Jesus: First "saint of brokenness"

Again I'm remembering the voices of students at the Episcopal Center @ UGA singing another hymn in a manner only they could sing.  It was the Lesbia Scott hymn, #293 "I sing a song of the saints."

Like so many of those elements obviously indicating or meant at least to appeal to children in our worship this hymn exudes a charm as well.  Wikipedia has a fine article, here.

The hymn means to be generous in imagining who our saints might be by saying "you can meet them" . . . anywhere!  And we always had fun with the verse that goes:

And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,

and one was slain by a fierce wild beast:

and there’s not any reason, no, not the least,

why I shouldn’t be one too.

We learned instead to sing "and one was a beast, and one was slain by a fierce wild priest:"   It was fun.  It became a distraction.  As charming as the hymn is there is more going on than light hearted imagination.  Clearly the intent is to get us to consider the presence of sainthood.  Instead of it being ascribed to "those who have gone before us in the faith" we are to consider our pew partners, our Mah-Jong partners, our Rotary partners, our brothers and sisters as saints.

Several of St. Paul's letters begin with calling the members of the congregations receiving his instruction "saints."  So the concept of a present sainthood is not new to Christian thinking.

Then how do we move from the proper observance in thanksgiving and mourning of our "saints" to a proper observance to us as saints? For sure we delay and count on God to bring us to perfection in resurrection.  But in so doing could we be avoiding the harder task of seeing sainthood as made really present in brokenness?

The potential ubiquity of sainthood must meet that condition, not avoid it.  Thanks be to God that is exactly how sainthood works.  If perfection were the first qualifier then no saint would be known as:

patient and brave and true,

who toiled and fought and lived and died

for the Lord they loved and knew.

Yes there are "those who have gone before us."  Jesus was the first.  But his brokenness paves the way for all to follow as much as his always being perfect.  We are being perfected, then fully in resurrection but for now some of us will need patience, others will toil, all will die. I'm pretty sure none will be slain by this fierce wild priest.