“What Makes a Saint a Saint?”
Matthew 23:1-12
11/2/08
So, we just celebrated Halloween on Friday, October 31st
(otherwise known as Reformation Day). Perhaps you have children
or grandchildren who dressed up for the occasion. Maybe you
remember how you used to dress up when you were younger. Maybe it
was as a pirate or a princess, a monster or an alien. But maybe
it was as one of the characters of the Bible - perhaps Noah, Moses,
Daniel, King Solomon, Queen Esther, or the Virgin Mary. You can
probably imagine what the costumes for such individuals might look
like, as we have seen these people depicted for us many times in movies
and pictures. But what if someone were to ask you to put together
a costume that depicted a saint - not any particular saint, just a
saint? What would such a costume look like? How do you
picture a saint?
Many things might come to mind. Some when
picturing saints see them with a hallow of light shining upon their
heads. Some picture saints as very pious, holy people, who, if
they sin at all, commit very little sins. Some picture saints as
angels, who’ve died and gone to heaven. Still others
picture saints as people who have some kind of direct line to God and
who are given remarkable abilities to perform miracles. For many
people, saints are individuals who have little to do with the ordinary,
mundane affairs of this life; but their eyes are always directed
upwards towards heaven. They’re always at prayer, always
reading the Bible, always helping others, always avoiding evil in
whatever form it appears.
The Pharisees of Jesus’ day had their own idea
of what a saint should look like. A saint to them was one who
looked and acted very pious, holy, and religious. He was one who
gave the appearance of keeping not only the ten commandments, but also
the traditions of the religious authorities. In addition to
publicly displaying a life of moral purity and obedience to the Law,
there was also a certain outward look that a saint had to have.
They had to wear a costume. For the Pharisees this included
wearing broad phylacteries (A phylactery was a small leather box
containing Hebrew texts written on vellum, worn by Jewish men at
morning prayer as a reminder to keep the Law. The broader the
phylactery, the more Scriptures it appeared you were carrying
around.) Their costume also included wearing long fringes, a
reference to a religious garment that was worn as prominently as
possible in order to display one’s devotion to God. This is
what the Pharisees thought a saint should look like in their day, and
it’s the image they tried to conform to. For them as long
as you looked the part, as long as you kept up the appearance of a
saint, you were a saint. The keeping up of appearances included
taking the places of honor at feasts along with the best seats in the
synagogues, greeting and being greeted by the right sort of people
while out and about in the public marketplaces, and making sure
everyone knew their title and referred to them by it.
But Jesus makes it clear that this was all a
show. It was one big costume party, a religious performance that
deceived not only others into thinking that these Pharisees were
saints, but one which deceived even the the Pharisees themselves into
thinking that they were saints. Unfortunately, we Christians can
get caught up in this kind of costume party, too, and fall into the
performance mode, in which we attempt not only to deceive others into
thinking that we’re saints because of our good behavior, but even
trying to deceive God into considering us to be saints because of our
pious and holy living. But God isn’t deceived. While
we may fool others, we can’t fool Him. He sees right
through our costumes to what lies underneath, so that the only ones we
end up deceiving before Him is ourselves.
What God sees under our costumes is anything but
saintly. Jesus sees right into our hearts and declares just what
He said through the Prophet Jeremiah, that “The heart is
deceitful above all things, and desperately sick...” From
it come “evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality,
theft, false witness, and slander.” And so, there’s
no costume we could put together for ourselves that could hide this
mess from God. The first attempt was made by Adam and Eve, who
used a bunch of fig leaves as their costume to try to hide their sin
from God. But God knew what they had done, and He knows what you
and I have done. He knows that you and I are no saints by nature
and that there’s nothing that we can do to make ourselves saints
in His eyes. We’re sinners through and through.
But so were the so-called “saints” of
the Bible. Allow me to describe to you some of the
“saintly” behavior of these so-called holy people of
God. Let’s begin with Noah. He got into a drunken
stupor after the flood and lay around naked in his tent. While
his son Ham made fun of him, his sons Shem and Japheth went and covered
him up, much to their embarrassment. Then there was
Abraham. He was an idolater before God called him, and though he
was declared righteous for believing God’s promises, on two
different occasions he lied about his relationship to his wife, Sarah,
saying that she was his sister; he did this because he was afraid that
if the Egyptians and then later the Philistines found out that she was
his wife they’d kill him. Then, like father like son, Isaac
did the same thing, lying about his relationship with his wife,
Rebekah, telling the king of the Philistines that she was his sister,
for the same reason that Abraham had lied about Sarah. Some
saints, huh?? But let’s not forget Jacob, Isaac’s
son, who deceived his blind father into thinking that he was his
brother, Esau, in order that he might receive the blessing of the
inheritance. Another saintly father and son pair is King David,
the adulterer and murderer, and King Solomon the idolater, who went
after the false gods of his many foreign wives. Isaiah the
prophet confessed that he was a man of unclean lips living among a
people of unclean lips. Daniel confessed both the sin of his
people as well as his own sin. Mary, too, the mother of our Lord,
confessed that she also needed a Savior, and St. Paul confessed himself
to be the chief of sinners. And yes, even St. Peter, the first
Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, revealed his sinfulness in an act of
hypocrisy which compromised the Gospel.
