'Can one be a saint without God?'

Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on All Saints' Sunday, 2019

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What’s it all about?

            Life?

                        Death?

                                    Meaning?

                                                Purpose?

            Big questions.

The French writer, Albert Camus,

            in his novel La Peste -

                        which was written in 1947 in the aftermath of the Second World War -

asked a big question:

            “Peut-on être un saint sans dieu?”

Great question! (What does it mean?!)

In English it is this:

            "Can one be a saint without God?”

That’s Camus’ question,

            and he goes on to say,

                        “That's the problem, in fact the only problem, I'm up against today."

I guess that for many people

outside, and within the Church,

asking if one can be a saint without God

            is not the most pressing problem they up against.

Other things probably feature somewhat more highly.

But on this All Saints’ Sunday it is an important question.

            Can one be a saint without God?

In other words:

            do you need to believe in God,

                        does there even need to be a God,

                                    for you, or me, to be a saint

            or ‘to do to others as you could have them do to you’?

And that brings us back to what a saint is.

If a saint

            is simply

                        a virtuous or a heroic person,

                        a great role model or an all-round ‘good egg’

            then, frankly,

                        God need not come into it.

And for many people today that is enough.

            I can live my life by a set of ethical norms,

                        even if they’re shifting norms,

                                    which ultimately say that

            if I am a good person, then that’s sufficient.

Or I can just look after Number One

            because there really isn’t anything much beyond me anyway.

For Albert Camus those answers were not enough.

            Can one be a saint without God?

I am not claiming Camus as a Christian, but

            that question posed a problem for him,

            because it got to the heart

                        of what human existence,

                        meaning

                        and purpose

            is all about.

Does it come down to God or not?

Of course,

it does.

The saint

            is one who lives no longer for themselves but for God;

the saint

            is one who so rejoices in

                        and acknowledges

            the gift of life in Christ

            that death cannot conquer them;

            the saint is one so shaped and led by the Holy Spirit

                        that all their points of reference

            take them back to the Father.

The Roman Catholic Church has a very well established process for declaring

            someone to be a saint.

It’s known as Canonisation.

It is when the Church declares that,

            having examined the virtues of a particular man or woman,

they are worthy to be a model for faith;

            that their prayers for us make a real difference in our lives;

                        and that their life is a mirror of the life of Christ.

That last point is the most decisive

            because the saint mirrors the life of Christ,

                        and they do so with a texture

                        and flavour

            that only they can bring to it.

Thanks be to God for those saints, to whom we can put a name,

            and in some cases a face too.

As Anglicans the nearest that we can claim as a ‘saint making process’

            is when someone is baptised.

                        That’s using the word ‘saint’ in a different way.

                        The Church is filled with the saints,

                                    with a small ‘s’,

                        who are being formed as Saints

                                    with a capital ‘S’.

Baptism incorporates us,

            grafts us,

                        into the life of Jesus Christ.

It’s the ultimate declaration that you can only be a saint with God.

            Life,

                        death,

                                    meaning,

                                                purpose:

            they only make sense

                        when we know ourselves to be creatures of God

                                    who are brought into a relationship with him

                        as his sons and daughters.

Made in the image and likeness of God

            as his creatures;

restored in the image and likeness of God

            as his children:

                        his saints

The life of a saint is a sign

            that contradicts

                        the standards, mores and ethos

            of a self-sufficient way of life.

Not all saints were nice;

            some were rude;

                        many would be misfits in contemporary society

but all share the deepest sense that they are utterly dependent

            on God,

                        the source of all being and life,

                        the One for whom we exist.

If you want to be a saint, you’re not going to do it without God.

You cannot make yourself a saint;

            you can only yearn and desire to be a saint.

And that is the deepest yearning

            of the Christian:

mirroring Christ;

            hungering for Christ;

                        being Christ

in, and for, a world that thinks it can do it all by itself.

This life –

            the life of the saint –

is shaped and fashioned by the Holy Spirit

            who binds us together and brings to the Father.

One can never be a saint in isolation,

            and the testing bed of the saint is lived out in service

                        to the poor,

                                    the needs of others

                        and a life shaped in honouring the giftedness of all creation.

It is a life that draws from beatitude –

God’s blessing –

and returns everything in beatitude.

The Eucharist continues that work of forming saints

            as we hear his Word

                        and receive his presence

            into our bodies

            in the intensity and breadth of the sacrament of his Body and Blood,

                        as we unite with the saints of all the ages,

            with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven to proclaim:

            sanctus,

            sanctus,

            sanctus:

holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts,

heaven and earth are full

            of thy glory.

Glory be to Thee, O Lord most high.