The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
November 5, 2006
Vol. 9 no. 43

Everything But...
           It is notoriously hard to define a saint. We all know one, at least, but how that person matches up with the saints of yore is always a case of apples and oranges. All the ancient saints have had better public relations than your saint at the end of the pew or end of the block.
           But one thing I have learned watching some saints and reading about others is that they are seldom perfectly saintly. That’s pretty good news if you are working on being a saint, yet know that you have collected and committed a few too many blemishes along the way. Saints aren’t perfect, and never were.
           It’s more important to know whom God considers saintly. Our opinion and assessment is academic, after all. The Bible has lots of saints, but frankly most of them are really odd and have lots of rough edges. Matthew begins his Gospel with a long genealogy of Jesus, starting with Abraham. It’s a string of men all the way down, except for five women who are noted as mothers of the line. They are all familiar characters - Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Uriah, and Mary - and while they may all be saints in their own way, all lived under the shadow of their sexuality.
           Only Tamar and Mary were actually Hebrew, so it is notable that they allowed foreigners to become the mothers of all Israel. Next to Mary, Ruth is the most saintly, a kind person who devotes herself to another human being in need. Ruths in our midst today certainly would be using far different strategies than their namesake. Ruth’s job essentially was to seduce her mother-in-law’s relative so that the family tree of Naomi’s son would be continued. Didn’t think that was a saintly task? Sainthood is a tough job and somebody’s got to do it.