All Saints C2019
Luke 6:20-31
by Pastor Sarah Stadler
Philiosopher James Carse brilliantly begins his book Finite and Infinite Games with these words: “There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” With building complexity, Carse goes on to describe the many finite games we play: the games of our childhood like Duck Duck Goose (or Duck Duck Grey Duck for Minnesotans), games like football and soccer, games like the acquisition of certain material goods, like a home or a particular car, games like moving higher and higher up the ladder of social success, games played by nations seeking power. Carse calls these finite games because we can quote-unquote win them. Once we attain a certain level of pay or possess a certain object, we’re done. Having won, we may set our sights higher and attempt a nicer house or a fancier car, but that is yet another finite game. Finite games are well and good—as long as we recognize they are finite, Carse writes. As long as we do not mistake them for the infinite game.
“There is one infinite game,” Carse concludes after 149 brilliant pages. The infinite game cannot be won, no matter what we do. The infinite game can only be played.
On this All Saints Sunday, we may be tempted to see a life of faith as something won or lost. We may hear Jesus’ words from the gospel of Luke, words about non-violence and love for enemies, words that challenge us, and we may wonder if we will ever win, if we will ever attain the spiritual heights of those who have gone before us: a beloved grandmother, an exemplary Sunday school teacher, a saint who showed us unconditional love or acceptance. It’s natural, of course, to want to meet spiritual goals. It’s natural to want to scale the mountain of faith like it’s Everest. Once we make it to the top, we’re done. Goal accomplished. Baptized. Confirmed. Every task checked off on a neat list: forgive, turn other cheek, love, go to church. Check, check, check, check. Turns out, a life of faith is not a finite game, not even for those who seem to have the win all locked up.
For example, Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa was a Roman Catholic nun who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Calcutta, India. She entered the world’s stage in the 1980s because of her compassion for those most vulnerable. She cared for orphaned children. She touched people considered untouchable. She gathered up those whom no one else wanted. She wrote and spoke all over the world about the need for love and compassion, about the presence of Jesus in the people she met and served. She is, for many of my generation, the essence of “saint.” Yet Mother Teresa struggled for decades with her faith in God. She spoke about Jesus with faith and hope, yet for her, God was profoundly absent. Even Mother Teresa, quintessential saint, could not scale the mountain of faith for a win.
For a life of faith is not a finite game. There are no winners and no losers, no goals which, when met, end the play.
We can’t know the “right” answers.
We won’t plumb the depths of the mysteries of God.
Instead, as the one infinite game, the purpose of a life of faith is continuing the play.
Today in our Jesus story from Luke, Jesus proclaims blessings and woes to the disciples and insodoing describes the dominion of God. In God’s dominion, those who hunger and weep and live in poverty, those who are hated and excluded for Jesus’ sake know the blessing of God. And those who are full and laughing and wealthy, those who have a good reputation are told, literally in the Greek, to “pay attention,” to “be warned.” That’s what “woe to you” means. I have long been confused by these words of Jesus, but this week, it occurred to me that maybe the reason those who are full and laughing and wealthy must be warned is that they, we, I might think I’ve already won. We might think we have already reached the summit of our spiritual ambitions, that we are well and whole without blemish or need for growth. We might believe that a life of faith is a finite game, a game that we’ve won. While those who hunger and weep and live in poverty know to continually seek and wrestle and hope and dream.
A life of faith is the one infinite game, the one game we keep playing, the way of life where we seek and wrestle, hope and dream. We never reach the end, at least not in this life. Today, we remember and celebrate the lives of the saints gone before us, our parents and grandparents, our Sunday school teachers and confirmation mentors, the people who loved us, the people who forgave us when we couldn’t forgive ourselves. I know the impulse to idealize the way these people put their faith into motion, but the truth is that a life of faith is a constant wrestling, a constant seeking, a constant hoping and dreaming. Today, we may not be able to love our enemies, but one day, we might. Today, we may not have the strength to pray for those who persecute us, but one day, we might. Today, we may not turn the other cheek and practice non-violence, but one day, we might.
Saint Augustine, church father of the fourth and fifth centuries, once wrote: “Every saint has a past, every sinner a future.” And of that same St. Augustine, the poet Mary Oliver wrote:
Things take the time they take. Don’t
worry.
How many roads did St. Augustine follow
before he became St. Augustine?
(If you know St. Augustine, you know there were lots of roads.)
Commanded to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, to turn the other cheek, we may feel disheartened by the enormity of all we have not done in following Jesus. But thanks be to God, this life of faith is not a finite game but an infinite one. By God’s grace, we keep on playing. Thanks be to God! Amen.