November 5, 2006

All Saints Sunday

What Kind of Martyr?

Revelation 21:1-6a; Mark 12:26-34

 

The Reverend Richard E. Allen, Jr.

 

One of the modern saints of the church, a loving clergyman named Fred, died in February of 2003.  Most of us remember Fred not for his work as a Presbyterian minister, but for his gentle demeanor as he shepherded generations of children through both their own childhoods and that very special place of the heart and the mind that was known simply as  “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.”  Whenever he spoke to gatherings around the country, Fred Rogers typically gave the same invitation.  “Take just one minute,” he would say, “and remember all those people in your own life who have loved you into being.  I’ll time you on my watch.”  (I’m Proud of You:  My Friendship with Mr. Rogers, by Tim Madigan, page 93.)

 

All Saints Sunday is the day when we as a church and as people of faith pause to remember those in our lives who have loved us into being and those whose love has brought us into the church.  So, with that slight addition, I invite you, now, to think back on your own life, and remember all those people, living or dead, who by their words and their actions loved you into being, giving you in your heart, not just your head, your own deepest understanding of who you are, and remember those also who taught you about God.  Again, take one minute to remember all those people in your life who have loved you into being and into the faith.  Since Fred is with us only in spirit, I’ll time you on my watch.

 

Remembering those people, we remember that, by God’s grace, we are never “self-made.”  Life is always a gift, and we become who we are, both genetically and spiritually, because of the generosity of others.  Today we celebrate those gifts of faith and life given us by the generations of Christians who made the paths our feet now follow.  We may not know all their names, but their faith and their deeds beckon us to live with similar integrity – matching in our lives our believing and our doing.  These people were witnesses, through their words and their deeds, of the faith that shaped them.  And because of their influence in our lives, that same life of faith has taken root in our lives.  All of us are here because somewhere, at some time, someone became a living witness of the love of God in the world. 

 

We know the names of those witnesses who shaped us, of course.  Some were famous, like Fred Rogers or Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King, Jr., and touched our lives by their writings, or their charity, or their prophetic voices, even though we never met them in person.  But some were quiet witnesses, who lived on a smaller scale, teaching Sunday School or college classes or leading retreats, and we met them and sometimes have kept in touch.  Others were mentors or friends, both vital in their own ways, teaching us the ways of work or the ways of being lovingly human to each other. 

 

Yesterday morning I listened as Martin Marty, one of the greatest living scholars of American religious life, listed among his own heroes of faith both the great 20^th century American theologians, brothers Richard Niebuhr of Yale and Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Seminary in New York.  That the scholarship of the Niebuhr brothers would have taught Martin Marty was no surprise.  But Marty then noted the other unknown influences in his life, remembering the janitor of his own elementary school, a man, he said, who could read the pain in a child’s eyes better than any school psychologist.  We are all shaped by both the named and the unnamed; we are all formed by both the celebrated and the unknown.  We know the names of some of these witnesses who have given us the faith, and some of their names have even slipped from our own memories.

 

So it was in the early Christian church.  As generations of Christian believers took the places of the first disciples, generation after generation, it was clear that the faith depended in every generation on transmission by both the famous and the forgotten, both those who wrote or spoke eloquently, and those who simply lived the faith eloquently and lovingly.  The famous ones were remembered by name in the scriptures:  St. Paul, St. Peter, Mary Magdalene, St. Luke for example, or Priscilla and Aquila or Lydia, remembered by being named in Paul’s letter and in Acts.  But there were others whose sacrifices touched lives in less dramatic ways, and after a couple of generations, they were being forgotten.  So the church decided to remember these otherwise unmemorable saints with a collective day to celebrate them all:  All Saints Day.

