Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, Nov. 5th, 2023, All Saints Day
The scholar Joseph Campbell first published his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces back in 1949, but his work on mythology didn’t reach a wide audience until almost forty years later, when journalist Bill Moyers broadcast a series of interviews with Campbell in 1988. This series, “The Power of Myth,” introduced a global audience to the universal themes within the stories that give every culture meaning and purpose.
The hero especially emerged as a key symbol for communal and personal life – heroes across cultures followed a similar adventure toward transformation, leaving their comfortable existence, being mentored through difficult training, plunging into a strange new world, battling hardship and monsters, facing death, being reborn and bringing the gift of new life back to the “ordinary” world.
Soon everyone saw this pattern everywhere from Star Wars to the Lord of the Rings to every Marvel Comic that had ever been published. Those we call “saints” in our tradition, their lives could be seen as tracing that same cycle, following the example of Jesus through the wilderness, into suffering and death, and finally to eternal life. More than that, people began to see the pattern in “real” human lives, including their own. People began to claim the title of hero in their own lives and assuring others, “You are the hero of your own story.”
These stories are inspiring, and sometimes empowering. As a kid I loved to read stories where the young protagonists, whether in Narnia or someplace closer to home, found their own strength and defeated the powers of evil. If they could do it, maybe I could too. As I’ve grown older, having experienced failure and weakness, I’ve become less optimistic about my capacity to do heroic deeds, and I wonder, is heroism the best model for our aspirations? Are we called to be heroes for the Kingdom of Heaven? Does it even make sense to call the saints “heroes,” or might there be a different paradigm for what we are celebrating today?
Priest and theologian Samuel Wells has said that Christians are not called to be heroes; we’re called to be saints. He writes,
To start with, the hero steps up and makes everything turn out right. In other words, the hero is always at the centre of the story. By contrast, the saint may be almost invisible, quickly forgotten. The hero’s story is always about the hero. The saint is always at the periphery of a story that is always really about God.
As we can see with the popularity of the Hero’s Journey, the world loves a hero, and would like to convince everyone that this is the standard of human worth. You too can stand out from the crowd, be remembered for posterity, be admired and envied and emulated by all. If you are not a hero, even in your own life, what good are you? And if you don’t aspire to that, well, you’re not living up to your potential.
How does the image of the hero stand up in the face of the teaching of Jesus? On the mountain, does he teach his disciples that “Blessed are those high achievers who win fame and fortune”? “Blessed are those who save the world from doom and destruction”? Well, Matthew tells the story a little differently. It is those who have failed in the world’s eyes, who inherit the blessings of God. Not heroes, but the meek, the hungry, the sorrowful. Those who will probably be forgotten by anyone for whom heroism is the standard.
Those saints whose pictures surround us here in our sanctuary, we remember them, but not so much because of their personal achievement. We remember them, and we love them, and we seek to emulate them, because they have drawn us into a story that is not about them as individuals, but is primarily about God. Whether Paul of Tarsus, or Mary Magdalene, or Desmond Tutu, the invitation is the same – come and see our Lord who has risen from the dead, and enter into his life of love and abundance.
Saints don’t stand in front of the crowd so much as they join the circle of the beloved, all facing toward God and toward each other. We know our own saints here, some of whom we lost only this past year: Leah, and George, and Vivian, and Faye, and so many others. They have joined the communion of saints beyond the veil of death, and they still stand with us in this circle, around the altar. Death has not defeated them, because God has defeated death. It is not their heroism, but their witness to the power of the Good News of Jesus, that we cherish.
As those called to be saints, we learn to be a part of something greater than ourselves. We learn to stumble, to fail, and to get up again. We learn to walk together. We learn how to be those who help, and how to be, with grace, those who need help.
Sam Wells concludes his description of saints by reminding us that while heroes strive to be exceptional, saints find their identity in the company of all the ordinary beloved children of God. He writes:
[T]he hero stands alone against the world. The story of the hero shows how he or she stands out from their community. Yet of the 64 references to saints in the New Testament, every single one is in the plural. Saints are never alone. Heroes have learnt to depend on themselves: saints learn to depend on God and on the community of faith. The Church is God’s new language, and it speaks not of a country fit for heroes to live in but of a commonwealth of saints.
This is the sainthood into which we are baptizing Beatrice, Finn, and Oliver today. The grace of baptism will be with them throughout their lives – it will bless and strengthen their God-given gifts so that they may be a blessing to the world. But they will not need to be heroes. We simply ask that they be our companions in the way, and help us to be a commonwealth of saints. We invite them to be with us a community where the poor in spirit are not just tolerated, but belong, and where those who mourn are truly comforted. We baptize them so that they can help us give sustenance to those who hunger for God and be fed themselves, so that they can join us in choosing mercy over retribution, and peace over war.
We baptize Beatrice, and Finn, and Oliver, into Christ, into a meek and merciful and thirsty Body that speaks a new language of God’s love. The kingdom of heaven is here and now; it is among us, and it is us, a band not of heroes, but of ordinary saints.