"Holiness to the Lord"

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

Scripture: 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5: 1-12

"See what (wonderful) love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are."

-- 1 John 3:1

I spent last weekend in a land of saints, Latter Day Saints. I discovered that the foundation stones of all their temples are inscribed, “Holiness to the Lord,” and thus the title of this All Saints Day sermon was given me. What is holiness I ask myself, and what is a saint?

We could get into an argument very quickly if we approached an answer to these questions by way of doctrines and customs. Every sect has its own doctrines and its own customs, and some regard these as inviolable and worth fighting, expelling, killing and dying for.  We have seen too much violence along that way to want to continue down it, and so we ask what there might be in sanctity that all human beings can endorse. The answer is, of course, that profound and mysterious power that in our culture we call love. For that reason the reading from 1 John is appropriate for today: “See what wonderful love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”

Let us spend our time today simply studying as much of the first three verses of 1 John 3 as we can. They will tell us what holiness is, and what a saint is. You might wish to follow along in the pew Bibles. I shall be reading the Greek text and so do not be dismayed if what I read does not accord with the translation you have before you.  The first discrepancy is that the RSV for example omits the adjective “wonderful” before love. The word I have rendered wonderful is used in Mark 13:1 by one of the disciples when they look back towards the temple and he says to Jesus: “Teacher look at those amazing stones and those wonderful buildings!” Recall all those expletives you use when you see some extraordinarily beautiful work of art, some sublime piece of architecture, (I think Zondra and Bill saw many such things recently in Kyoto) – “unbelievable, amazing, breathtaking, wonderful, astonishing.” John says that the love God has shown us in Christ is likewise astonishing, wonderful, breathtaking, amazing and unbelievable, and you had better believe it.

The word John uses for “love” is the well-known, “agape,” a word used by the NT to designate the special Christian understanding of the divine love as entirely graceful, that is, given on the basis not of our loveliness but of God’s faithfulness. God loves us primarily not because we are lovely but because He is faithful, for His own name’s sake, and thus He makes us lovely. Faithful love is always important but consider how comforting it is to know that the love we depend on will always be there, no matter how old and ugly and grumpy we become, because it is based in itself and as such creates loveliness and value rather than demands and consumes it. This is the divine love that remains essentially a mystery to us; we experience it but we never understand it.

What does this love do, specifically? It calls us “children of God,” and then the writer rather charmingly adds, “ and that’s what in fact we really are,” in case someone were to say, “Well there is a difference between being called and actually being a child of God.” God’s amazing love has penetrated and enveloped us, it has transformed us into children of God by the incarnation of God in the womb of Mary. God has created the world anew, and we who believe have entered that new creation. All we have to do now is to become what we already are.

“For this reason the world does not know us because it did not know him.” My esteemed teacher, WD Davies, with whom I shared at least the honor of being a Cambridge (UK not Mass.) man used to warn against the falsity of fame with the following story. “The good scholars are known around the world, the better scholars are unknown outside of Cambridge, and the best of all are unknown even in Cambridge!” Our own culture must find this unintelligible because for us appearance is so much more important than reality, and every one of us no matter how feckless and ungifted feels entitled to fifteen minutes of fame (an unintended but pertinent observation on this weekend before the elections). John tells us that the world does not know the children of God because it cannot recognize the presence of the divine love; so be it; the child of God lives for his/her own heavenly Father and not for the applause of the world. We all know people who live or have lived the life of love unheralded, even obscurely, as salt in the stew, the saints whose goodness preserves the world.  

So the saint is one who lives as a child of God at the heart of the marvelous love. What does such a person look like or act like? This is the dangerous moment in our reflection, because just as one begins to describe the perfect life one crosses the threshold into conformity and controversy. The next verse, however, comes to our aid: “Beloved, we are already the children of God, and it is not clear what we shall turn out to be; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (3:2).” Here is that necessary note of tentativeness and tolerance. What is certain is that we are God’s children, claimed by the marvelous love, but how that cashes out immediately is not clear. The end is clear, that we shall be like Christ when we see him again as he truly is, and the beginning is clear, that God has adopted us as His children, but the middle is unclear, because life is lived by individuals. How we live out that childhood, between the beginning and the end is contingent and takes as many forms as there are people like us to live it. So sanctity is not a matter of conformity to one or another style or community; we each have our own way of being God’s child, our own style of holiness, and for that reason we must not condemn one another. We each live out our holy lives as God gives us to live, and we do so as His children, embraced by a mighty love and headed for conformity with Christ. “When he appears we shall be like him.”

“And everyone who has such a hope in him, purifies him/herself as he is pure (3:3).” What is this purification? Well, Jesus gave us the Beatitudes as a portrait of himself. To purify ourselves as he is pure is to see in the mirror of his purity the possibility of our own being utterly dependent on the Father, mourning over the wickedness of the world, being ready to learn, desiring justice for the world, merciful, peace making, suffering persecution and bearing the Cross. At the center of this mirror portrait stands the pure heart. With the hope of being like Jesus when he appears, we purify ourselves, and that means simply that we open our hearts entirely to the wonderful love the Father pours upon us as He welcomes, educates and blesses us, His dear children. The pure heart is the heart of Jesus, completely transparent to the wonderful love of God, and so holiness is not a mighty effort to show love but rather a humble receptivity to the love that precedes all human love. Holiness is not a great effort so much as it is a great faith, a great trust and a great confidence in the divine love.

There is nothing that makes a person more loving than being loved him/herself. The saint, therefore, is the one who has an immense capacity to receive love, to accept that he/she is loved, who can receive more and more and more of the divine and human love. Here is an instance where it is more blessed to receive than to give. Many of us suffer from the inability to receive love, the compulsion always to be giving, always to be doing good to others. NT holiness is emphatically the great faith that receives, what God does for us in Christ, the divine love that saves and renews.  Such saints, folk who hunger and thirst for God, whether or not they do anything apparently good and meritorious in the world, bring to the world its essential life, because they are the conduits of the divine love, which creates all things, renews them always and holds everyone and everything in being.

Amen.