 

It’s a powerful idea, isn’t it, to remember these otherwise forgotten folk?  It’s especially powerful, given that most of us will be among history’s “forgotten folk” ourselves.  One can try to slow down the process of the world’s forgetting.  We have names carved in stone and placed in cemeteries over the bodies of our loved ones.  We write books, or we put up plaques celebrating our accomplishments and listing our names with others.  But let’s not fool ourselves.  The stones in the cemeteries will eventually fall down or crumble to dust, like the bones of those whom the stones would remember.  Even the best of books will rot, pages crumbling; and plaques are first ignored, then stored in a closet after a renovation, and ultimately discarded.  When our names are forgotten, and when we are gone and the names of those we love fade from human consciousness, both they and we will be remembered by the faith we leave with others who come after us.  When the New Heaven and the New Earth come to us, as in the vision from today’s lesson from the Revelation, and God redeems both the world and ourselves, then, and only then, we will be fully reunited with our community and fully remembered.  Forever.  In the meantime, before this world is restored according to God’s good design, All Saints Day will be our day, too.  In this meantime, we will be remembered by God alone.

 

In this meantime, we all are witnesses to the faith, even as others have given their living witness to us.  In the meantime, we have to choose how we will live our lives, knowing that the answer determines our reputation.  We will have some reputation.  We cannot choose NOT to stand for something.  We cannot choose NOT to be a witness. 

 

The question that haunts us always is, “What kind of witness will we be?”  For, of course, there are different kinds of witness.  In the earliest church, a witness to the good news of Jesus Christ sometimes was called to pay for her testimony with death.  Perpetua, a disciple of the second century, died in one of the sporadic Roman persecutions of the early Christians.  Because she was pregnant when she was convicted and sentenced to death for her faith, and because even the Romans thought of themselves as too civilized to publicly destroy an unborn child, she was allowed a brief reprieve until her child was born.  Her dying prayer was not for herself, but for her child. 

 

It was because of such faithful witnesses like Perpetua, people who gave their lives willingly rather than deny our Lord or resort to violence in his name that the Greek word, “witness” came to mean someone who will die for the sake of her faith.  In that way this Greek word came into our vocabulary.  The word:  “martyr.”

 

Because the meaning of a word is fluid, the word “martyr” in our common vocabulary is coming to mean something like “suicide killer” or “fanatic bomber.”  The word “martyr” is not commonly remembered today as one giving nonviolent witness, even unto death.  Perhaps we in the church could help redeem the word if we could come to recover, in our own lives, the will to give our lives, peacefully, and productively, for the witness of our faith.  Perhaps we could decide that God’s gift of our lives is so valuable that the very best we can do with life is to decide what kind of “martyrs” we shall become. Then we might consciously live the values and the virtues and the commitment that will point to Jesus as Lord of our lives.  Just as others, by their lives, not their words, have taught us the faith, so our lives teach our children and others the faith as well.  Not our words, but our lives.

 

We are all martyrs, in a very real sense.  Whether we deliberately decide, or simply live casually into our life’s choices, by those choices we give witness to our values.  Just as the earliest disciples of Jesus, when living the life of faith, found that they needed to ponder the purpose and values of their lives, too. Whether quickly or slowly, day by day, we give our lives for something.  In that sense, each of us is a martyr, even if we don’t think of ourselves that way.

 

“Which is the greatest commandment?” Jesus is asked in today’s gospel lesson.  Another way to frame the question, in today’s idiom, would be, “To what should we give our lives as a witness?”  Jesus gives a response from the faith he shares with questioners of every age.  “Love the Lord your God,” says Jesus, “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”  In effect he says, “Be passionate.  Give your life as a witness.  Hold nothing back, nothing at all.”  But there is one thing more.  Proper witness, real martyrdom, involves loving not just God, but others as well.  Or, as Jesus says it, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  What is the greatest commandment:  to give yourself fully to God and to others.  In effect, become a martyr for God and for your neighbors.

 

That’s a purpose worthy of the witness of a life.  God takes note of such a life, and we have confidence of being remembered into eternity.  We will be remembered, not by our neighbors, for they will die, and not by our children, for they will live their own lives, and even they will die.  Finally, when all others forget us, our witness is remembered by God. 

 

We will be remembered.  Finally, one way or another, we are all martyrs.  We all live, and we all die, for that which we most deeply love and value.

 

We are all witnesses.  As we remember the martyrs who have shaped our lives, let us remember the question that they inevitably pass on to us:  What kind of witness, what kind are martyr, will we be?

Amen.