All Saints

A couple of months ago, I got a call from the Library here at Milligan. “Hey, we’ve unearthed a couple of boxes of Hopwood archives. Are you interested?” Was I interested? Finding this stuff was like stumbling across the long-lost book of the law in the wall of the temple. The boxes arrived and I went through the notebooks and documents as gently as one might handle newly discovered Dead Sea scrolls. I carefully opened the brittle pages, and treasured the words set down so long ago. There were working notes from Mrs. Thompson’s long lost history of Hopwood. There was a registry from 1915. There were minutes of elders’ meetings from 50 years ago. We don’t want to forget our history. We’re making plans to celebrate 175 years together on Buffalo Creek. We’re actually a few years older than that, but you know how people tend to round downward once you reach a certain age. The Buffalo Creek Christian Church, later known as Hopwood Memorial, may have been established here as early as the late 1820’s. Church historian Addie Thompson wrote that “For several years there was no building for weekly services so (the church) met on the banks of the creek, in barns, mills, cemeteries, homes, groves, or any place they found suitable. Later a log church was built on land donated by Joshua Williams.”

    Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.”  Many of us here this morning are a little uncomfortable with commands...or at least certain commands?  We chafe under the seeming inflexibility of “the rules,” we bend God’s commands and sometimes break them and try to explain them away or just plain ignore them.  Sometimes rules seem dusty and  out of date and senseless anyway.  Did you know that in Tennessee, it is illegal for a driver to be blindfolded while driving a vehicle?  In Indiana, it is against the law to shoot open a can of food. (So that’s why they make pop tops!)  In Kentucky, it is a crime to use a reptile during any part of a religious service.  “I don’t care if it is testimony time...put that snake away!”

    Through the character of Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry sees this long procession of  saints.  Jayber, who cleans the church building in his little hometown of Port William, KY, remembers it like this:  “One day when I went up there to work, sleepiness overcame me and I lay down on the floor behind the back pew to take a nap.  Waking or sleeping (I couldn’t tell which), I saw all the people gathered there who had ever been there.  I saw them as I had seen them from the back pew...  I saw them in all the times past and to come, all somehow there in their own time and in all time and in no time: the cheerfully working and singing women, the men quiet or reluctant or shy, the weary, the troubled in spirit, the sick, the lame, the desperate, the dying, the little children tucked into the pews beside their elders, the young married couples full of visions, the old men with their dreams, the parents proud of their children, the grandparents with tears in their eyes, the pairs of young lovers attentive only to each other on the edge of the world, the grieving widows and widowers, the mothers and fathers of children newly dead, the proud, the humble, the attentive, the distracted–I saw them all.  I saw the creases crisscrossed on the backs of the men’s necks, their work-thickened hands, the Sunday dresses faded with washing....I seemed to love them all with a love that was mine merely because it included me.”

    Thinking and praying about those saints I have known who have gone before usually gets me reaching for the Kleenex box. It starts with the first hymn.  The image of all those believers we have loved who have gone before us gathered with believers from all time really grips my imagination:  And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, steals on the ear the distant triumph song, and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong. Alleluia!  From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast, through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: Alleluia, Alleluia.  As I behold that procession in my mind’s eye, as I think of the faithful lives lived for Christ, I’m overwhelmed with floods of emotion.
        Bernard of Clairvaux understood that.  He said:  “What does our commendation mean to them?  The saints have no need of honor from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs.  Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them.  But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself enflamed by a tremendous yearning.” (From J. Robert Wright, ed., Readings for the Daily Office from the Early Church. Church Publishing, 1991, p. 496.)

Christmas is a time for surprises. A couple of years ago, Jill was hoping to get a bicycle for Christmas. When Christmas morning rolled around, she was surprised (and hopeful) to find a HUGE box near the tree. It was a little oddly shaped to be a bicycle, but hope springs eternal. She tore into the box, only to find a slightly smaller box inside. The smaller box was opened to reveal a slightly smaller box inside that one too. Snickers from the youngest brother gave away the perpetrator of this demented scheme. Box after box was unwrapped. Jill’s expectations dropped as the boxes reduced in size. Thoughts of a bicycle were erased...she’d be lucky to end up with a pair of shoes...or a Barby doll...or a candy bar. The boxes went from small to tiny. The final wrapper was removed to reveal a plastic box that once held tic-tacs. “Oh great...thanks... what is it?

We Protestants aren’t much for feasts and holy days. We tend to know more about the New Orleans Saints than we do about All Saints. As fun as Halloween is, let’s not let miniature ghouls, witches, and candy corn crowd out the celebration of the lives of the saints. This is a celebration we ought not to lose. But who are saints? Saints are all of us who belong to Jesus. And what is it that we do on this day? We don’t pray to the saints on this or any other day. We have no need to ask the saints to intervene on our behalf before the throne of God. So what does All Saints have to do with us? This is certainly a day to give thanks for those whose lives have impacted our own for Christ. And it is a day when we think of how our lives are connected with the wonderful family of God that stretches through the ages.