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Meet Father KempAll Saints Day 1 November 2009
In 1980, my uncle and aunt were serving as missionaries in Nigeria. My aunt was pregnant and had to have an emergency C-section on the mission field. My cousin was born with spina bifida with myeloschisis, when the spinal cord and nerves are protruding through an open wound in the lower back and was immediately flown to the best children’s hospital around, reputed to be one of the best in the world, but my aunt and uncle ,for numerous and unfortunate reasons, were not able to travel with him. However, my grandmother heard what had happened she immediately flew into action. She was a practicing nurse, who received her training during World War II, but some say she should have trained to be a marine sergeant; in fact, her nickname in the hospital was “sarge.” She did not have a passport, so she flew to Chicago to get a passport and somehow she pushed her way to the front of the line and received her bona fide U.S. Passport in fifteen minutes. She then flew to the hospital where my cousin was and found him lying on a steel tray out in hallway. There was no one attending him, there was no blanket on him, and his wound was not bandaged. When Grandma confronted the nearest nurse, her reply was something like, “Well, he is just going to die, so why do all that?” I do not think any nurse on the ward ever forgot my Grandmother. Grandma took my cousin back to North Dakota, he is one of the most loving, and kind persons I have ever met.
My grandmother did a lot for my cousin when he was an infant, yet she was not able to do one thing: she was not able to give my cousin her spine, she was not able to heal his paralyzing wound. I tell you this story, because all of us are like my cousin: we are born with a life-threatening wound. All of us were born with a gapping wound in our chest and a heart that is not fully formed because it has been exposed to toxins of sin. Our hearts are withered, cold and unable to love. Douglas Coupland accurately describes our condition, when toward the end of his book Life after God he said, “Now- here is my secret:…My secret is that I need God – that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I am no longer capable of giving; to help me to be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me to love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”[1] If we want to love, if we want to be kind, if we want to be generous, we need God, we need him to give us a heart transplant; we need him to take away our cold, dead, loveless heart and give us a heart that is alive and burning with love.
A saint is anyone who has had a divine heart transplant. The New Dictionary of Theology agrees saying, “In the New Testament ‘saints’ becomes the most common title used to describe Christians in general. This title is used for the particular reason that they have been consecrated to God by the atonement of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is a status which they already enjoy, and not simply one at which they aim.” When God the Father consecrates someone, setting them apart through the atonement of Jesus Christ and through the work of Holy Spirit, that person becomes a saint having a new heart that loves, that shows kindness and is generous. In a way, we can the origins of All Saints day in Western Christendom emphasizing God’s ability to transform cold and dead objects into objects of life and worship. In 609 or 610 ad, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Roman Pantheon, a temple built in honor of the cold and dead Roman gods, for Christian worship of the one, true and living God. Thus on All Saint’s day, we celebrate how God takes a cold, dead and lifeless heart and consecrates it through his Son and the Holy Spirit to be a heart of life, warmth and love. But what does God use to transform our hearts and what role do saints have in history?
There are many brilliant and competent heart transplant doctors, yet there are no doctors capable of replacing a dead, cold and loveless heart with a heart that is kind, generous and full of love. This type of surgery can only be performed by God himself and this type of heart can only be found in Jesus Christ, who is the incarnation of true love, kindness and generosity. Therefore, when God consecrates us to be saints, he takes out our heart killed by sin and replaces it with the heart of Jesus Christ. This is what St. Paul meant when he said, “Christ…has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.” (I Corinthians 1:30) and “God made Christ who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (II Corinthians 5:21) Therefore, a saint is anyone who has the heart of Jesus Christ beating inside their chest, anyone who loves with the love of Christ, who is kind with Christ’s kindness and who is generous with Christ’s generosity. That is why all those who have been consecrated by God have the status of a saint, for they have received the perfect heart of Jesus Christ, there is nothing left for them to earn or merit.
If saints have been given the heart of Jesus Christ, what is their role in the world, especially those who have died in faith? After chronicling the great achievements through faith of the saints in the Old Testament, the author of Hebrews said, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Saints surround us like a great cloud acting spurring us on as we race toward to Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith. The stories of past saints are sometimes like carrots gently leading onwards, stories like St. Fabiola, who established the first public hospital in Western Europe in Rome during the 4th century.[2] And sometimes their stories are like a red-hot cattle prod that causing us to sprint, like the story of Hugh Latimer, who in 1555 said to Nicolas Ridley, his companion at the stake, while the fires were being lit under their feet, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”
All of struggle to love, all of us struggle to be kind and all of us struggle to be generous, but we do not have to remain in this loveless state. The solution to our inadequacies is not to buckle and try harder, it is not to retreat into a corner and think more positively, our solution is to become a saint. Out solution is have our cold, lifeless, loveless and cruel heart removed and in its stead, receive the heart of Jesus Christ that burns with love, overflows with kindness and abounds in generosity. You, who have placed in life in the hands of Jesus Christ, know that you are saints. Your wounded heart has been replaced with the heart of your saviour, your wounded conscience has been cleansed by his righteousness and your dead feet have been resurrected by his unstoppable life. Therefore, let us bask in the stories of those who have gone on before us so that our faith may be quickened and encouraged, so that we may fix our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.
[1] Douglas Coupland, Life after God, London: Simon and Schuster, 1994, p. 359. quoted Graham Tomlin, The Provocative Church, London: SPCK, 2004, pg 7.
[2] David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, Yale University Press: New Haven, 2009, Pg 30.
