Rev Pat Kriss Saints and Sinners

(Posted November 2, 2022)

By Rev. Pat Kriss

“I am not a saint unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”  -- Nelson Mandela

I don’t know about you, but whenever our All Saints Sunday rolls around as it will in three days, I never feel much like a “saint.” I know too much about me to think that I qualify for that designation, and I tend to side with the late Nelson Mandela to see myself as another sinner who keeps on trying.

Who Is a Saint?

However, if you’ve ever wondered why Calvin referred to EVERYONE as a saint, it’s because he understood us – all of us who believe in Jesus – to be part of the Body of Christ, and a member of the Communion of Saints.

That means, regardless of how successful we’ve been so far in acting like saints. The point is to concentrate on what lies ahead, rather than to look backward at all the actions we’ve taken and the thoughts we’ve had that were far from saint-like.

Fall Back on Saturday Night!

There’s one thing I hope all of you saints-in-training will get right about this weekend is that you remember to set your clocks BACK an hour on Saturday night as we leave the spring version of daylight-saving time behind. While being punctual for church may be a saintly virtue, being an hour too early for services is not. Here’s one of those places where you are rewarded for your saintly-ness: a whole extra hour of sleep back!

What’s Happening on Sunday?

When you join us Sunday, we will remember and honor those members and friends of our congregation who have gone on ahead of us to God, since January 2021. We’ve included those who we lost during the pandemic since, while we were away from the Sanctuary, so many of these departures went unnoticed.

We will also have a chance to hear Luke’s story of Jesus giving his followers a version of the Beatitudes that includes the blessings and woes of sticking to the path to being saintly.