ability to rise above it.
He was a klutz, which endeared him to me as I am also one who cannot seem to master any skill requiring fine motor coordination. I once read that he tried to be a scribe but was so bad at it he was assigned to the kitchen and cooking duties. He reported that he seemed to have a knack for breaking things. It was in the kitchen he excelled, if not as a cook then as a deeply spiritual and caring person. Everything he did was “for God.” Even flipping eggs was a spiritual exercise for him. He found God in peeling potatoes and onions. Perhaps his most profound insight was that God was not limited to churches or monasteries; he told a lay woman that to be with God you only need to converse with him in your heart. Love, agape, was the end all and be all for him.
“In the ways of God thoughts amount to little whereas love accounts for everything…I flip my little omelette in the frying pan for the love of God, and when it’s done, if I have nothing to do, I prostrate myself on the floor and adore my God who gave me the grace to do it, after which I get up happier than a king . Our sanctification depends not on changing our works, but on doing for God what we would normally do for ourselves. “
In his lifetime he became well known locally but was not a famous person. He was not a martyr, not a priest, not a leader. He was a person who had found that profound peace of God at an early age and was a model for those around him. One translator of his words was struck that, what at first seemed to be the writing of someone simple and naïve was in reality that of someone who loved God deeply and “lived life in obedience, humility, and concern for others.”[1]
He is on my list of all-time favorite saints (with a little “s”.)
He lived out what Luke had Jesus declare in the Gospel reading today. While Matthew had Jesus talk about spiritual blessings, Luke’s Jesus is having none of that. His blessings are for the flesh, for the here and now. It is not difficult to understand that we are to do unto others as we would have them do unto ourselves; that is no more than quid pro quo. But that is NOT AT ALL what Jesus is saying.
Listen: LOVE your enemies. Do GOOD to those who hate you. BLESS those who curse you. PRAY for those who mistreat you. Then he goes on to say not only don’t retaliate, but offer up more: your other cheek, the rest of your clothes, what is asked and even what is stolen!! Who among us has done that consistently? Truth be told, I suspect, most Christians have not done it even once. In politics, the term is “pay to play” and we see it every election cycle.
The world in which we live is broken; it was broken in the time of Jesus. This is not what God intended with creation. Jesus came to restore creation and he said it could be done only one way: with love. Love expects nothing in return. Nisi in reditus. Everything you do, do for the sake of love. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is fine as far as it goes. As I look at the world around me, I think I would fall into some sort of ecstasy if that happened. Yet even that is not enough. Go beyond the idea that exchange of this for that is in any way important in the kindom God created and that Jesus taught. Love is an investment for which we expect no return. Economists, pull out your hair! Jesus turned the whole system on its head.
This is what “grace” is all about. The Greek word is charis, which can be translated as “credit” and is the root of charity, but it is not credit with God that we need. We need grace; we need love. There is nothing fair about it. Brother Lawrence had enough bad things happen to him in his early life that he could have become angry and bitter. Instead, he was filled with love and grace. It was that love and grace, the seeing of God and the realization that all things are sacred, that guided his life and touched the lives of those around him. His story is read to this very day, touching the lives of hundreds and thousands of people. Have we not seen people who have had things happen that you would think would make them bitter, angry, vengeful and yet they aren’t. They have found charis, grace, love, agape. That is sainthood; these are people who lived a Kingdom life. Let me be clear: I do not ever, ever accept that someone being abused is bound to stay in an abusive situation. Nor is that what Jesus was preaching, for that confuses love with abuse. Non violent resistance is, however, what Jesus was teaching. Ghandi used Jesus as his model for freeing India from British colonial rule; Martin Luther King used the same teachings for the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s.
This All Saint’s Sunday we name the saints in our midst, and we honor all those who went before us in the Christian journey. No one did it perfectly; some missed the mark widely. I think of family and friends that I have known and I believe they lived as best they could, mostly trying to be just and fair.
Those of us gathered here today, and those gathered in houses of worship elsewhere, will honor All Saint’s day in various ways. I think Luke would be pleased if we honored it by walking the way that Jesus took, and which Brother Lawrence demonstrated was possible for average humans like us, by making love the center of our lives.
[1] Edmonson, Robert J, Translator’s Note, Practicing the Presence of God, (Paraclete, 2007) vii.
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