Unsung Heroes

All Saints Day: John 17:1, 6-19

When you think of the most difficult teachings of Christianity, the ones that people have the hardest time accepting, you might think of the Virgin Birth, or miracles like Jesus’ walking on water or multiplying the loaves and fishes, or his rising again from the dead on the third day. But those aren’t the really hard ones, not really. Those things are imminently more acceptable to unbelievers than the one we are celebrating today, the communion of saints. For while people can make some allowances for the possibility of unexplained phenomena like miraculous healings, the idea of a supernatural, mystical reality that both unites all believers and transcends them, a web of relationship that crosses the boundaries of life and death, time and ethnicity—that’s too much to swallow.

It’s easy to understand why. The doctrine of the communion of saints is a teaching that runs against the grain of the dominant assumptions and beliefs of our world today. For, at the center of it is the conviction that we don’t exist on our own, that the most important source of our identity is our membership in a group, that what is most important about us is not our uniqueness or personal successes or inner genius, but our holding to a belief and practice shared by millions of other people, across cultures, time and nationalities.

Such an idea is an offense to the radical individualism that drives our society today. Henry Clay was the first to use the term, “self-made man,” 200 years ago, and in the years since, we have made that description a source of pride. The communion of saints insists, though, that that is a lie. It’s not true in general, and it’s certainly not true when it comes to faith. We are not self-created or self-sufficient. All of us, as Christians, are made through the gifts of others. Our salvation is not up to us. It is important that we have a “personal relationship with God,” and not a hand-me-down faith, but Christianity cannot be reduced to just “me and Jesus.” Christianity is a social, corporate religion. It’s not just about us. Each of us is a part of something bigger.

The wonder at being part of something bigger was impressed upon me when I was a child. Growing up, every Christmas, after opening presents, my family and I would head over to my great-grandfather’s house, a few blocks away, for Christmas dinner—us and the whole Terry clan. My great-grandparents had four children. So at Christmas dinner, there were those four grown children and their spouses, my grandparents’ generation, and their children, my parents, and then the multitude of us kids, greatgrandchildren. It was a whole mess of people. Surrounded by all those relatives, I had a powerful sense of being part of something larger than just myself or my immediate family, and a sense of pride and comfort in that. It’s the same with the Church. There are no lone Christians, no solitary believers. We are part of a community, a communion, the communion of the church.

Often, we forget that. We overlook the fact that none of us came to belief in Jesus on our own. Others were involved, indeed were indispensable to our coming to faith, be it our parents or godparents Sunday school teacher or priest. We may feel sometimes like we are the first to struggle with the Bible, to try to follow Jesus, to wrestle with God, like no one else has faced the problems we face being Christian. But even a cursory review of church history quickly disabuses us of that notion. Christians have lived through wars and rebellions, persecutions and co-option by the state, as well as times of security and plenty. And generally more of the former than the latter. But in any case, the path of Christianity is well-trodden. Indeed, we are beneficiaries, inheritors of two-thousand years of Christian civilization and culture, two thousand years of striving to understand, live out, explicate and express creatively, build on, and pass on the truth of the Gospel. We are indebted to them for their witness. It is because of them that we are able to believe today.

This is not to say that our ancestors in the faith got everything right. They had blind spots in their understanding, just as we have blind spots. But because their blind spots are not our blind spots, they may just be able to help us see better where we fall short. Attending to how they sought to live faithfully in their day, how they faced challenges to their integrity, their commitment, their faith, we might be better able, strengthened to live out the faith today.

Now, all this might sound like an advertisement for Butler’s Lives of the Saints or Fox’s famous Book of Martyrs. While that may not be a bad idea for any of us to familiarize ourselves with the exploits of our faith-forebears, the value of the saints is not restricted to the big-name believers, the “celebrity saints” that adorn church windows and artwork—saints like Peter, Paul and the Virgin Mary, Francis and Patrick, Augustine and Benedict. Even more important, perhaps, are all the lesser-known saints, our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters in the faith, the ones who have encouraged us in our journey, who taught us to read the Scriptures and love Jesus, who supported us through hard times and sustained our trust in God. These are the unsung heroes of the faith.

I say “heroes” advisedly, on account of the fact that saints and heroes don’t have much in common. Heroes, as we normally think of them, are people who stand out for their superior qualities. They are stronger or more courageous, cleverer or more determined than most. Saints, by contrast, can be almost invisible, easily missed, quickly forgotten. Saints may not be strong, brave, clever or even successful, but instead are faithful. And yet to call saints “heroes” is to acknowledge the fact that we all need people to look up to, exemplars, models, people who demonstrate how it’s done, who show us the kind of people we want to be.

