In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
A theologian has said that “we inoculate the world with a mild form of Christianity, and it becomes immune to the real thing.” We do this in so many ways, by using “Christian” as an adjective to describe music, or ethics, or politics, and thereby make faith subservient to whatever the main thing is. Or we get swept up in the tide of individualism and think that we can take the bits and pieces of faith that we like, discarding the parts we don’t, and come up with our own versions of the faith. As the philosopher Voltaire put it, “In the beginning God created humanity in his own image, and we have been trying to repay the favor ever since.” Or sometimes we dilute our faith by idolatry, where God is one deity among others. Those other gods can be country, political party, money, success, appearances, you name it, and we’ll worship it.
The result is, as that opening quote suggests, a mild form of Christianity that bears little resemblance to the Jewish Messiah who lived briefly, died violently, and rose unexpectedly. A mild faith rarely spurs to forgive our enemies, or ourselves, rarely will it move us to give generously, rarely will it focus our attention on the least and the lost in our society. In CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, an older demon is counseling a younger demon on how to lead humans away from God. At one point the older Screwtape says, “Talk to him about ‘moderation in all things.’ If you can get him to the point of thinking that ‘religion is all very well up to a point,’ you can feel quite happy about his soul. A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.” Or, as the modern theologian Stanely Hauerwas has put it, “A Christianity that makes no earthly difference is profoundly offensive.”
Today, the Church marks the Feast of All Saints, a day on which we celebrate and thank God for the light of Jesus that has shone through the lives of men and women, making a profound earthly difference. All Saints ought not be confused with All Souls, which we will celebrate tomorrow evening, on November 2nd, at 5:30pm in our Memorial Garden. On All Saints, we celebrate the Church Triumphant and those who are shining examples and guideposts for us as we strive to follow Jesus Christ. On All Saints, we remember people like St. Mary, St. Augustine, St. Cuthbert, and St. Thomas Becket.
By contract, All Souls is a much more tender day on which we remember our own dearly departed and the impact they had on us personally. On All Souls, we remember grandpa, our Sunday School teachers, and Aunt Mary. All Souls is a day on which we can remember that grief never goes away, that we still miss them. If All Saints is about trumpets, then All Souls is about tears, and both are needed in the life of faith.
On All Saints we focus on saints, not heroes. Hollywood loves a good hero story—strong, victorious, and powerful people who can say “mission accomplished” at the end of the day. But today isn’t All Heroes’ Day. No, it’s All Saints. A saint isn’t someone who has a mission. Saints aren’t goal–driven, they aren’t often powerful, and, a lot of the time, they aren’t successful by any standard measure. Instead, the saint is faithful; they aren’t chasing a goal, but a purpose. And that purpose is to live in the difference that Christ makes.
This phrase, “the difference that Christ makes,” is, for me, one of the most important ways to understand what Christianity is all about. Following Jesus isn’t something we do in order to be better, nicer, or more successful people. That’s transactional. There’s nothing we’re supposed to “get” from faith. Instead, faith in Jesus Christ is about making us different.
You all know that I’m a big “Grace” guy. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times—but it’s so easy to forget in our culture, so it’s worth repeating: You are God’s beloved, full stop. There is nothing you need to do, think, or pray in order to receive, earn, or keep God’s love. And, by extension, because your salvation and dignity are not things you earned, they are not something that can ever be taken away. Christianity is not a religion that tells us what we are supposed to do, it’s a religion that tells us what God has done for us. The formula of Christianity is not “if–then,” it’s “because–therefore.” And the “therefore” is the difference Christ makes.
Again, there’s no “works” for us to do in following Jesus, but if there’s something for us to lean into, it’s this blessed difference that Jesus opens to us. On this point, I’m following the work of Hauerwas, who I mentioned earlier. He writes, “The theologian’s task,” and today on All Saints we might say, “The saint’s task,” “is to make it difficult to be a Christian. It is also to make it equally difficult to be a non–Christian, that is, to present an account of Christianity that shows the difference that being a Christian makes and how that difference may intrigue and challenge those who are not Christian.”
