FOURTH CHURCH PULPIT
October 28, 2001

ORDINARY PEOPLE
, John M. Buchanan

God before me, God behind me,
God above me, God beneath me.
I on your path O God

You, O God, on my way.

In the twistings of the road ©

In the currents of the river

Be with me by day

Be with me by night

Be with me by day and by night.

J. Philip Newell
Celtic Prayers from Iona

Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago
126 East Chestnut Street, Chicago, IL 60611-2094
(312) 787-4570

ORDINARY PEOPLE
October 28, 2001

JOHN M. BUCHANAN, PASTOR
FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURC

Psalm 65
Luke 21:5-9
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

Dear God, as we come into your presence this morning, we know we are not alone. With us are
those who taught us to believe and trust in you, those who taught us to love and care and give.
They are with you now and they are our saints. We thank you for them. As we worship, surround
us with their love—in your love—that we might know you more clearly, follow you more nearly,
and love you, and our neighbors more dearly, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

I love the covers of the New Yorker magazine. They are colorful, whimsical, and thought
provoking. Often they capture the sense of the moment in American culture. The cover of this
week’s edition of the magazine was particularly good, I thought. It’s the Halloween issue.
Clusters of little children are trick-or-treating in a Manhattan neighborhood, trudging up and
down a leaf-strewn sidewalk, sacks of goodies in hand, climbing up a flight of stairs to knock on
the door of a brownstone, as an eager couple peers out the window along with a jolly pumpkin.
But this year, instead of donning Batman, Spiderman, and Power Ranger getups, each of the
children is dressed up as either a New York firefighter or a police officer.

That stopped me in my tracks this week: ordinary people, who lost their lives just doing their
jobs. Ordinary people who have become for us a reminder that ordinary people have within
themselves the potential to do extraordinary things. Ordinary people who, on the eleventh of
September 2001, became heroes, saints perhaps.

“T have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

They did—thanks be to God. This is the week of All Saints’ Day, November 1, Thursday. And
this year in their name we might begin our reflection by giving God thanks for them and for that
potential in all of us.

The philosopher Ernest Becker said that while the word hero seems too big, too romantic for
most of us, the truth is that “to strive to be a hero, to rise above the mediocre, really to count for
something extraordinary, to outshine death, to be capable of the highest generosity, to feel
sacrifice, is what we most deeply need and want” (see Tom Long in Theology Today, July 1994).

Two thousand years ago a man awaiting his death in a Roman jail cell wrote, “I have fought the
good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” I love these words. They say what
needs to be said about the heroes of September 11. They occur to me often when a friend, a dear - -

Luther chose October 31 to post his theses because it was the day before All Saints’ Day, the Eve
of All Hallows, from which we get the word Halloween, the occasion when the spirits of the
dead are out and about. The idea of saints was at the heart of Luther’s argument with the church.
The church created saints, and the argument went that the saints were so good, so righteous, that
they accumulated more righteousness than they needed to get into heaven. The excess
righteousness was available to common sinners. In fact, you could purchase some for yourself or
for your relatives. The Vatican issued documents called indulgences, the purchase of which gave
the owner enough nghteousness to reduce his time in purgatory. In the early sixteenth century,
the Vatican sent a sales force out to peddle indulgences—in fact, financed the completion of St.
Peter’s by the sale. Luther wanted to debate that. He believed—and no one now argues with him
(A Mighty Fortress Is Our,God—his hymn—is now sung in Catholic churches too)— Luther
believed that scripture teaches that salvation is God’s gracious gift to humanity in Jesus Christ,
that you cannot earn it, only gratefully accept it. You certainly can’t buy it from the church. And
that simple but revolutionary idea—that Christian faith is more about living in gratitude to God
for the gift of God’s love than it is about trying to please God by obeying rules, defending
beliefs, practicing rituals, accumulating righteousness by buying indulgences—is why we
celebrate Reformation Sunday in worship today.

Much happened at the Reformation that was necessary and much happened that was unfortunate,
tragic: the total disappearance of the idea of saints, for instance. Because the idea of saints and
their accumulated righteousness was at the heart of what the Reformation thought was wrong
with the church, the whole apparatus simply disappeared from Protestantism. And that, I think, is
too bad. Not that I want to reintroduce the idea of indulgences—although it is tempting during
stewardship season. The chair of the stewardship campaign in a church I served years ago once -
said to me, “You know, you could help us out a little bit here if you’d just tell them they’re going
to hell if they don’t raise their pledges.” I do, however, hope to reintroduce the idea of saints—as
ordinary people who do extraordinary things and through whom God’s work of healing,
restoring, building, and creating gets done on earth. And I do. very much wish to reintroduce the
idea that we are not in this business alone: that we are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses”
the book of Hebrews puts it. That each of us has saints: those precious people who have helped
‘shape us, inspired us, who loved us enough to correct us, who picked us up when we fell, whom
we know and only know from afar, those whose lives inspire us and continue to illuminate our
lives—our saints.

' Saints, Frederick Buechner wrote are not “plaster statues, men and women of such paralyzing
virtue that they never thought a nasty thought or did an evil thing their whole life long.” “Saints,”
Buechner says, “are essentially life givers. To be with them is to become more alive” (Wishful
Thinking, p. 102).

Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor, whose church has kept the idea of saints alive, says,
“What makes a saint is extravagance—excessive love, flagrant mercy, radical affection,

exorbitant charity, immoderate faith, intemperate hope, inordinate love” (Weavings, Sept.-Oct.
1988, p. 34).

So you have saints. They may still be around. They may have joined the church eternal, the “vast
cloud of witnesses” that the Bible talks about. Either way they are the ones who have shaped and

Richard Lischer, who teaches at Duke University, is a minister who has written about his first
pastorate in southern Illinois, in a small rural community. He remembers a telephone cali one
night to come to the hospital. A baby was born with what the physician said were “multiple -

deficits” and was not expected to live. The parents, members of his congregation, wanted their
baby baptized.

When I entered the unit, I found it arranged for a baptism. They had pushed the incubator to
one side. A hush had fallen over the room, as parents of other newborns stayed to themselves
and cooed over their babies. The parents, the nurses, the residents, and the pastor stood in a
semicircle around the incubator. Everyone was gowned and the nurses were in masks. Leeta
and Shane, the parents, appeared to be in shock. One of the nurses opened the lid of the small
white humming cylinder, and J extended a moistened finger into the chamber. I made the
sign of the cross on the baby’s blue chest. . . . I touched one of his downy eyebrows and said,

“Shane Arlo Vachel Weams, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit.”

And the witnesses said, “Amen.” That was an amen on earth, choked out by five witnesses in
an atmosphere of muffled sorrow, and, I believe, it was an amen in heaven, echoed by many
other witnesses who see all things. We knew we were participating in something larger than
ourselves, and so did the other parents standing, respectfully, on the far side of the unit. They
also bowed their heads and some made the sign of the cross. I could have baptized Shane
Arlo many times over that day with the tears of the witnesses.” (Open Secrets: A Spiritual
Journey through a Country Church, pp. 223-225)

The communion of saints: ordinary people, like you and me, through whom God does
extraordinary things. Ordinary people who continue to bear witness and to influence and inspire.
Ordinary people who “fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith.”
Thanks be to God.

Amen.