Fearlessness, Faithfulness, and Falsies

by Tana M. Kjos

How the saints help shape our lives

Creedal references to the "communion of saints" aside, from my perspective growing up in a Lutheran household, the saints distinguished us from the Roman Catholic side of the family. They had them; we didn’t. It was nearly three decades before I really came to understand and appreciate the role of the saints in my own life. And it happened, of all places, in a synodical candidacy committee interview.

A candidacy committee is the group assigned to help people steer their way through the process of becoming professional church leaders. One day my committee asked me a question that, at first, struck me as particularly odd: "What does the Bible mean to you?" I wasn’t sure what they were looking for. I’m a Lutheran, after all. Sola scriptura and all that! I’m afraid I didn’t give a very academic answer. Instead, I just dove in with the first response that came into my head. I reached into my bag and took out the Bible I had been using for the last few years, the one I had to replace soon after that meeting, in fact, because it was beginning to fall apart. The leather was so worn it would flake off, sticking to my hands and then to my face if that happened to be the next thing I touched. "The Bible?" I said. "This Bible is my story. And these stories, written so long ago, are my stories. The people in this story have shaped me. These people are me."

That conversation has bounced around in my head over the years. I now realize that what I was talking about were the saints — the central role they play in my life, and their importance in a life of faith. We find these saints in Scripture, but we also meet them in our everyday lives. These saints shape us, reminding us of who we are and who we belong to. They bring us comfort and healing, reminding us of God’s promises even through the most difficult times. They gently nudge us and sometimes even give us the kick we need to remember that our purpose, as people of faith, is to participate in God’s mission to love and bless the world.

We Are Shaped by Their Stories…If We Dare
Do we dare let the stories of the saints shape us? How about the saints we meet hanging out with Jesus in the ninth chapter of Luke? They don’t actually look much like what you’d think a saint should look like. For starters, they’re so whiny! They’ve heard Jesus speak about the kingdom of God. They’ve been welcomed, healed, and loved. They have been fed by the word of God. Then what do they do? When it comes time for dinner, they tell Jesus to send the crowd away to fend for themselves. "We’re here in a deserted place," they complain. "We don’t have anything to give them." Jesus doesn’t skip a beat. "You feed them," he says. And that’s the point. Jesus is at work in the world, today and always, through people like you and me. Through those whiny saints, Jesus changed the lives of thousands that day. Jesus can do the same through us, too.

How about the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in the eighth chapter of Acts? What would it look like to be shaped by these unorthodox saints? Philip finds himself in the company of a man who could not be more different from him. And this Ethiopian wants to hear about Jesus. And once Philip tells him the story, the man boldly says, "Baptize me!" Knowing full well that the religious authorities — on the basis of biblical law — would not approve, Philip trusts the Holy Spirit and does what he believes Jesus would want him to do. He baptizes this stranger — an uncircumcised Gentile, sexually ambiguous, from a faraway land, filthy rich, foreign in every way — right then and there. The Ethiopian is changed by this encounter with Philip. Philip himself is changed. And their model of doing the faithful thing, even if it is unorthodox, has the potential of changing us, too.

These days I wish we were being shaped more profoundly by two of my favorite saints: the apostle Paul and the reformer Martin Luther. These guys both had reason to live in fear. There was a price on Luther’s head and Paul was hounded by the threat of imprisonment and death. Yet both lived in the freedom that comes through Jesus Christ… and called on us to do the same. How desperately we need to hear this message today!

As I travel around the country these days, I am confronted over and over again by the Homeland Security announcement that we are on orange alert. The real message is that red alert (or something worse) can’t be far behind.

And so we take off our shoes. We send our luggage through X–ray machines. Overhead TV monitors show us the latest storm front or other disasters in the making we need to be freaked out about. And it doesn’t end there. Fear has seeped into nearly every area of our lives, from world news and job security to the health of our congregations and the viability of our denominations.

But "Christ has really set us free!" Paul cried (Galatians 5:1, New Living Translation). And one of Martin Luther’s most famous writings is titled, appropriately, "The Freedom of a Christian" (1520). These saints remind us that God has set us free to be a voice of hope in this world, to be bold enough to work for an end to world hunger and peace in our time. They remind us that because we belong to Christ we can live lives of fearlessness, gracefulness, and radical generosity. They show us what it looks like to dare to love across every boundary.

