WHO'S THAT ON YOUR BALCONY?

November 2, 1986, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan |
Fourth Presbyterian: Church, Chicago

"4.We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses..."
~-Hebrews 12:1 (RSY)

Scripture
Hebrews chapters 11 and-12
Selected verses

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of
things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval. By
faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God."

. (11:1-3a)

“By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain,
through which he received approval as righteous." §(11:4a)

“By faith E'noch was taken up so that he should not see death; and he
was not found, because God had taken him." (11:5a)

“By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen,
took heed and constructed an ark for the saving of his household;" (11:7a)}

- “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which
he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he
was to go." (11:8) ne

“By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was
past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.” (11:11)

“These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but
having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that. they
were strangers and exiles on the earth." (11:13)

“By fatth the people crossed the Red Sea as if on dry land;"

(3 (11: 29a)

“And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon,
Bar'ak, Samson, Jeph'thah, of David and Samuel and the prophets -". (11:32)

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and Jet
us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking toe Jesus
| the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before

him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand
of the throne of God." (12:1,2) ,

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Some of us, I have concluded, suffer from a peculiar affliction which
makes it physically impossible for us to pass by an historical plaque
without trying to read it. There are a number of ways to sub-divide and
categorize the human race. One of them is between those who regard
historical plaques as useless clutter - the "history is bunk" folk - and
those of us who regard an historical marker as an item of endless
fascination, full of vital, life giving information, which must be read and
pondered. Our. affliction is not serious ordinarily, a nuisance perhaps to
those who are walking with us. It can become a bit dangerous when we are
driving through Gettysburg or Valley Forge and, of course, those who suffer
this affliction all. know how. embarrassing it is when we let it get out of
control and become an obsessive,. reading of everything in print...and in
spite of ourselves lean forward in the subway or airplane seat and crane
our..necks to read.the title.of the. book. the person across the aisle-is
reading: and .get caught,

I.am a reader of plaques. I visited St. Michael's Church in
Charteston, South Carolina, a magnificent old building with a spire visible
from. the harbor. .The church has played an important -role-in that
fascinating city. for several.centuries. The man who showed me. around,
however, kept telling me about the structure, but I kept being distracted
by the plaques on the wall. . They contain the story of the church.

"To the glory of God and in memory of
The..Reverend. So.and-.So, Beltoved..Pastor
who. labored. among us for 40. years,"

"In sacred memory.of Artillery. Sergeant
Smith, Army of the Confederacy, killed
at Vicksburg."

. "In memory of Colonel So and So,
Banker, for.35:years Trustee of this. church."

- At a meeting. in Indianapolis, Second Presbyterian Church, last week,
I enjoyed seeing one of the last and loveliest. Gothic Cathedral type
buildings to be constructed in this. country. But the-best part is the
fourth story corridor where they keep the old pictures, distinguished
Victorian Elders and. Trustees.and a wonderful large portrait of a dignified
woman who from 1880 unti?-1913 was the Superintendent of the Primary
Department.

I read the plaques because.they tell the story. They contain the
names of the saints, the individual men and women whose faith and hope are
-confirmed by the continued existence of. the church they enjoyed. and- loved,
much. as::1.-enjoy. and. love it, decades, or a-century. ago... I read the plaques
because ‘they. provide the content for that. curious affirmation. I make every
Sunday. when I stand up and recite: "I believe. in the Communion of Saints.

a

Yet the more Protestant we are the less it seems. we talk about. saints
and the more the word Saint takes on a sticky sentimentality which results
in our using it negatively to affirm our normality, our humanity, as in
"I'm.no saint, you know."

11/2/86 : 5 2

There is a story in that and: it needs retelling every so often,
particularly at this time of year, this week to be exact. And so, please
indulge me and hear.again a part of our story. Actually there are three
occasions ~ all of which occurred last week which bear the weight of this
story: ATl Saints Day ~-.November 1;.the Eve of All Saints, known in
history as All Hallows Eve - Hallows. Eve- Halloween; and the Day of All
Hallows, October 31, the occasion an Augustinian Monk by the name.of Father
Martin Luther chose to nail 95 Theses to the door of a church in
Wittenberg, Germany, for the purpose. of debate. - Reformation Day.
Obviously, our Roman brothers and sisters don't celebrate that occasion
much - although they're getting closer. Nor do we celebrate All Saints Day
much - and we're not getting close, but we ought to be.

