Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from November 5, 2006

“Who, Me?”

Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

Scriptures:

Revelation 21:1-6a

John 11:32-44

All Saints Day is a liturgical holiday that slipped into our Protestant calendar when we weren’t looking, a surprise fruit of ecumenism in our midst.  Celebrated in the Roman Catholic tradition since Pope Gregory made it a holy day of obligation in 835, it is a more recent arrival in the worship and tradition of most Protestants.

Barbara Brown Taylor suggests, that “more than any other day of the year, today is family reunion day for the church.  It’s a day for pulling out the old family photograph albums and remembering where we came from.”

As Protestants, we are still a little skittish when it comes to those who have Saint in front of their name like Saint Francis who, though he didn’t write the prayer attributed to him, did a pretty good job of living it out.  Then there’s Saint Joan of Arc who preferred armor to petticoats and led men twice her size into battle. (Taylor)

If you dig around in our shared closet, you will find lesser-known saints like Saint Maximilian, the first conscientious objector, who was drafted by the Roman army but refused to serve, saying his only loyalty was to his God.  At his beheading, Maximilian noticed the shabby clothing of his executioner and called to his father in the crowd, asking his own new clothes be taken off and given to the man.

Our shared family history book is filled with known and lesser-known Saints, duly canonized and baptized by the religious folks whose job it is to do that sort of thing.  As Protestants, we look, somewhat sheepishly, out of the corner of our eye and look for a more familiar communion.

In our communion of saints, we include those of our congregation and acquaintance who died in the last year, those of our own family, the spiritual giants of our century.  We can relate to Mother Teresa more readily than to Theresa of Avila.  We know more about Martin Luther King, Junior than we do about Martin Luther, the Church Reformer.

Today is the day to remember and celebrate them all.  We sit under the family tree of our shared heritage and acknowledge that we are shaped by a tender and terrible history.  When we shake the family tree, little known saints come tumbling out.  These are our ancestors in the faith who raised their voices, made bold decisions, were willing to go to jail, be burned at the stake, keeping the faith at all costs.

Shake the family tree and out comes Eleazer Wheelock.  Graduating from Yale Divinity School in 1773, he was ordained by our New London Association and became pastor of the Second Congregational Parish in Lebanon.  To supplement his income, he opened a boys’ school in the parsonage.  One of his students was a young Mohegan boy named Samson Occam.  In 1775, Wheelock established the Moor-Indian Charity School.  By 1765, he had 25 students enrolled, all on full scholarship.  He later received a land grant in Hanover, New Hampshire and a charter for the founding of Darmouth College.

Shake the family tree again and out comes Lewis Tappan, a New York Merchant and transplanted New England Congregationalist, who was the organizational genius for the American Missionary Association and the spearhead of the defense fund for the Amistad slaves.  The monies he raised not only assured their defense, but also housing, health care and employment.  He served the AMA for 19 years as a volunteer.  This faithful Christian layman, for whom no definitive biography exists, lived his Christian faith although his life was threatened, his home ransacked, and his possessions burned.  He was forced out of his church.  He taught an integrated Sunday school and advocated integrated public schools in the belief that blacks and whites could know each other as adults only if they grew up together.  When one of the Mendi (Africa) missionaries wrote to ask what the AMA officers would think if he were to marry an African woman, Tappan's answer was, "White or black, whom God puts together, let no man put asunder."  The year was 1854. 

Shake the family tree again and out comes Elvira Yockey, prime mover of the missionary aid society of the Reform Churches.  In the late 1800’s, when women were to keep silent in the churches, Elvira Yockey galvanized women with her passion for an outreach movement that was faithful to the great commission.  In 1877, the Women’s Missionary Society of the First Reformed Church in Xenia, Ohio was born of her leadership. 

The United Church of Christ, through its Evangelical and Reform, Congregational and Christian forbears claims a history radical witness to the Gospel and deep engagement with the pressing social issues of every age, our own included.  The roots of our denomination were steeped in a passion for justice, peace and faithfulness to the gospel. 

But wait, there’s more.  While we claim the movers and shakers of our tradition that pushed the church into faithfulness, these saints were not our only ancestors. 

Shake the family tree and out falls those who sat on their hands, cared only for themselves and thought little about the impact of their actions on future generations.  We are kin to those who have gone their own way when they did not get their own way.  We are the offspring of those who threw Lewis Tappan out of his church, and financially squeezed Eleazer Wheelock until he was forced to seek other employment so he could support his family.

We are the biological and spiritual descendants of those who supported racial segregation, fought against women’s ordination, ignored the plight of farm workers, and shrugged helplessly in the face of growing oppression and greed.  We are the spiritual sisters and brothers of those who skirt the pressing issues of justice by refusing to struggle faithfully and honestly with the growing gap between the rich and the poor, lack of affordable housing and health care, equal rights for same-gender couples, and the limits of medical intervention in the face of seeming limitless medical technology.

As Mary Brock notes, “We are kin to those who have fought for the faith and those who fought against it.  We are the spiritual children of wonderful stewards who gave their all and generations of curmudgeons who threw water on the Spirit’s fire every chance they got.  Some day, down the road when All Saints Day rolls around, people will remember you and me.  We are the potential saints of future generations.  We are the shoulders on which others will stand.  Will we be the ones who raised our hands or sat on them?  Sometimes, we forget we aren’t just living our busy lives; we are laying a foundation, molding a future, establishing a legacy.”

When Jesus turned to the people who witnessed Lazarus walk out of the grave alive again and tripping over the grave cloths, he said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”  Lazarus emerged from the grave alive, but covered literally with the stuff of death.  Jesus had done his part, now it was the community’s turn.

It is up to us to make room for the life God calls forth.  It is up to us to pick away the bits of death that cling—old prejudices’ familiar ways, bits of power and privilege that insulate us from the messiness of the world.   Jesus didn’t wait until people understood what happened, until all the experts had weighed in to find out if old Lazarus was really alive or if something even more weird was going on.

Jesus told them to get to work, to get rid of death and make room for life.  No doubt some of them stood around afraid to touch Lazarus, afraid of the stink of it all.  No doubt a few said to Jesus, “Who, me?” and a few just plunged right in picking off the grave clothes in obedience to a command and an invitation. 

The command was to a specific action—take off the stuff of death and make room for life.  In a very real way, that’s what all saints is about—celebrating those who stepped up to embrace the new life that God calls forth from death, pitching in, doing what needs to be done, catching a spirit and following after a vision of life and the kingdom and goodness and justice when it would be easier to sit on their hands in the safety of life as they knew it.

But, as Peter Gomes reminds us, being a saint is not a matter of perfection, but of fidelity.  Not so much about getting it right the first time, but staying faithful to the task.  In the great communion of those who are also doing their best, we journey along discarding bits of death as we go, removing the binding clothes of envy, prejudice, anger, despair and apathy, giving thanks that not all of us struggle with all of it on the same day. 

We stand with a great cloud of witnesses around us and, occasionally, we take our place with them.  Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us, “Saints are not distinguished by their goodness, but by their extravagant love of God which shines brighter than anything else about them.”