Sermon 11/7/2021 “All Saints stories”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection, 2800 Hope Way, Alexandria, VA
Text: John 11:32-44
Day: All Saints’ Sunday, Year B
I didn’t think of Lyle as a saint, not as a teenager. Lyle was my Sunday School teacher, and he was noticeably different than the other adults in my father’s congregation. He was a building contractor, rough and unpolished, yet he had a very gentle soul. Lyle confused me when I first knew him. The other adults in that church said he had a “bleeding heart.” I didn’t know what that meant; I vaguely thought he had some sort of heart disease and that he might die at any moment. I realized eventually that Lyle and his wife were the only politically liberal people in that whole church. Lyle and Dottie Binion fed hungry people—but not at church, where their bleeding hearts made people roll their eyes. I count the Binions as saints because THEIR eyes didn’t roll at my idiosyncrasies, teaching me that a bleeding heart is a whole lot better than a hard heart.
I didn’t think of Jack Cahill as a saint, either, not as a young Navy officer. Jack was the Verger every single Sunday at the church I attended. At Church of the Resurrection, we don’t have a Verger, someone who wears special church clothes and who carries a kind of ceremonial mace in the procession, making sure all the people in the procession go where they are supposed to go and do what they are supposed to do.
Jack and his wife Claire came early and stayed late so that Jack could Verge. I noticed, though, that Jack and Claire were very different than most of the others in that congregation. Jack had money, a lot of money. The others didn’t, or if they did they hid it better than Jack did. The others bicycled together—a lot—and served dinner at the local shelter (that they had founded) and participated in liberal causes, as if Christ Jesus would have worn the same political campaign buttons as they did. Most of the other adults in the congregation rolled their eyes at Jack and Claire, waiting patiently for them to give away their money and help them with their liberal causes. I learned, though, that Jack and Clair were part of a non-church group that visited the local park benches on the coldest nights, handing out blankets and coffee. That’s when I realized that bleeding hearts—and hard ones—come in all political ideologies, all political parties. This is how I also learned that saints, as a rule, don’t roll their eyes at anyone.
I’ve made another general observation about saints over the years since my youth: people who are extraordinarily saintly NEVER admit to being one. But we are ALL—each of us—supposed to be saints, someone who shows others something about God.
Who are YOUR saints, the ones who taught you your most important God-lessons in life? Saints don’t always get things right; they are human. But when they err, they promptly repent. Saints show up. They listen more than they speak. They rarely take offense. And saints empty themselves of themselves, enough so that the light of God shines through them. Saints get offended by and persevere over injustice, not for themselves so much as for others. And saints do whatever is necessary to endure and help others endure in their faith, healing the spirits of many along the way.
Church of the Resurrection has many saints, both living and gone home to God, who—as the hymn says—”from their labors rest.” We read [will read] the names today of the 88 people whose ashes are in our Memorial Garden.
Frank Taylor Maynard’s ashes are not among them. The U.S. Navy called him Frank when they weren’t calling him Commander. His mother called him Taylor back home in Georgia.
Frank officially joined Church of the Resurrection on 12 June 1964, when our church was just three months old. Frank was single and newly arrived from California, for a three-year assignment here. Jim Green—who became Resurrection’s Vicar a year later—said that Frank always looked for a mission church to join, that he delighted in helping new churches to thrive.
An accomplished pianist and baritone, Frank was (no pun intended) instrumental in acquiring a small pipe organ for this church. Frank was reassigned to California in 1967, by which time Resurrection had over 100 members; we quadrupled in size within another year thereafter.
All of that, while commendable, is not why I count Frank as a saint. Jim Green said of him, “He was willing to do whatever needed doing, whatever was asked of him, including,” he added, “leading the teen group, which he was spectacularly bad at doing.”
In case you’re wondering, Frank is still using what might become his ashes. He’s 93 years old, living in his home in the Mission District of San Francisco, with a much younger relative.
Church of the Resurrection has bygone female saints, also. Prominent among our early ones were Lucy Lee, the widow of a missionary to China, and Ethel Springer, the second woman to earn a divinity degree from an Episcopal seminary, in 1937! These women both lived in the Hermitage across the street from our church. According again to Jim Green, they, “Kept us from … [being divisive during the Civil Rights Era] by articulating their activist point of view, helping to set the climate and [inclusive] ethos of Church of the Resurrection.” Or, as I would put it, they taught us to not roll our eyes at anyone.
So, rejoice that Resurrection has always been anti-racist, seeing people as individuals and not as representatives of any human-constructed class or group or type. Today we recognize and give thanks for the saints who helped a church full of people from all across the political and socioeconomic spectrums join together to do the work of God in their time and place. In a very real sense, these saints of ours are still very much with us.
When asked what a saint is, a young girl once pointed to the stained-glass windows in her church and said, “the ones who the light shines through.” I think she aced the test. When we empty ourselves of our ego, when we “let go and let God,” we invite the Holy Spirit to work in and through us.
We are a community of saints, a communion of saints. We are bleeding hearts and weeping hearts. We are the whole family of God, living and worshiping here now and in the past, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together (as our catechism says) in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise … and by living for others.
God helping me: I mean to be one, too.
