In 1985, I went to Parris Island to photograph Marine training for a newspaper. During that visit, I wandered into a small gallery honoring Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Photos of the honorees were lined up next to written descriptions of why they were selected for the honor. At first I was secretly jealous of the award winners. Who wouldn’t want that great an honor? Then I read the descriptions and learned how they had distinguished themselves in combat. I noticed that several recipients had dived on a hand grenade to protect the others in the bunker. That didn’t sound like an example I wanted to follow. Then there were the half dozen or so who died in successful charges against machine gun nests and gun batteries. They had all died in the fight. Going out in a hail of bullets wasn’t my idea of a good time either. Oh there were a number of soldiers who had lived to tell their tale, but they too had had to advance unprotected through a hail of bullets to earn their honors. I left the museum impressed with the dedication of the soldiers it honored. I also crossed Congressional Medal of Honor off my own wish list. That’s an honor I would rather not have to win.

Saints are sometimes seen as God’s Medal of Honor winners. But trying to become a saint isn’t much better than trying to earn a Medal of Honor. Becoming a saint is hard work. In fact, dying for your faith seems to be one of the most sure-fire ways to become a saint. You could follow the example of St. Stephen who was stoned, or of Saints Perpetua and Felicity. They and many other Christian saints were imprisoned for their faith and fed to the lions. Then there is the example of St. Peter who was to be crucified. He said that he was unworthy to die like his Lord and was crucified upside down.

So a top ten list of the ways to become a saint would have to include, being stoned, devoured by wild animals, being beheaded and a host of other grisly fates. Now I don’t know about you, but all of those things are on my not to do list. If that’s being a saint, then I think I would rather be out of the running.

What now? If I’m not eagerly looking for a chance to be brutally murdered for my faith, how can I become a saint? What about the other saints then? How did they pull it off? Maybe I can sneak into the church’s calendar of saints through another route. My choice to follow in that case is Saint Francis. After all, he preached to the birds. How hard could that be?

Francis was born into the new Italian middle class in the late 12th century. His father was a successful cloth merchant. As a child and young man, Francis dreamed of winning fame and fortune as a knight. But the course of Francis’ life was profoundly changed by two experiences. On a pilgrimage to Rome, Francis saw a beggar outside of St. Peter’s Church. The Holy Spirit moved Francis to trade places with the beggar. Francis exchanged clothes with a beggar and then spent the day begging for alms. That experience of being poor shook Francis to the core. Later he confronted his own fears of leprosy by hugging a leper. Like trading places with the beggar in Rome, hugging a leper left a deep mark on Francis.

But contrary to the way his story is often presented, Francis did not change overnight. For years Francis struggled over how to live out the Gospel. Shaped by his experiences with the beggar and the leper, he had a strong identification with the poor. Francis became history’s first drop out. He hopped off the fast track lifestyle and sought out a more radically simple life.

Francis and his followers tried to actually follow Jesus’ teaching with all that meant. Earlier in this service, I read the Beatitudes, which is a portion of Jesus’ most famous sermon, called the Sermon on the Mount. Francis and his followers put those famous words into actions. Francis and his followers tried to be meek, to be merciful and to be pure in heart. Francis and his followers tried to be peacemakers and to hunger and thirst after righteousness. And for them, the answer was to cut themselves off from worldly riches and to radically identify with the poor. For that, Francis is remembered as a saint. But Francis is not remembered as a saint because he set an example that we should follow. Francis lived in the tension between his desire to follow God fully and his more worldly desires. Francis is remembered as a saint not because of who he was, but because of who he followed, Jesus the Christ.

Saints aren’t people who get everything right. Saints aren’t people who live life without making mistakes. Saints are people, just plain old ordinary people like me and you, who do their best in their own time and their own place to follow Jesus’ teachings. So we don’t look to saints as an example of what we should do. We look through saints to see the example they followed. Saints become icons for God.

Icons are a tradition in art that has never been as popular here in the west as it is in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In any Eastern Orthodox Church, there are icons lining the walls, like the icon cross or the icon that covers our reserved sacrament at King of Peace. The icons are not just a decoration. Icons are seen as windows. The Orthodox pray using the icons to help focus their meditation. The icons are not objects of devotion in their own right and they are certainly not idols. Icons are paintings to look through to see God. And one experiences the living God, not in the work of art, but beyond it. Orthodox Christians call icons “windows into heaven.” It is in that sense that the lives of saints are icons. Through the example of the saints, we see how the scripture took hold in another saint’s life. Through the example of saints, we learn not about the saint, but about the God the saint followed.

So to be a saint, you don’t pick a saint’s life to copy. To be more saintly, you discover how your own life can be a window to God. When I understand it that way it becomes possible for me to see saints in the world today. Oh sure, there are the examples everyone uses like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Theresa. And those are good examples. Both were flawed humans trying to live in response to all God had done for them. But the Bible is not so limiting. Scripture refers to all Christians as saints and biblical writers, like the Apostle Paul, knew that their fellow Christians were not all perfect. We remember the people we have known in our own lives who have already died. Many of them are represented by the candles we lit in front of the altar earlier. I don’t know about you, but some of the faithful departed I lit a candle for were far from perfect.

But being a saint is not about being perfect, but about following Jesus. If you have turned your life over to him, then you are a saint already. New saints are made all the time. You might not feel saintly. That’s OK. God doesn’t welcome us into the Kingdom of God because we deserve it. God’s welcomes us into God’s kingdom out of love for as unique creations. No matter where we have been and what we have done, God is always ready to welcome us home. God has made saints out of the worst of sinners. All you have to do is to commit your life to Jesus. He will take care of the rest.

If you have already taken that step, then you are already numbered among the saints, whether you feel up to that designation or not. And each time your own actions point beyond yourself to the God you serve, then you too are serving as an icon of God.

Scripture refers to the saints as a cloud of witnesses. It is a cloud of witnesses to our God of love that includes those who have gone before us, together with all of us gathered here today and all the saints that will come in the future. Together we make up the communion of the saints. A communion that you and I are very much a part of now.

In closing, I want to share with you a visual feast of saints. Through the artwork on the screen you will see almost a hundred of the millions and millions of saints who have gone before us in the Christian faith. Look past the serious faces and the long beards surrounded by golden halos. The images themselves are not the important thing. The most important thing is the God behind the images—the God who we know through Jesus Christ our Lord. Because the great cloud of witnesses points to the one Lord who all the saints serve.

Each icon represents a unique life of someone who tried to live out the Gospel and there have been millions of lives like that. These icons are but a portion of the cloud of witnesses joined by those represented in the candles we lit tonight and represented by those of us gathered this Friday evening. It is a cloud of witnesses that you and I are a part of. Even when we don’t feel worthy of the honor. Or perhaps particularly when we don’t feel worthy of the honor, You and I are saints of God.

Amen.