It's telling that our society has done everything it can to destroy its heroes. All of the people we used to look up to—presidents, sports stars, military leaders, clergy—they have been knocked off their pedestals, sometimes literally. Public scandals, broken promises, impersonal and ineffective institutions, to say nothing of changes in what counts as acceptable behavior, have exposed every would-be role model for the tragically flawed human they are. It’s gotten so that it’s difficult to believe that heroes exist at all.

We see this even, of all places, in comic books, that once stalwart redoubt of heroes and superheroes. You likely haven’t heard anything about it—it’s not something that anyone outside the industry knows, let alone cares about. But a radical change has taken place in the comic industry in the past three decades. The selfless, noble protectors like Captain America, Spider-man, and Superman have been replaced by morally flawed protagonists, anti-heroes, and outright villains in capes. Even once heroic characters, like the X-Men, Thor, and the Flash, have “broke bad,” abandoning the moral codes they were known for. The writers of comic books today say that their stories are more “mature,” more grown-up. But what they sell as realism is in truth just cynicism and pessimism. And in the process, they have abandoned the hope and heroism that made comic books attractive and their heroes deserving of our emulation.

We live amidst a society that has torn down its heroes, both real and fictional. But that doesn’t change the fact that we still need people to look up to, people who represent the best of us, people we hope our children will be like. Perhaps now is a great time to rediscover, to restore the place of saints in our society. Saints may not be flashy, rarely wear tights, and don’t have any special powers or abilities. They are distinguished as a group only by their seeking to be faithful in their time and place. And for that reason, not their courage or prowess, saints often end up having an outsized impact on history.

To quote Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings books, “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I’ve found. I have found that it is the small, everyday deeds of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”

The power of such small acts performed by ordinary folks was evident in the small French village of Le Chambon. During the years of the Holocaust, when towns and villages across occupied France were forced to give up their Jewish residents, the people of Le Chambon, ordinary men and women under the leadership of Pastor Trocme, managed to save more than three thousand Jews by hiding them in their houses. Little accounted for their remarkable witness other than their pastor’s sermons, week in and week out, that enabled these unheroic people to perform acts of heroism.

When in 1942 the Vichy French police demanded that Pastor Trocme tell them where the Jews were being hid, Trocme refused. In a search, only one Jew could be found. When they put the Jew on the bus for the trip to the prison, the son of the pastor broke through the ring of guards and placed a piece of precious chocolate in his hands. Then the rest of the village began “passing their little gifts through the window until there were gifts all around him—most of it food, precious in those hungry days during the German occupation of France.” Perhaps even more impressive, these people considered even the Vichy police their neighbors. They resisted the police, used all the cunning at their disposal to keep them from finding the hidden Jews, and lied repeatedly to the authorities. But they did not attack the police, their mortal enemies. Why? Because their study of scripture had convinced them that even the police were their neighbors. They felt that they ought to do all they could to keep the police from becoming victimizers of the victims.

Small but courageous acts like those taken by the community of Le Chambon offer a powerful witness to Christian faith, indeed they present the best argument for faith we can hope to give. In a society like ours which is not only individualistic but rationalistic, it’s tempting to think that, if we could just make a reasoned case for faith, applying logic and evidence, as in a legal trial, we could get the verdict we want, we would convince hordes of people and bring them to faith in Christ. But few people are converted solely through reasoned debate. Far more come to faith on account of the example of faithful Christians, saints, whose love of God and their fellow humans, compels them not to do great things, but small things with great love, sacrificing their own status, safety and security, so as to be present to God and their neighbor. I mean, think of the Christians you know or you’ve heard about, the ones who have made the biggest impression on you. I doubt your admiration is the result of some book they wrote or argument they made or institution they built. Rather, it’s because of the kind of life they lived, their singular focus on God, the often quiet and humble but devoted way they lived their life.

That’s what sets them apart as saints, and what should set us apart. For, it’s not just about what the saints who’ve gone before us have given us, what we’ve gotten from them, but how through their actions, they’ve enabled us to offer the same to others. You see, we are saints too, are supposed to be. Every Christian, by virtue of our baptism, because God has claimed us, is part of the communion of saints, part of that great web of relationships that ties us to Jesus and through him, to each other. And we are called to recognize our indebtedness, what we’ve received from the saints, so that we might be saints for others, encouraging, nurturing, teaching, and kindling the love of God in others.

What this all means, if at the end of the day, we take anything away from today’s celebration of the Feast of All Saints, it is an appreciation that “church matters,” the community matters, the communion of saints matters. Christianity is not a solo activity. Being Christian is not a do-it-yourself project. We are saved not individually but as part of the church. It takes a community to make a Christian, and a community to be Christian. God in his wisdom has created that community for us in the Church—the local church and the larger, universal church that our church participates in. And for that we say, Thanks be to God!