by Patricia Lull

Almost every Sunday, the congregation with whom I worship prays for those who now praise God with the saints in heaven. Some Sundays, we are reminded of particular Saints whose work and witness continue to encourage Christians in the twenty-first century. Who are these saints and Saints, remembered in our liturgies and noted on the calendar of the church year?

From the very beginning of Christianity, the lives of remarkable teachers and witnesses to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ have been remembered by the faithful. Many of these Christians were martyrs, who died because of their witness to the power of God at work in Jesus Christ.

Stephen, whose death is recorded in Acts 7, is the first of these Saints with a capital "S." Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are familiar to many because of the Gospels that bear their names. Such Saints as Mary Magdalene, Peter, Andrew, Paul, and Mary, the mother of our Lord, are known for their faith during the earliest years of the church, as told in the Gospel accounts.

Since those first exemplar Christians, the Christian faith has spread through the witness of one generation to another. Saint Paul remembered the mother and grandmother of Timothy, Eunice, and Lois, as being instrumental in forming the faith life of his young companion (2 Timothy 1:5).

Most of us can name particular people who have helped us grow into maturity in the faith given us in baptism. Parents or grandparents, a Sunday school teacher or a camp director, a kindly neighbor or a co-worker, friends or pastors are often the small "s" saints we name when we tell our own faith story. Not well known like the remarkable witnesses we call Saints, these ordinary women and men — baptized into the one communion of saints — play a crucial role in encouraging our lives as Christians.

It is part of our humanity that we learn from the generations before us how to live our lives. When a particular person has played a formative leadership role for a community or city, his or her witness is remembered in ways that are almost larger than life. Even after the person has died, others remember the words that this leader said, the values embodied, the deeds done. When those leaders were Christians of remarkable influence as teachers, role models, or martyrs, they are revered as special models of the godly life.

As Lutheran Christians, we remember that one of the issues for people like us in the Reformation Era had to do with how the Saints were seen by some believers. At that time, some Christians were afraid to pray to God directly. Many ordinary people felt unworthy to approach one as powerful as God Almighty, and so they would ask the Saints to intercede for them.

The Reformers, including Luther, helped people understand that Jesus Christ is the only heavenly friend and mediator we need when we want to pray to God. While the Reformers discouraged the elaborate devotional customs that had sprung up around the Saints, they understood that we human beings can still learn much from the example of others. In particular, Saints who are widely known and saints who are personally known remain excellent models and teachers of what it means to live by God’s grace in every generation.

As might happen in any family or community, sometimes stories that are told and retold from generation to generation grow to outlandish proportions. The same is true of the stories of the multitude of Saints remembered around the world. It’s not always possible to document precisely what a Christian did in the fourth century or even the sixteenth century. It’s more important to think of the Saints as exemplars of the faith than to trust in small details of how their lives are remembered many years later. After all, the work of the saints, small "s" and large, is simply to point us to our Lord, Jesus Christ.

If you look in the front of Lutheran Book of Worship, you will find a calendar that lists lesser festivals and commemorations throughout the church year. These note dates on which we join other Christians in remembering the witness of all sorts of Saints and saints. The list includes hymn writers and nurses, mothers and missionaries, biblical characters and people who lived in our lifetime. The calendar covers the whole year to encourage us to learn about these diverse witnesses in worship in our congregations and in our personal devotions. Taken together, these lives represent the rich and varied ways in which the Christian people of God have witnessed to their faith in Jesus Christ for twenty centuries.