*Blest are the pure in heart* Chancel Choir Hymn of Faith *Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee* Witness of Scripture: Matthew 23: 1-12 Anthem *Holy is the Ture Light* William H. Harris. Chancel Choir Sermon *Remembering the Greatest* David Spain
Recorded on November 5, 2023
It has been attributed to Henry Clay that he first used the phrase “self-made man.”No doubt influenced by Enlightenment thinking and the affirmation of individual rights, Clay’s phrase has carried forward through the years in various expressions—the rugged individualist, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, even old Marlboro commercials depict the notion of a self-made person. To be sure individual responsibility is important and personal agency matters, especially for those whose voice has been denied for whatever reason. While affirming the importance of individual agency, the church offers another perspective in which to frame life, another three word description. We know it as All Saints Sunday.
Today, as we have given thanks for individual lives from the life of this congregation and the lives of so many in our larger community of friends and family, we recognize we would not be here without the help of so many others. In the album of influence in my life, some of their names are Deryl and Richard, Florence and Helen, Penny and Ed—you have your own list of names in your own albums, anthologies of influence that might include categories like coach and teacher, mentor and aunt, parent and grandparent. We all are indebted to those who have lifted us on their shoulders, or at least cheered for us along life’s way—all of them that great cloud of witnesses, saints to us who thanks be to God means we have not been left alone to be self-made.
In her novel Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver tells about the town of Grace, where each year they celebrate the Day of the Dead. Everyone gathers in the village cemetery; they elaborately decorate the tombstones, strewing flowers all over the ground. They bring food; the children run; they sing and play games; it is a great festivity, all done with tender care. In the church, we certainly continue to care for those who have died…it is a great comfort to see this attention lavished on the dead. In these families you would never stop being loved.’ On All Saints Sunday, we recognize that love is a two-way street—our care for those who have gone before us, and their care for all who follow in their footsteps, because as the apostle Paul so correctly said it, “love never ends.” So today, we remember and we listen for the voices of those who have gone before us. We hear the chorus of their love—24 from this church family whose names are written in the church bulletin, and countless others whose names are written in our hearts and minds.
The church in its wisdom invites us to reflect on the testimony of the saints.What do we hear? First and foremost, we marvel at the complexity of their lives. There might be a thread or theme, a word of two that is descriptive of their lives; but we also celebrate they were complex, fascinating, mysterious people—a patchwork of events and moments, actions and reactions that can never be reduced without dismissing some part of their lives. It is good to remember the God-graced complexity of their living and ours, for it helps keep us more curious and less judgmental as Walt Whitman advised; or as historian James Truslow Adams observed “there is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.” The ones we remember today are remembered for their wondrous, beautiful, imperfect complexity, especially important in a time when rhetoric in its many forms is tempted to reduce people (or even groups of people) to a single pejorative insulting description, a framework that not only reduces the saints from the past, but also reduces the neighbor next door, or across town, or across any divide.
We reflect on the lives of the saints and remember that none of them—and none of us—gets through life unscathed. The gift of life is wondrous in and of itself, and there are many days of wonder and joy and gladness; but there are also days of agony, of loss, of undeserved hurt and pain. My father, now only a few months shy of his 101st birthday, has often repeated, “boy it is less than a perfect world.” And yet, despite those imperfections both in the world and in each of the saints, these ordinary women and men persevered, kept hold of a hope for life and a vision for a better day, through all the fractures and fissures still letting something of the love of God shine through. Their witness means that none of us can throw up our hands and say we are excused or excluded from the same saintly striving.
We look to the lives of the saints and recognize that one of the best gifts they bequeath to us is perspective. We see their living pointed to something beyond themselves—they lived transparently, seeing themselves as part of a greater purpose, a humility that recognizes greatness as a light passing through more than resting upon any one person.Willa Cather wrote in her novel My Antonio, “that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great,” wisdom carved on her tombstone. We recognize the Christian faith emphasizes less the triumph of the individual and more the companionship for the greater good. God did not create us to live isolated and separate, but as helpmates and co-workers, for we live in an inseparable web that is God’s good design. “What life have you if you have not life together?” asks T. S. Eliot.“There is no life that is not community, and no community not lived in praise to God.” (‘Choruses from The Rock).
