the race of life onto the sidewalk.

Transcription

1 YOUR SIDEWALK CHEERING SECTION November 4, 2012, All Saints Day Observed Isaiah 25: 6-9 Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York Theme: We have people on the sidewalk cheering us on as we run the race. By your grace, O God, may we hear in your word what we need to hear and may we then be strengthened by it in order to do what call us to do. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen. s have been pouring into my inbox since Tuesday morning from people across the country letting me know that we our church, our city our region were in their prayers. I got s from minister friends, messages from members of churches I previously serviced. I got s from total strangers. One came from a woman named Keri Cloud in Edmond, Oklahoma, letting me know she and her church were worried about us. Another, from a woman in Texas named Tina Tedder, said My heart aches for the serious impact this storm has made on so many. My thoughts and prayers are with you! Some of them asked what they could do to help. Many of you have called asking what you could do. As I mentioned at the beginning of the service, Brick is working with the Presbytery of New York City and our national Presbyterian Disaster Assistance agency to channel contributions in a way that will be most effective. Doug King and I plan to meet with the representatives from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance this week. We should have specifics in the next few days, but as I mentioned, one thing you can do is to offer housing to a FEMA volunteer. Another way would be to help prepare emergency meals at Yorkville Common Pantry tomorrow and Tuesday. I bring up these messages from friends and colleagues, s from perfect strangers, simply because they ve actually meant a lot. Perched on this high point of Manhattan with underground utilities, our church and our neighborhood didn t - 1 -

2 bear the brunt of Sandy. In general, we ve been fortunate. But the s have still meant a great deal. It means a lot when you know that somebody out there is praying for you. It means a lot when you know that somebody out there is cheering you on. This past Tuesday, just after the storm had passed, I had lunch with a long-time member of Brick and his wife. He s a marathon runner, and after we had talked about Sandy, we discussed marathons, not yet knowing that this year s would be canceled. He told me that he s run no fewer than 58 marathons in his life, most of them in Boston and New York City. I asked him what the biggest difference between the New York Marathon and the Boston Marathon was. I expected him to mention hills or weather. But that s not what he said. He said the biggest difference was the crowds on the sidewalks. In Boston, he said, there are not always crowds along some stretches of the race. In New York, there are always people on every stretch of the race cheering you on. He told me that the crowds on the sidewalk really matter to the runners. It means a lot when you know that somebody out there is cheering you on. No marathon as such this year, of course. But there s still a race or two before us. For one, our whole city and region is running a marathon. The literal marathon may have been cancelled, but we are in one tough race to recover and rebuild. And then of course, each of us is running our personal marathon. Each one of us is running the great race that is life. Hurricane or no, we re all runners in the great marathon. Today s not only the day of the marathon that wasn t. And it s not only the Sunday after Sandy. It s also the Sunday on which we keep All Saints Day. All Saints Day is actually November 1st, but most Protestant churches observe it the following Sunday. We do so by remembering that most Protestant of affirmations, namely that all the faithful those who were exceptional in their faithfulness and those who were not so exceptional you and me in our imperfection are all by the grace of God counted as saints. Saints not because we re so good, but saints because God is so good. Saints because God s grace is so deep and wide that it covers the shortcomings of the likes of us. To hang onto the marathon metaphor, what we do every year on this day is to remember all those who have moved from - 2 -

3 the race of life onto the sidewalk. That gorgeous passage from the book of Isaiah that Isabella read a moment ago imagines a great banquet beyond time. It imagines the ultimate and final reality of the cosmos as a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of wine strained clear. This mythic feast is set on a mountain top, the cosmic summit where God has wiped away all tears and destroyed death, the shroud that is cast over all peoples. Christians have long read this Old Testament passage as an image of the banquet that is Holy Communion. One of the truths we celebrate in Communion is this: Appearances to the contrary, it s not just God and us in this room who are present in Communion. When we sit down to this feast of love, we dare to trust that all those dear hearts now lost to our vision are also gathered at the table. They are somehow with us at the feast that stretches through time, a banquet that spans from then to now and into eternity. We all have dear ones who have who have moved from the earthly race to the heavenly sidewalk. I, for one, need them to cheer me on. My hunch is that you need yours to cheer you on. I d like to tell you about some of my saints on the sidewalk. I do so because I hope my sidewalk saints will remind you of yours. My grandfather, my mother s father, is a saint on the sidewalk. He s holding up a sign that says, Go, Mikey, go! (He always called me Mikey. ) When I m struggling up a steep hill in my faith, I know I have Grandpa Painter cheering me on. He was a Minnesota Bell Telephone executive by day, a Baptist lay preacher by night, and an intransient fundamentalist all the time. If he were alive, we'd have a few theological points to talk over. One of my sharpest memories of Grandpa Painter is of the day I was confirmed at age thirteen. The night after the confirmation service, he sneaked into my bedroom and sat on the side of my bed, and told me that the Revised Standard Version of the Bible the church had given me that morning was a no-good, new-fangled, Bible. He pulled out his own old King James Version. Would you like to trade? he asked. I said no, but he gave me his KJV anyway and then he prayed with me. I - 3 -

4 still have that Bible. I imagine that heaven has eased his anxieties about Bible translations, but, oh how he loved his Bible! He had underlined words on most every delicate onion skin page of that old KJV he gave me. He d crammed the margins with meticulously lettered little notes he wrote to himself with a dark-blue fountain pen. All these years later, I rarely open a Bible that I don't glance to the sidewalk for Grandpa Painter who loved his Bible. A second sidewalk person When being a father or pastor is not the joy it generally is, I have another family member on the sidewalk, my Grandma Lindvall. Her philosophy was that there s no such thing as too much time for people you care about. I remember the afternoon she sat for hours with my cousin and me when we were about ten and taught us to drink Postum, that horrendous coffee substitute she drank. She showed us how to pour it into the saucer to cool it and then to suck it through a sugar cube. All these years later when somebody wants more from me than I think I have to give, I look for Grandma Lindvall on the sidewalk. She catches my eye and gives me a little wave. Then maybe I find the time. A third sidewalk person When I m tempted to lose perspective on life, when the little things are in danger of crowding out the really important things, I remember a saint named Bob Padgett. Bob was not blood family; he was church family, the husband of our choir director back on Long Island. He was very tall, had ears that stuck out and died suddenly two days before Christmas. I ve never known a man better at focusing in on what mattered. His very presence was calming. He had a way of sloughing off the small stuff and giving himself to the heart of things. All these years later, when I feel overtaken by details, running so fast I forget where I really need to go, I glance over to Bob on the sidewalk. He has a paper cup of church coffee in his hands; he smiles and mouths, Keep a steady pace. In today s Communion service, we ll all stand after a list of names is read, a list of those who have finished the race and are now on the sidewalk. After the names, - 4 -

5 there ll be a silence. Into that that silence I invite you to do your own remembering of your sidewalk saints, both those on the list and those not. As you remember, look over to the sidewalk where they re cheering you on. They may be blood family your mom or dad, your grandfather or grandmother, a brother or a sister. Maybe they re faith family. Maybe a friend now passed. Remember that they re watching as you run life s race, watching you in great love. They re also watching confidently. They re watching in perfect confidence because they know how the race ends. They know that it ends in a great feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of wine strained clear, a feast set on a mountain top, that summit where God has wiped away all the tears and destroyed the shroud cast over all people, death itself. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen