Why Jack Kerouac Was Wrong About All Saints

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Feast of All Saints’ Day, November 1, 2020 by the Very Reverend Tyler Doherty.

We often think of saints as those few, rare, heroic Christian souls who exemplify remarkable degrees of holiness--the Mother Teresas, the John of the Crosses, the Julian of Norwiches, the Sojourner Truths. Of course, there are people who are just different, who show us in the shape of their lives what it means to be “like Christ” in this life. People say that about St. Francis, in fact. That he was reputed to be the most Christ-like person since the time of Jesus. To encounter St. Francis was to get a glimpse of what it might have been like to be in the presence of Jesus himself. Our highly individualistic culture tends to feed this picture of sanctity as a solitary affair, the heroism of a few, select spiritual geniuses who spring fully formed from the head of Zeus, so to speak. There’s a certain quaint romanticism to that picture, not unlike what like Jack Kerouac writes of in On the Road,

… the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

But what we miss in that conception of sainthood--the “burning, burning, burning yellow roman candle picture of sainthood” let’s call it--is the ordinary, daily, and communal nature of the path to sanctity. Especially in this time of racial reckoning, profound political upheaval, and wave after wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s absolutely crucial that we understand that one or two bright lights in a generation is not enough. What the world so desperately needs at this moment is an entire community of saints, a community of love, the beloved community who know in their bones God’s love for them and are equipped to share that love with others by any and all means necessary.

I’m not always sure we claim the identity sketched out in the Gospel According to Luke’s Nunc dimittis (The Song of Simeon) of being a people who recognize the light that is Jesus and then allow themselves to be transfigured by that light so that they can be that light for others: “For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see: A Light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.” The Church is called to be a community of character shaped and formed by the love of God that embodies a way of seeing and being that runs counter to the way of the world: light in the darkness. The Church is called to be the voice that says, “No more of this!” to the world like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Like Karl Barth and the other signers of the Barmen Declaration in 1934 that rejected the German state church’s complicity with the National Socialists’ rise to power, the Church today is called to be a different kind of community than the one we see on television or social media where fear, exclusion, casting out, scapegoating, hatred, violence, hard-heartedness, and looking out for number one are the order of the day.

The Beatitudes are really a roadmap for what this community of character, this beloved community, is to come to resemble by Grace. We’re so used to Matthew being the “Church’s Gospel,” and to hearing the Beatitudes that it’s easy to let the beauty of the passage wash over us without grasping the truly radical, and discomfiting nature of what Jesus is sketching out for the disciples as they embark on their training. He is presenting them with a world-view and way of being-in-the-world that is completely counter to their (and our) received notions of what it means to be a human being. It was as jaw-droppingly subversive then as it is today.  To get an inkling of this, just reverse the Beatitudes and you’ll get a picture of how the world turns:

 Do everything you can to be rich and powerful.

Toughen up and harden yourself against all feelings of loss.

Measure your success by how much of the time you are thinking only of yourself and your own happiness.

Be independent and aggressive, hungry and thirsty for higher status in the social pecking order.

Strike back quickly when others strike you, and guard your image so you’ll always be popular (McLaren).

Sound familiar? That’s how our contemporary culture in many quarters defines success. Jesus, however, defines happiness, blessedness, and success by completely different terms. In Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom we are to be in solidarity with:

The poor and those in solidarity with them.

Those who mourn, who feel grief and loss.

The nonviolent and gentle.

Those who hunger and thirst for the common good and aren’t satisfied with the status quo.

The merciful and compassionate.

Those characterized by openness, sincerity, and unadulterated motives.

Those who work for peace and reconciliation.

Those who keep seeking justice even when they’re misunderstood and misjudged.

Those who stand for justice as the prophets did, who refuse to back down or quiet down when they are slandered, mocked, misrepresented, threatened, and harmed (McLaren).

The movement of discipleship is always towards the margins. We go with Jesus to last, the least, the lost, and the left behind and stand with them in solidarity. We listen. We hear their stories. We ask questions. We try to see the world through their eyes in the recognition that that is impossible. We drop our armor and learn to be vulnerable to the cries of those who have been stepped over and shoved aside, to the cries of this fragile earth our island home groaning under the weight of endless profit, endless extraction, and a throw-away economy. Jesus tells us that when we go by him, with him, and in him to the margins, we discover something truly miraculous: peace, rest, abundance, happiness, blessedness. But it requires a change of mind, a reorientation in the direction in which we search for happiness. Broadly speaking, the path of discipleship is that 180 degree turn from self-centeredness to God-centeredness, from love of self to love of God in all things. We turn a degree at a time. Slowly, through the cultivation of holy habits and sacred dispositions, over the years spent in prayer, worship, service, reading scripture, witnessing for justice and peace, we turn fully to God and God alone like a sunflower turned from it’s droopy nighttime sleep to the sun’s first rays and tracing its progress across the sky throughout the day.

Everything the Church does is meant to affect this reorientation from how the world operates and towards how Jesus operates. The Church turns us daily if we let it. It’s a tried and true program for the creation of the Beloved Community. Turning to Jesus as the light in the darkness. Learning about Him and from Him. Worshipping Him in community. Praying to Him daily. Blessing others in His name with listening ears, open hearts, and helping hands. Going with Him to the margins to encounter the forgotten and the cast off. Resting in His presence beyond thoughts, words, and images--wasting time gracefully with God--that we might be refreshed, restored, and made new. Turn, Learn, Worship, Pray, Bless, Go, Rest. The Way of Love. That’s the path we’re called to walk as a community. That’s what it means to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus. That’s what it means to make Jesus, not Caesar and worldly power, our Lord. That’s what it means for us to witness and embody a different way of being than what we see on depressingly full display on the nightly news. It’s easy to point the finger and say what’s wrong with the world, but the true task is to become love, to surrender everything that obstructs the light of God’s presence in our hearts that we might become transmitters of the light as individuals and as a community. It takes a village as the saying goes. 

Individual saints are the lights of the world in their generations. But what would an entire community who resolved daily to walk the way of love with passion, joy, steadfast perseverance, and faithful daily commitment look like? What would be the effect of such a community in a broken and hurting world?

… the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;

the sun will not strike them,

nor any scorching heat;

for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,

and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

That’s the promise our reading from the Book of Revelation sketches out. Heaven come down to earth. It’s God’s work facilitated by our fragile, fallible, human hands. Not just one heroic roman candle, but a river of little lights flowing out the door at the deacon’s dismissal into a dark world. All Saints.