Jesus said as much long before Cather or Eliot shared their wisdom. Matthew’s gospel tells of Jesus speaking to the crowds, to the disciples then and the disciples now. Jesus’ concern is not about the teaching—he affirms what the scribes and Pharisees teach. What he is troubled by is the lack of consistency between word and deed. We recognize that matching word and deed is life’s greatest challenge, and not just for scribes and Pharisees. We need now more than ever, when hearing Matthew’s story, to resist the-all-too-often made mistake of villainizing the scribes and Pharisees, in other words the Jews, as somehow the antithesis of Jesus. Our Jewish friends have too often been the foil to justify anti-Semitic attitudes betraying a very ugly Christianity. Rejecting easy hatred, especially amid the flood of today’s horrific rhetoric may not always be easy, but it is a very saintly way of living, a great gift to pass on to our neighbors and the generations following.We want them to be able to say of us, we stood against hatred. To that end, Jesus calls his disciples not to live for self-exaltation or pride.Instead, Jesus calls his disciples to live by serving, to take up a basin and a towel, to be clothed in the garments of compassion and humility, justice and mercy. It was not the first time Jesus had said such a thing, nor would it be the last. When Jesus was serving a meal to his disciples—the last supper they would all share together—an argument broke out about who was the greatest. What he said on that occasion, what he said to the crowds about the scribes and Pharisees, and what he says to us all these years later is the same--“The greatest among you will be your servant…the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves…for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”It is not too much to say the saints are those who serve with humble gladness, because Jesus is among us as one who serves. Jesus revalues what has been devalued.
We would remember however, that today is more than a day of commemoration. It is also a day of commitment, a day not only of being grounded in gratitude for those who have gone before us, but also a day for taking flight for those who will follow us. We are part of that great cloud of witnesses, that great march of redemption—not spectators to the work of God, but participants in the work of God. The great heroes of the faith—Abraham and Sarah, Esther and Amos, Mary and John, Martha and Paul who once carried the light of faith, now pass that torch to us, for as Peter Gomes has written, “All Saints Day reminds us that the Christian faith is not so much the community of recollection as it is the fellowship of participation and anticipation… people not so much perfect but persevering who associate themselves with Jesus’ work in the world.” (Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living, 229, 230)
You might know the name Clarence Jordan. With an agricultural degree in one hand and the book of Acts in the other hand, Jordan started Koinonia Farms outside Americus, Georgia where he invited people of all colors to live and work in community. It was a noble experiment at any time, especially so in the 1950’s rural south. The Klan voiced and acted out their displeasure, torching crops and randomly firing onto the property. It was one thing for Jordan to endure such hatred, but quite another for a child.One day his daughter came home from school in tears, and when Jordan asked what was wrong, she said that a lot of kids at school were mean to her but there was one boy who would knock her down, throw her books down the hallway, and call her ugly names. Jordan advised, ‘you’ve got long fingernails, why not use them against him?” to which his daughter replied, “I thought about that, but I heard you say in your sermon that Jesus said we’re supposed to love our enemies, so I thought I shouldn’t do that.” Jordan responded, “Tell you what I’m going to do tomorrow—I’ll go to the school, and I’m going to ask Jesus to excuse me from being a Christian for about fifteen minutes while I beat the daylights out of this boy.” His daughter said, “Daddy you can’t do that.” “Why not?” “You can’t be excused from being a Christian for fifteen minutes.” (James Howell, Servants, Misfits and Martyrs: Saints and Their Stories, pp. 47 – 52)
Saints come in all shapes and sizes…they may be in the cloud of witnesses, they may be little children who lead us. Whoever they are, they remind us of Christ’s light that never stops shining, never stops beckoning, not even for 15 minutes. Today, we are not only remembering the greatest; we are also remembering and enacting what Jesus said about greatness—and that is the work of the saints.