It being All Saints Day and tomorrow being All Souls Day, I've decided over the next two days to post from the third chapter of Luke Timothy Johnson's book Learning Jesus, the section he titles,
Learning Jesus In The Saints.
I agree with the first sentence which strikes me as a very Catholic idea and a very human one. Short of a Pauline experience, where else are we to find the confirmation of the testimony found in ink on paper? The greatest evidence I've seen for the truth of the resurrection and continuing life of Jesus is in those who truly follow Jesus. In my experience, those are much more likely to be Women even though many more men are canonized as saints I read 80% online. Which also, unfortunately, strikes me as a too Catholic idea. Though hardly only Catholic. Maybe All Saints Day should be considered a feminist holy day, the one where all those Women who aren't the focus of an official feast day or inclusion in the canon are remembered - at least until Rome sees fit to or is forced to correct the sexist sins of the hierarchy's past - including ordaining Women.
The most compelling and convincing evidence of the resurrection is the existence of Christian saints. The Spirit poured out on believers by the resurrected Jesus is not only a spirit of prophecy directing their speech (Acts 2:14-21); it is also a spirit of holiness (Rom. 1:4) directing and transforming their livers according to the image of Jesus (Rom. 8:29). Paul’s language is most dramatic:
"Now the Lord is the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. And we all, gazing on the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as the Lord who is spirit (2 Cor. 3:17-18."
If Christians “live by the Spirit” that comes from Jesus, then they are also to “walk by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25), which Paul explicates as “fulfilling the law of Christ” by bearing one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2). The pattern of Jesus’ character – the way he “loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20b) – is now to be the pattern of the Christian’s life, for like Paul we “have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God” (Gal 2:20a). Paul speaks of “putting on the Lord Jesus” (Rom. 13:14) and of “putting on the new person which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator . . . Christ [who] is all in all” (Col 3:10-11).
The idea of imitating moral exemplars is as old as human wisdom. What is distinctive to Christian conviction is that both the pattern and the power to follow it are given to humans by the living Lord Jesus through the Holy Spirit. The process of sanctification to which Christians are called (1 Thess. 4:3; 1 Cor. 1:2) is a process of growing in conformity to the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) – a process that results in a life that is, in reality a continuing embodiment of Jeusus’ own: “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of yoru mind, that you may test what is the will of god, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:1-2, RSV).
The path of holiness doesn’t not consist in an imitation of the historical incidentals of Jesus’ human lie; these remain in the past and are irrecoverable. Jesus’ specific time and place in the world, his maleness and Jewishness his speech patterns and his deeds, his mode of ministry and his manner at meals, even his enemies and his way of fighting them, all these help define the Jesus of the past but no longer define the Jesus of the present, who finds specific bodily expression in the lives of others through the power of the resurrection.
Paul and Peter and the anonymous author of Hebrews all grasped that it was the pattern of the Messiah’s humanity – his character, as it were – that Christians were called to imitate and were empowered to imitate through the Holy Spirit. The mystery of “incorporation” into Christ meant that one was a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17) in which the Spirit of Jesus could direct one’s life – in circumstances utterly different from those of Jesus in the past – through the same process of self-giving service, radical obedience, suffering, and new life exemplified by Jesus, himself.
“I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own based on law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness from God that is based on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead . . . . We await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself. (Phil. 3:8-11, 21). [Note that I’ve underlined what Luke Timothy Johnson put in italics in his text.]
To be transformed according to the image of Christ means, therefore, to live by the “mind of Christ” and the “pattern of the Messiah.”
It is precisely in this connection that the humanity of Jesus appears as most important in our earliest Christian texts. The transformation work of the Spirit is to replicate in human freedom the character of Jesus. Witness to the reality of God in the face of idolatrous pretense continues the witness borne by Jesus (Rev. 19:10; Tim. 6:11-16). Bearing persecution and social ostracism with faith means that we “go outside the camp bearing the abuse he endured” (Heb. 13:15). Suffering without reviling or complaint requires that we “follow in his steps: (1 Pet. 2:21). Forgiveness of others is to be done “as the Lord has forgiven you (Col 3:13; Eph 4:32)). Walking in love is to act “as Christ loved us and handed himself over or us” (Eph. 5:2). Avoiding every kind of vice follows from “learning Christ . . . if indeed you he heard about him and were taught him just as the truth is in Jesus” (Eph. 4:20-21). Relativizing our rights out of concern for others lest out freedom cause them to stumble demands that we have consideration for “the brother for whom Christ died" (1 Cor. 8:11).
I'd forgotten that LTJ made that statement about "relativizing our rights" out of consideration for others till I typed it out just now. It could not be more relevant to the posts I've been posting and working on and it is heretical in secular, "rights" proclaiming America as the Roman and Greek despisers of early Christianity found the Gospel of Jesus. I dare say that huge numbers of bible thumpers and trad-caths would despise that idea. But I wouldn't accuse them of being Christians, being political-economic ideologues, christianists.
I don't think that saints are necessarily professed Christians. A member of my family who is anything but one constantly shows me what it means to do to the least among us what we would do for God and he's a right old infidel. And I know a number of others like that. But in the end I'm a sort of Catholic Christian universalist who believes in the eventual reconciliation of all in all. Which will bring us to my favorite of the two days, All Souls, tomorrow. I don't believe in either the Augustinian heresy of eternal damnation nor in the other heresy of the obliteration of those found insufficiently good at a last judgement. Though I do rather like the idea of purgatory as taught by Paul and Macrina and, actually, Jesus, himself.