We Find Hope and Healing in Their Stories
The stories of the saints shape us. And they fill our lives with hope and healing. This gift became real to me in the laughter of the saints who gathered in the church basement of my childhood, doing crafts together for some sale or another. You see, one of those saints, my grandmother, had a radical mastectomy before I can remember, maybe even before I was born. And for years, until they came out with something better, she wore a foam pad that she called a "falsie." Remember, this was a very, very long time ago. Before you talked about this kind of thing. Before Betty Ford told women they needed to get regular breast exams. And, to top it all off, my grandmother was a full–blooded Norwegian. Not one to talk about personal matters, thank you very much. But she was quite a character, at least as Scandinavians go. When she worked on her crafts, down in that church basement, with all those other women, she used that falsie as a pin cushion. She looked like some sort of voodoo doll! And, oh, those ladies would laugh.

Gathered in that place was a community of saints who provided the love, the healing, and the hope I had learned about in Bible stories. One of my favorites is told in the second chapter of Mark. You know this story, right? Jesus is staying with some friends in a house in Capernaum. And while he’s there, he does a little teaching… and a lot of healing. One night, the house so packed with people looking for what Jesus is giving away that the friends of a paralyzed man have to climb up on the roof of the house and tear it apart to make a hole through which they can lower him to Jesus. These friends are determined to change their friend’s life and there is nothing that can stop them. Those saints in Mark’s story, like the saints in that church basement, provide healing, love, and comfort for their friend. Through the stories of these saints, we learn that laughter heals, that being loved can make you whole, and that through the things we say and do for each other Jesus can still work miracles.

We Are Nudged into Action by Their Stories
The stories of the saints shape our lives and give us hope when things are hard. And, sometimes, they give us the kick in the pants we need.

The times, it has been said, are a–changing. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a foreign land. Not all that long ago, I felt pretty hip and edgy. I wore cool clothes. I was technically pretty with–it. I knew the hottest music (and actually liked it). Then I turned 40. Two of my three kids are in college; the other is in high school. They talk to their friends on–line through Web sites like Facebook, listen to musical genres I didn’t know existed, and speak in languages I don’t understand. (Have you ever looked over the shoulder of a teenager as she IMs [instant messages] her many friends?!) We face similar challenges in our congregations. Most people in our neighborhoods don’t quite speak our language. They don’t love our music or understand our traditions. They have no idea what a circle is, let alone why they would want to be a part of one. They see welcome signs on the front lawns of our churches, but hear us arguing about who is really welcome. They want solutions to homelessness, the health care crisis, hunger, and all of the issues related to immigration…but we are mostly silent about these things. And sometimes we seem unsure about whether or not we have anything of value to offer.

It would be tempting to conclude that this gap is simply too wide to get over.

But the saints won’t have it. On that first Pentecost, they spoke in as many languages as there were people in the city (see the second chapter of Acts). The Holy Spirit gave them this gift. Why wouldn’t the Spirit give it to us, too? Speaking German, Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish, our immigrant ancestors planted churches across this new country. Why wouldn’t we plant new churches for the immigrants among us today? Why wouldn’t we figure out how to worship in the language of a new generation? Why wouldn’t we do whatever it takes to get the Good News out in a way that embraces, communicates with, and welcomes all of God’s people?

The saints and their stories have changed us, challenged us, and healed us. Their stories, thankfully, even haunt us when we are lazy or tired or scared.

The freedom with which the saints lived their lives dares us to risk following wherever the Spirit leads. Dares us to take risks in the name of Jesus. Dares us to do even the most outrageous things for the sake of love. We couldn’t possibly look sillier than a voodoo doll!

Tana M. Kjos has a master’s degree in mission and leadership from Luther Seminary and 15 years experience leading organizations into renewal. She is the co-founder and creative director of A.R.E.: A Renewal Enterprise, doing consulting and leadership coaching for faith–based, non–profit, and for–profit values–based organizations of all sizes. She is available to speak and lead workshops. For more information visit www.ARenewalEnterprise.com.