And we could go on. In fact, every so-called
saint in the Bible looks more like a sinner than a saint. Instead
of looking like the Pharisees or walking around with the Scriptures in
their hands all the time with hallows around their heads, saints appear
dirty, messy, and vulgar. They’re no different than you and
I; in fact, they’re just like you and I. And in some cases
they might even appear to be worse than you and I. But those who
try to look like saints end up being even more severely rebuked by the
Lord than those who don’t. Jesus eats with tax collectors
and sinners, but ends up calling the Pharisees a bunch of hypocrites, a
brood of vipers, and children of the devil. And yet, anyone who
tries to point the finger of judgment at them gets that finger pointed
right back at them. We’re all chiefs of sinners before God,
wallowing naked in the filth of our sin with nothing with which to
cover ourselves before God.
So, is there any such thing as a saint? It
would appear that the saints are all sinners. How is it that they
can be called saints? What makes a saint a saint? Well, it
should be obvious that we can’t make ourselves saints. The
only one who can make a sinner a saint is God. And it’s
evident that He does this, because He calls Christians saints.
St. Paul often begins his epistles with the words, “To all the
saints in Christ Jesus who are at...” and then he names the
city. So, how did these sinners get to be called saints?
How does God make a sinner a saint? He does it by declaring you
righteous through faith in His promises. This is the same way all
the sinners of the Scriptures got to be called saints. Like
Abraham, they believed God’s promises, and He credited that to
them as righteousness. The promises that God makes to His saints
all find their ‘yes,’ their fulfillment, in Jesus
Christ. He was the Seed promised to Adam and Eve, the same Seed
promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Son promised to David, and
the Suffering Servant proclaimed by the prophets. It’s He
who’s now come in the flesh, given His life on the cross, and
risen again from the dead, so that through faith in Him and His promise
of forgiveness, life, and salvation, God declares you holy, righteous,
and blameless. He declares you to be a saint.
If you want to see what a saint is supposed to look
like, though, don’t look at yourself or any other sinner; look at
Jesus, God in the flesh. While all the saints are sinners, Jesus,
the Son of God, is not. He alone exhibits true holiness.
The Scripture says that He was holy, innocent, unstained, separated
from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He’s called
the holy One of God. He’s called the holy and righteous
One. He’s called these things, not because God’s
holiness and righteousness were given to Him, like it’s given to
the saints, but because He is in Himself as God holy and righteous by
nature. We are told that He was tempted in all things as we are,
yet He was without sin. God the Father declared Him to be His
beloved Son with whom He was well-pleased. Jesus pleased His
Father, because everything He did was done in obedience to His
Father’s will, from fulfilling the commandments, to preaching
God’s Word, to laying down His life on the cross as the sacrifice
for our sins. As the radiance of the glory of God and the exact
imprint of His nature, Jesus perfectly demonstrated what it is to be
holy, righteous, and blameless before God.
But how does that help you and me as sinners?
How does it help us to know how holy Jesus is? It
doesn’t. In fact, it would normally mean judgment for
us. But Jesus doesn’t show you how holy He is only to show
you how unholy you are. He shows His holiness for you, because
it’s the holiness He gives to you. In this way Jesus’
holiness helps you, because it has become yours. It was given to
you at your Baptism. There, as St. Paul says, you were clothed
with Christ. Going back to the costume analogy, before when you
tried to cover your sinfulness before God with your own self-made
costumes you failed. God could see right through any attempts on
your part to look holy before Him. But by way of your Baptism God
has given you the costume of Christ. This is no costume that you
provide for yourself, as Adam and Eve did in the garden, but this one
is provided for you by God, the way He provided for Adam and Eve
garments of animal skins to take the place of the garments of leaves
which they had made for themselves. The garment you are now
clothed with is the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who took away your sin
in His body on His cross, the only garment through which God cannot see
your sin. When He sees you He sees Christ and His holiness.
For this reason also, you are called a saint, a holy one of God.
Now, it’s not that we are no longer
sinners. Far from it! To the surprise of many and as was
earlier demonstrated from the Scriptures, the lives of the saints are
marked by sin. We don’t appear to be the saints that we
have been declared to be by God through faith in Jesus Christ.
That’s because we are still sinners, sinners who have been
clothed with the holiness of Christ in our Baptism, but sinners all the
same. We’re still the dirty, messy, and vulgar people by
nature that we’ve always been. Though given new hearts, we
still have the old ones that are full of filth. We’re
saints and sinners simultaneously in this life. In the next life
we’ll be free from the sinner part and will only be saints.
But for now, when saints find that they are living more like sinners
than saints, the first thing they do is confess their sins to the Lord,
then they hear His words of forgiveness, then with His help given them
by the Holy Spirit, they begin to live like the saints that they are in
Christ. They love, accept, and forgive their fellow
sinner/saints, and they live as ambassadors of Christ in their various
vocations, speaking the word about Jesus crucified for our salvation to
all who ask us to give a reason for the hope that we have in Him.
So, don’t worry when you see yourself or your
fellow saints wallowing in the filth of sin and clomping around in the
ordinary, mundane affairs of this life. Rather, see both them and
yourself in Christ, clothed with His holiness. The saints, after
all, are the body and Bride of Christ. Though her garments appear
to be stained and full of blemishes, spots, and wrinkles in this life,
the Bride of Christ is beautiful to Him. With His blood He
cleansed her through the washing of water with the Word, so that He
might present her to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or
any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
That’s you, that’s all the saints in Jesus Christ.
Amen.