Stories of Saints

When Rowan Williams spoke at the United Reformed Church ministers’ gathering in May 2018, I realised how skilled he was at telling the stories of others and using those to say some really significant and helpful things. On that occasion he told the stories of three women - Maria Skobtsova, Dorothy Day and Madeleine Delbrel - and used an account of their lives and Christian contribution to offer some fascinating insights.

Now, much more briefly, he has put together a collection of stories of Christian lives and uses these to point us to new and familiar Christian insight. The book, entitled “Luminaries” started life in various places and is a compilation, mostly, of addresses and sermons. However, it works, as Williams takes us into the lives of those he described. Starting with St Paul, and it is well worth starting in the Bible in a project like this, and ending in the latter part of the twentieth century with Oscar Romero, he takes us into some great stories of Christians. It is a good reminder that we all have our story, and that stories are worth telling.

There are twenty stories, and each have their insight.

I particularly liked some of what he says about William Tyndale (1494-1536) - “Tyndale was not just a gifted, pithy and entertaining translator; he also had a profound and far-reaching vision of the social order. For Tyndale, God was shown in the world by particular kinds of social relation. The Church is the community of those who live in Godlike relation to one another. The Church is the community of those so overwhelmed by their indebtedness to God’s free grace that they live in a state of glad and grateful indebtedness to one another.”