Hagiography: What?

I am a pastor of a church.  Frequently I conduct funerals or memorial services for church members and others who have died.  Through the years I have discovered that while this can be a difficult task it is often very rewarding.

One of the members of one of my former churches said to me once that I preached better funeral sermons than Sunday morning sermons (one of those conditional compliments!).  Her comment, however, made me reflect on why that might be so.  When a Christian dies I think the responsibility of the pastor is to honor the memory of the person and to witness to the presence of God in that person’s life.  I want to tell the truth about a person’s life, of course, but the truth as God sees it.

We all know that people are flawed.  The Bible puts it this way:  “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)  Christians are not without sin.  Yet it is “the God’s truth” that God delights in each one of us.  God even delights in those persons who deny that God exists.  God even delights in those who don’t believe.  God delights in every creature.  (Zephaniah 3:17;  Psalm 149:4; Genesis 1:31)  So, what I try to do is to see the person who has died through the eyes of God’s unfathomable and uncontainable delight. 

In the early church there was a popular literature called hagiography.  This is a fancy word for describing the study of holiness, particularly holy people, whom we often call saints.  The lives of the saints made for interesting reading at one time.  I think it still does. 

There are two ways of defining saints:  those who are holier than anyone else, and those who are considered holy by God simply by virtue of the fact that God created them.  I prefer the study of everyday saints.  As I have learned to see the deceased through the eyes of God’s delight I have learned also to see living people through that same lens, to see the holiness that is in them (as much as they might deny it).  Perhaps my best sermons are nothing more than an attempt to see the delightful glory of God in the most ordinary of folks.

It sometimes takes practice to tune your vision in this way.  But it is great fun, as well as amazingly humbling, to see people the way God sees them.  Try it.  It may also change the way people see you.

Righteousness Is Out of Fashion

You never hear the word “righteous” anymore. I’m not talking about its use a decade ago, describing something as “cool” (“The paint job on that car is righteous!”). I suppose the word was used a generation ago in churches to describe moral, upstanding behavior on the part of the Christian believer (You Bible scholars think of James 5:16, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much”).

Still, I wonder if the use of the word in the previous generation had the same connotation as its original intent. When Jesus said at his baptism, “Thus it is fitting to fulfill all righteousness,” I don’t think he was talking about moral, upstanding behavior. He was thinking of more than a standard of individual conduct, he had in mind the will and purposes of God. There was a time when we thought righteousness had more to do with purity of life than anything else (“I don’t smoke and I don’t chew, and I don’t go out with girls that do”). Righteous seemed to be more about what we didn’t do than what we did. Nowadays I’m not sure that even Christians understand what is meant by the word righteous.

One place to begin our quest for understanding is the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7. In the midst of this collection of Jesus’ sayings, we find him like a reborn Moses, issuing a reinterpretation of Mosaic Law. “You’ve heard it said . . . BUT, I say to you . . .” He pronounces blessings on those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness,” and he helps us set priorities, “Seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness.” Matthew portrays Jesus as being especially concerned about this righteousness, whatever it is.

Eugene Peterson in The Message, interprets that “seek ye first,” phrase as, “pay attention to what God is doing.” I like that. Righteousness as attentiveness to what God is doing. That seems to be the right order of things. Instead of righteousness being a standard of behavior for me to follow, it is, rather, a call to tune in to the activity of God. God’s activity is prior to my activity. And attentiveness is both an act of will and an alertness of body. If I’m paying attention, like a runner at the blocks waiting for the starting gun to go off, I’m more than ready to do something. I’m not just thinking about it. I’m not just looking on as an observer. But I wait for the right cue before I dash off.

Maybe righteousness will come back in fashion when we start paying more attention to what God is doing, instead of obsessing about what we’re going to do next. What is God doing these days? Well, I think God is doing what God has always been doing – turning the world right side up. Look for calamity, catastrophe and suffering, and when in the midst of it all, you see goodness, kindness, peace and justice, there is God’s kingdom of righteousness. I pray it does come back into fashion. Wouldn’t that be righteous?

I have more I want to say about righteousness, but I’m not sure what it is yet. I’m just waiting for the gun to go off.