"What's A Saint?"

John 11:1-6, 17-44

“What’s a Saint?”

One day a man was walking through a beautiful church building with his 4-year-old son.

As they walked, the young boy looked around.

He stopped and was curious about the stained-glass windows that looked so beautiful with their bright colors.

As he looked at the windows, he asked: “Who are all the people in the windows, daddy?”

“They are saints,” said the father.

“What are saints daddy?” the kid asked.

The father was stuck.

How was he going to explain who saints were to a four-year-old boy?

As the boy was still looking up at the windows and the father was still wondering how he would explain who saints are, the young boy shouted out: “I know who saints are daddy.

They are the people that the light shines through.”

Who are the people in your life through whom the light has shined?

Who are the saints that have touched your life with the incredible love of Christ?

Maybe they are still alive.

Maybe they are members of this congregation.

Maybe they have passed on, and you lit a candle in memory of them this morning.

My dad was far from perfect, but he was a person through whom the light of Christ shone.

My father had three young children.

He worked hard all week and had very little time to himself.

So, on Sunday mornings he would take an hour or so for himself while my mother rushed my sisters and I off to Sunday school.

Later, my dad would join us all in worship.

One Sunday, when I was about 5-years-old I asked: “Why do I have to go to Sunday school?

Dad doesn’t go!”

From that day on, my dad went to Sunday school.

Those are the kinds of things saints do.

My dad passed away two years ago.

And even though he is physically gone from this earth, I still feel him with me--cheering me on as he always did--through Jesus Christ the Resurrection and the Life.

I would imagine many of you can relate.

Death is horrible and ugly.

But through Jesus Christ—it is not the end.

Here on All Saints Sunday in the year 2018 we find ourselves looking at an extra-ordinary passage of Scripture.

For, in this Scripture, we come upon a man weeping.

And this man who is weeping is none other than the Son of God Himself!!!

He is the One through Whom and for Whom this entire universe was created.

He is the Word that became flesh and lived among us.

He is One with the Father.

He is God.

And He is weeping for us because He is confronted with the utter hopelessness of our human condition.

His compassion for us is so great that to see us in this lost state is almost too much for Him to bear.

We weren’t created to die.

We weren’t created to live life outside of a relationship with God.

We weren’t created for darkness, brokenness, lost-ness…

…life without meaning…

…a future without hope…

…death, chaos, and despair.

And we see the evidence of this despair all around us.

Every day there are more and more shootings.

Every moment another young person takes their first hit of a drug that will ultimately and completely destroy their life.

Every day more and more human beings are trafficked for sex.

Every day more and more children are destroyed by an evil which is beyond comprehension.

Every day the suicide rate climbs.

Every day the world is a little bit more cold and desolate.

And so, Jesus weeps.

Love incarnate breaks down in tears outside our tombs.

And here lies our hope.

For God so loves the world that God will not give up on us.

God so loves the world that God shares our pain.

“For God so [loves] the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Mary, Martha and Lazarus were basically Jesus’s best friends.

Their house was a home away from home for Jesus.

He ate dinner there.

He relaxed.

He laughed.

He shared life.

And when Lazarus became sick, Mary and Martha sent for Jesus.

But, no matter how hard it must have been for Jesus to do this, so that they might be given the gift of faith, Jesus waits until Lazarus dies in order set out for Bethany.

Martha is the first one to meet up with Jesus when He gets there.

“Lord,” she says to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

“Jesus [says] to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’

Martha answer [s], ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’

Jesus [says] to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’”