Living with the Saints

The Yorktown United Methodist Church
Pastor Roy B. Grubbs

November 1, 2009                                                                                  Revelation 7:9-17
All Saints Sunday                                                                                      Hebrews 12:1-2  

E.B. White, the great American writer, once watched his wife Katherine plant bulbs in her garden in the last autumn of her life.  “There was something comical yet touching in her bedaggled appearance,” White writes, “the small hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in late October, calmly plotting the resurrection.”

Katherine was a member of the resurrection conspiracy, those who plant seeds of hope, seeds of tomorrow under today’s dark skies of uncertainty and death.  People who look for new life even as the old is falling away, and so carry the rest of us along who are haunted by what has been instead of what can be.

All of us are beneficiaries of the Easter people who have preceded us, who have plowed, planted and prepared resurrection for those who come along.  I think of Abraham and Sarah setting out on a journey to an unknown land on the basis of a call and a promise.  How did they know they just weren’t hearing voices?  They trusted that he voice they heard was God’s.  Or Moses leading his people out of Egypt only to wander in the wilderness for forty years clinging to that same promise, which Moses would never see fulfilled.  These and all the rest of the heroes of faith named in the stirring roll call in Hebrews have one thing in common.  “They all died in faith before any of the things that had been promised came to be,” says Hebrews, “but they saw them in the far distance and welcomed them.” Like Katherine White, these planters of hope acted out a spring they would never see.

You don’t have to be a biblical hero to plot the resurrection.  Maya Angelou once said that is wise to remember where we have come from, whether it be Europe or Asia or Africa .  It is wise to think: Suppose I came face-to-face with my great-great grandfather or grandmother, and she looked at me and said, “So you’re the one.  You are the reason.  You are the one I took it all for---the reason I came on ship steerage, eating bread and water, suffering all the pains of uprooting.  You, Margaret; you, John…you are the end result of all my dreaming.  You are it.”

How would you shape up to your ancestors’ dreams?  You are here because of them.  Because of their sacrifice, their endurance.  Because of their belief in something better to come.

How do we join this conspiracy of hope?  In two ways, I think.  First, by remembering and giving thanks for the saints who have prepared the way for us.  Not the great saints with a capital “S” whom the Catholic church beatifies, but the “small-s” saints who, though their life-long acts of faithfulness, kindness and love have made a world for us.

A wealthy student at Williams College was accused of defacing college property and was sent to see the President, renowned educator Mark Hopkins.  The student came in with an attitude, took out his billfold and asked how much the damages cost.  This was too much for the president, who ordered the student to sit down.  “No one,’ he said, “can pay for what he receives here.  Can you pay for the sacrifice of Colonel Williams who founded this college?  Can you pay for the underpaid professors who remained here to teach when they could have gone elsewhere?  Young man, I want you to know that every student here, including you, is a charity case.”

On All Saints Sunday, we charity cases remember all those to whom we are so indebted for the life we are blessed to live.  Teachers, preachers, friends, parents, and more.  We remember and give thanks, but we also invest.  We plant ourselves in what has value now for the sake of next spring, whether we will see it or not.

There has been a lot of resurrection-plotting around this place for the past few years.   One of the reasons I came to this church was your desire to be more than you were.  You wanted to grow in faith, in spirituality, in your mission to the community and to the world, and, yes, in numbers, too.

We have all invested ourselves in that springtime vision these three years.  We were facing a budget deficit, which has been reversed and  eliminated.  We wanted to give more to missions, which we have done each year.  And, now we are looking to bring in a Student Pastor this coming fall.  When you think about it, that’s a lot to do in two and a half years. 

But we can’t stop here.  The race we’re running is not a sprint, but a marathon, that takes perseverance and deep dedication.  Too many churches today are locked into survival mode, content just to exist for themselves.  I dream for even more connection with our community, where people are excited about their common ministry of reaching out to the worlds’ needs.  I hope YUMC becomes even more of a vibrant and grace-filled spiritual home for all ages, where young and old discern their calling to be planters of hope and love.  I’ll even take a warm and fuzzy “hub of love,” where everyone—and I mean everyone regardless of lifestyle, economic condition or station in life—will feel accepted and nurtured.  I want all those things—and I think you do, too.

I ask you to join me in plotting the resurrection.  Let us plant seeds for an unseen spring, knowing that God will produce glorious new life in places and ways we can only imagine.  Surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses—our personal cheering section---let us invest ourselves wholeheartedly in what we value most deeply, and in those we love most fully.  Our children—and I mean by that all the young ones in this church today and those who will come tomorrow, each of whom belongs to each one of us---our children will be the beneficiaries of the resurrection we plot.  Why not give them the best we have to offer?  Amen

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