All Saints Day was the occasion in the Middle Ages to think about the
Saints of the Church, to revere and. adore the Saints in Masses for that
purpose... (Please note, Protestants, that Roman Catholics have never
worshiped Saints: but have adored and revered. them which is-a liturgical.
way of thanking them and we could learn something from that, I think.) In
any event, the faithful invoked the favor of the saints in acts of. piety
and devotion and.as often happened in the. Middle Ages, a basically good
idea got. mixed up with superstition and then economics got. into it with
predictably disastrous results.

The superstitious were convinced. that the dead were.a.little nearer
the world of the living on All Saints Day. As they were thought about,
revered and invoked, people with vivid imaginations thought they experienced
their actual presence. In fact, if you had a really vivid imagination and
were very quiet you-might even catch a glimpse of them in.the grave yard
emerging from the shadows... How I hated, as.a boy, the Jong walk home. from
the YMCA beside the Fairview. Cemetery. -And I do recall at least a
different perspective on the matter when I finally shared my fear with my
parents and they reminded me that “my own relatives were up there in that
cemetery, too," and so my.own morbid,.medieval terror. was: tempered by the
notion that. some of those spirits might actually. know me and recognizé me
as Bob and Blanche's boy and intercede with. their: friends. on my behalf.

It was a good idea in the. Middle Ages to be prepared on All Hallows
Eve, after dark, to ward off unwelcome spirits; by carving .a frightening
face in a gourd or. large squash and lighting it with a candle. Well,
Martin Luther, restless Augustinian, chose the day. before All. Saints jin
1517 to nail his Theses to the door in Wittenburg because a lot of people
would be passing that way in the morning. ~All Saints was a big day in
Wittenburg. The year.before, Frederick the Wise. had. put his personal
collection of. sacred relics on display. It .was.a. wonderful carnival.
Historian Roland Bainton has preserved the record of contents of that.
collection. for posterity: .a.thorn from-the. crown-Jesus wore, one tooth
from St. Jerome, four. pieces of St. Chrysostom, four hairs of the Virgin
Mary, seven pieces of her. veil sprinkled with the blood of Christ... The
relics of Jesus included a piece of the swaddling cloth from Bethlehem and
a piece of bread from the Last Supper.. Frederick's collection contained
19,012 Holy Relics... In Luther's. time, it. was. popularly. believed. that. if
a Christian was fortunate enough to view all those relics on All Saints Day
and make a generous contribution, he/she was granted an Indulgence - a

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reduction of the time to be spent in Purgatory, for a maximum of
1,902,207 years and 270 days. [Here I Stand, Roland Bainton, p.. 53]

Luther proposed, in his 95 Theses, to discuss this system. At the
heart of it was the notion that the Saints had accumulated so much
goodness during their lives, much of it was left over, in storage as it
were, and available for distribution by the church, for a fee ... a pretty
effective stewardship program. When Luther's protest became a full scale
revolt, its adherents, known as Protestors, or Protestants, wanted as
little to do as possible with the notion of indulgences. And so the idea
of Saints was assiduously avoided. And in that process, Western Protestant
Christianity lost one of its more useful and important concepts. Most of
us, aS a matter of fact, don't know what we are affirming when we say, in
the Creed that we believe in the Communion of Saints.