And this is who the saints are for us—they point us towards the difference Christ makes. Another theologian has said that the saints are our evidence for God; that God makes the divine reality known through human lives. The saints are those for whom their lives make no sense if not for the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ. As we heard in the reading from Revelation, the saints are those for whom the Lamb is their shepherd; not the warrior, not the billionaire, not the king. But the lowly, weak, and slaughtered lamb is the different one that they follow.
Think about Perpetua, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, Maximillan Kolbe, or Jonathan Daniels—all martyrs whose deaths are not remembered as tragedies, but inspiring witnesses to Resurrection faith. They believed and trusted that Christ would make all the difference in their deaths, and so they prayed “not my will, but thy will be done” with their very lives as the collateral.
Or how about Martin Luther King, also a martyr, or Patrick, or Harriet Tubman, and Desmond Tutu who took enormous risks in speaking up, in getting into good trouble, in forgiving their enemies. Without the difference they learned from Jesus, their lives are absurd.
And then there’s Hilda, Francis, Benedict, Julian, and Teresa who gave their lives to teaching and to serving others in ways so odd, so beautifully different that centuries later, we still draw inspiration from the light of Christ that shone through their lives.
And how might we explain or describe the difference that Christ makes? Well, Jesus himself tells us: “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” A note on translation, “righteousness” is the same word as “justice;” so, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the persecuted.”
It is essential that we read these Beatitudes, as they are often called, not as requirements, not as a strategy, and not as instructions. Instead, they are indicators that one is living in the difference that Christ makes. Because those are not the values of this world. We give out awards for being the best, the fastest, the richest, the biggest, the boldest. But Jesus says that his kingdom doesn’t run on that logic. Instead, the kingdom is described by meekness, by mercy, by poverty, by persistence in the face of rejection, by longing for a just and equitable society.
We don’t do any of those things in order to earn our place or receive a reward, rather they describe what true happiness, what true blessedness is about in the blessedly different kingdom of Jesus. And the same is true of the Baptismal Covenant, which Episcopalians tend to idolize and want to put up on stone tablets like others want to do of the Ten Commandments. The Baptismal Covenant isn’t about what we have to do or are supposed to do. Instead of being prescriptive, the Beatitudes and the Covenant are descriptive. When we baptize someone, we recite the Baptismal Covenant as a reminder of the difference that we are being immersed and initiated into.
This difference is our witness. I’m not big on mission statements for churches, but if any church needs one, it is this: Our mission is the difference Christ makes. It is what our world is desperately searching everywhere for. Salvation will not be found in winning the lottery, it will not be found in a cure, and it will not be found on a ballot.
The difference that Christ makes is in forgiving our enemies, rather than seeking vengeance. It is in giving, rather than focusing on what we receive. It is in trusting what Jesus has done instead of worrying about what we have to do. It is in knowing that the worst thing that happens to us will not be the last thing that happens to us. It is in living as if love is the only thing that matters, because it is. And all of these differences are precisely what we see in the life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus has made all the difference for us and for our salvation. Flannery O’Connor is reported to have once paraphrased Jesus by saying, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”
There’s a passage in the Passion of Jesus where Peter is denying that he knows or is associated with Jesus. But one of the bystanders still accuses Peter saying, “You must be one of his followers, we can tell by your accent.” The saints are those who have a Jesus–accent. Mercy is on their tongues. Love is in their speech. Justice is on their lips. Hope is their accent. And, as St. John the Baptist said, the saints are those whose words and lives proclaim, “He must increase and I must decrease.”
And that, my friends, is not an innocuous, limp, or lukewarm faith. The saints are not revolutionaries, rather they are those who believe that the revolution has already happened in Jesus, and we give God thanks for their witness as we pray for the wisdom and courage to, like them, embrace the weirdness of faith. As it turns out, Christianity is more beautiful, dangerous, and interesting than we might have imagined.