Let's think about that for a moment. We value individuality and
autonomy in our culture - too much, some are saying. Sometimes, in order
to affirm our individuality, we forget our connections, particularly our
relationship to the past. We are never totally autonomous and we deny, cut
off, alienate ourselves from something very important when we pretend as if
we were an "island, entire of itself." You and I are, in fact, an
astonishing amalgam of the past. We bear within us, in an incredible
genetic structure and DNA code, a microcosm of a whole family at least and
the whole race at best, only a tiny bit of which we know about. For better
or worse we are deeply in debt to the past: to our parents directly, but
also to their parents and their parents - and at that point our knowledge
stops, but the influence on us does not. Have’ you ever reacted
instinctively to a situation, a person, and been astonished because what
you said, even the inflection in your voice, sounded exactly like your
mother or father? Do you ever look at your younger sibling - as you grow
older - and see the physical presence of your parent? We are not very
autonomous . ‘

That is true biologically, psychologically and spiritually. Martin
Marty was lecturing at a Roman Catholic University after Vatican II. Some
students were cheering a blasphemously furious ex-priest who was berating
and scorning the Catholic Church in the most vivid language imaginable.
Marty wrote: "I asked them why the applause. ‘You'll never understand’
one of them said, 'what an identity crisis the Catholic Church gave each of
us.' I wondered out loud if they knew how lucky they were ever to have
belonged to anything potent enough to give them an identity over which to
have a-crisis." [By Way of Response, p. 19]

Part of the experience of being a Christian is to know that you are
connected to something bigger than yourself - which has a long
history...and which is yours today only because many, many others lived and
died for it and passed it on down to you... There is a small piece of Iona
marble on my desk. On the island of Iona off the West Coast of Scotland,
where an Irish missionary and soldier of fortune by the name of Columba
Tanded in the sixth century. There are remains of a monastery and a
restored Abby... To stand there is to have an expanded and deepened sense
of what it means to be a Presbyterian Christian because it connects with
the past and with some very real saints...

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Nikos Kazantzakis,: the novelist, reflected on those. who had- gone
before. He hears the dead saying tothe living: . "Finish: our. work... All
day and all night we come and go through your body... When you. shake with
fear, your terror...degrades innumerable souls before and behind you. When
you rise to a valorous deed, all of.your race-rises with. you." [The
Saviors of God] a

The novelist caught the reality which the church has always intended
in the idea.of the Communion of Saints.. We are not autonomous. We are not
alone.. Those who have gone before us are with us.

No one in all. of history needed to-know. that-more-urgently than the
Christian people in the first few generations after. the life and ministry
of Jesus... The New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews was written for them.-
for their encouragement as they faced an uncertain future which almost
certainly included persecution. "Remember," it urges, "those who preceded
you: Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Moses." "We-are- surrounded by so great
a cloud of witnesses," the writer exclaimed. And-we are.-. you-and:I.-
surrounded and influenced by, and in the presence of men and. women who gave
us the gift of life, poured.into. us -. out of their vessels-- the rich wine
of our personalities; gave us, from their.own faith and hope - whatever
faith and hope. we have....Do.you-love the church?... So did generations of
your forebears. Are you impatient. for. justice in the world? It is a very
Presbyterian reaction... Does something. in you refuse to make peace with
racism and oppression?.. Christians have been: experiencing: that.and passing
on down through generations for 2,000.years... Do you find that you cannot
Tet go of hope. - that. each day -you. look. for news that suggests we are
moving toward peace? You stand. in.a long, Jong.line of Christian people
whose solid, unshakable hope began with Christ and was passed on down.. How
sad that-we Protestants can't celebrate our saints, recognize them, name
them, thank them, thank God <for .them..

The Jate Carlyle Marney, a delightful. Southern Baptist. preacher,
philosopher - who devoted his later years to. patching up the lives of
hurting ministers; invented --as far as I know - my. favorite image for the
Communion of Saints.- the Allegory of the Balcony.

Human personality, Marney said, can be compared to a house - a fairly
elaborate,.complex, variegated: structure, Try that. on for-a minute. Some
are fancy, some are simple, functional. .Some are ostentatious, some are
unnecessarily modest....Each has.a number of rooms and it's helpful to know
about each and-who.is in them.. Each has a-formal parlour, family room,
dining room, kitchen....Each has a-basement, where the plumbing. is-and.the
trash is kept. . The Victorians had trouble admitting that there is a
basement. But in our day we have begun. to acknowledge our. shadow selves.
We have been sitting at.the feet of Sigmund Freud: for. several generations
and we know that we are capable of evil and that the old notion of original
Sin is not at all inaccurate.

The trouble is, Marney used to say, that having. discovered -that: we
have a basement, and that it's OK to have a basement,:-and that it. is not
particularly healthy to deny that there is a basement, we are convinced
that we have to spend all-our.time in the basement, jive down there. We
act, sometimes, as if the plumbing. and.trash bin: are ali. there is.to us.

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someone quipped that the theological delineation of the:"Me Generation" is
that it is the first to celebrate rather than repent, when it discovered
original sin. 7

There is more to us, however, than a basement. In fact, if you come
up the stairs and step outside onto the front lawn and look up, you will
see something else: . some fancy architecture, for instance, a balcony, with
a white, wrought-iron railing (Marney was a Southerner!) and on the balcony
are some people, sipping iced tea, or bourbon, depending I suppose on
whether you are Baptist or Presbyterian. Those people on your balcony are
the good and strong and healthy influences in your life. Your parents are
probably there, and your grandparents, and some others. you know and some
you don't know - and there are some there you never met: in your life but
they were and are very influential for you. -The*people on your balcony are
your -Saints. :

It is a helpful exercise to identify them. In his autobiography,
Frederick Buechner writes: a .

"On All Saints. Day, it is not just the saints of
the church that we should remember in our prayers, but
all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and
overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole: ones, ...
who one way or another, have been our particular fathers
and mothers and saints, and whom we loved without
knowing we loved them and by whom we were helped to
whatever: little we may ever hope to have of some kind of vs,
seedy sainthood of our own." [The Sacred Journey, p.
74]

An appropriate way to observe AIl Saints Day, I'submit, is to walk out
into your garden and took up at your balcony. Identify. the people who are
there. Acknowledge them - parents, grandparents, teachers, aunts and
unctes, coaches, friends. Name them. Wave to them. “They are your Saints.
And the others: Desmond Tutu, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King,
Bonhoeffer, Schweitzer, Knox, Calvin, Luther, Peter, James, Martha, Mary, -
they're up there too for you,

The doctrine of the Communion of Saints is an effort to express the
mystery of faith that we are not alone; that in. Jesus Christ we are not and
never will be alone, It is only an effort. The deeper reality will always
lie slightly out of reach of ‘even our best theological efforts. But there
is something here that: needs saying, however stumbling and inadequate the
words are, Those who have gone before us are with God...their reality did
not end with the end of their lives...they are for us and with us...somehow
in the mystery of the creator's love - which in Christ. we have seen to be
victorious over the event of human death...

The words bend under the weight of that. Hymns are better.... "For
all the Saints, who from their labors rest"... and stories - about Abraham
and Sarah, Peter and. Martha...

My grandfather was what a grandfather should be; a big man with the
huge, strong hands of a railroad shop foreman, and beautiful white hair,

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rumpted shirts smelling of cigar smoke and pieces of wintergreen candy in
his coat pocket covered with Prince Albert Pipe tobacco. He lived well
into his nineties. He was a presence in my life as an infant, child,
adolescent, and as a young man I would visit him when I was home. The last
time I saw him, he was quite i1]. I was an ordained minister which was a
source of both curiosity but also pride for him. My father insisted that I
pray with him which I found difficult to do. But I did it, and as I left
he waved in a jaunty manner and said, “Till we meet again, Johnny." And I
know now what he meant. The Communion of Saints.

We are, in the words of the writer of Hebrews, “surrounded by so great
a cloud of witnesses," Some of them we know. Some we have only heard of.
Some we don't know. Some are very much alive. Some have been dead for
centuries. Some died recently. They are our Saints. They are the strong
and good and faithful influences in our lives.

We believe they are safe - in God's care.

Who are they for you? - Who is on Your Balcony? Identify them. Thank
God for them. Look up and wave at them.

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