An All Saints Day sermon by
Lanny Peters
Pastor, Oakhurst Baptist Church
November 3, 2002
Thomas Dorsey, whose hymn we just sang, is acknowledged as the father of gospel music. In 1932, he was on the road starting a choir in St. Louis when he received news that his wife had died while giving birth to their son. The baby himself died two days later. Wracked with guilt for not being home with them and overtaken with despair, Dorsey locked himself inside his music room for three straight days. He finally poured his grief into writing these words.
“Precious Lord” is one of the most loved gospel songs as it expresses the way grief pulls us down until we are almost gone, hanging by a thread, and hoping God is holding the other end. All Saints Day is a day of deep grief.
It is also a day of deep hope, for it is a time to remember and celebrate the lives of those who have gone before us and yet are somehow still with us. The Bible says, “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” a “communion of saints.” I had a new sense of this traveling in Turkey last week. We began our interfaith journey in a cave high above the city of Antioch. In this hole in the side of a mountain, the early Christians hid and worshipped, afraid of persecution yet determined to gather in community and declare themselves followers of Christ.
They had fled to Antioch from Jerusalem after the stoning of Stephen. The word Christians was first used to describe this group in Antioch. Barnabus brought the newly converted Paul to Antioch to teach him about the faith for a year. It was from Antioch that Paul set out on his four major missionary journeys. As I stood in that little cave church and thought of Paul and Barnabus and those early Christians, indeed I felt surrounded by their presence.
We also visited the house near Ephesus where it is said that Jesus’ mother lived out her last years. There is no way to know this for sure. Still, there was something about the place that gave me such a deep peace that I could believe it was true.
A few minutes ago, we spoke names aloud or in our heart’s silence. As we did, memories of our loved ones came back and we were surrounded by their presence, a cloud of witnesses. There is a Jewish prayer that goes like this:
we remember them.
In the glowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
we remember them.
In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring,
we remember them.
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
we remember them.
In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
we remember them.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
we remember them.
When we are weary and in need of strength,
we remember them.
When we are lost and and sick at heart,
we remember them.
When we have joys we yearn to share,
we remember them.
So long as we shall live, they too shall live,
for they are now a part of us, as
we remember them.
On
this day we particularly remember two of our children, Thomas Hauk and Sarah
Woolf. How is it possible that among all those active in our congregation, the
only deaths for an entire year were two teenagers? It is incomprehensible, and
I will not even try to explain what is unexplainable.
But
on this day we can affirm that we remember. On the Sunday when Sarah talked
with her family about being ready to die, her grandmother Sue told Sarah that
she talks with her mom, Granny Barker, and tells her about beautiful things
that she sees. Mo told Sarah, “Now when I go to the beach, I’m going to talk to
you. When I see something beautiful, or do something that I know you would love
to do, I’m going to tell you about it.” Sarah’s eyes were closed, but she
responded with a beautiful smile. As Bill Reynolds said at Sarah’s Memorial
service “Sue was telling her granddaughter that their communion with each other
would not end.”
I
would like Bill to come now and tell a story about remembering Sarah.
My only memory of being in a car with
Sarah was when I drove Donna’s car down to the first floor of the parking deck
at the hospital. An hour earlier, Sarah
had been very angry about having to stay in the hospital for one more agonizing
hour. She got in the car, pushed a
pre-set button on the radio and turned up the volume. And she smiled that
gorgeous smile.
Shortly after Sarah died, Bill, Donna and
Shannon came over to our house one night.
Bill said, “We’re carrying out one of Sarah’s wishes.” And he handed me the keys to her 1992 Honda
Accord. She didn’t come up with the
idea, but she blessed it. My family and I were overwhelmed by this gift. We went for a drive. When I turned on the
ignition, “Southland in the Spring Time” started playing. We drove around Decatur, with Donna,
Shannon, and Anna singing along in the back.
Over the past months, I have been “sensitive to God’s message as it comes” to me from driving Sarah’s car. It is and will always be Sarah’s car. I have cried and laughed more driving that car. I don’t drive it without thinking of Sarah. Her band of pre-sets I’ve kept as a kind of radio memorial, the same with the Decatur High parking stickers on the windshield and Wilson on the antenna. There have been moments—like downshifting coming around a curve—or when the sunroof’s open to the sky—or when one of her songs comes on, and I reach to turn it up, that it feels like she’s right there with me. Her spirit shows up in that car, not all the time, but plenty.
My kids both say that they’ve seen
Sarah. On the plane two days before
Sarah’s memorial service, Anna said she saw Sarah riding a dolphin in the
clouds. Two different times, Luke has
been in the back of Sarah’s car and said, “Dad, I can see Sarah. Can you see her?” “No, I can’t, but I’m glad you can. I feel her with us a lot, though.” After our cat Theo died, Luke
said he saw Sarah holding both of our cats that had died in the past year, Leo
and Theo. He didn’t seem bothered that
I couldn’t see it like he did.
One morning I woke up and something said
to call Donna to see if she wanted to go out for lunch. The feeling became stronger in Sarah’s car
as I drove to work. I called Donna and she said she didn’t know how busy she
would be, but to come by and see. When I got there she said, “You want to see
what a good man does for his wife on her birthday?” and showed me the beautiful
roses Bill had sent. I didn’t know it
was Donna’s birthday. She said that a year earlier Sarah woke her up in the
hospital room singing “Happy Birthday” to her. A year later, something woke me up, too. Donna and I agreed on who it was.
I had not had any of these “Sarah moments”
in the hospital. Bill said, “Well, that
would be right.” Sarah hated that
place. One day I was walking down the
hall and I felt goose bumps and a presence.
“OK,” I said to myself, “if that’s you, I want to hear your name.” The first two people I saw said
nothing. I thought to myself, “This is
silly.” The third person I saw was
Mildred, a nurse who used to care for Sarah.
“How’s Sarah’s family doing? ” she asked. I told her later what had happened and she wasn’t surprised at
all.
I’ve only dreamed of Sarah once. She was standing up. And I hugged her. The only way I can describe it is this: I was with someone who did not need anything. She was so fully who she was and she didn’t
need anything. I don’t know what to make of all this. Mostly, I just try to trust it.
And turn the volume up.
Today, we also remember Thomas Hauk. During Thomas’ last days in the hospice, his parents would lie in bed on either side of him and tell stories across his body. I was deeply moved by this remembering.
Not long before he died, two young men whom Kate did not know came in to visit Thomas. They explained that they knew Thomas because he worked at the small restaurant they had started, called Urban Cannibals. Thomas loved food and cooking and one day soon after they opened dropped by to see if he could work there after school. The two young men had a sort of sixties hippie look and at the time Thomas had shaved his head bald. One of them looked suspiciously at him and said, “What are you, some kind of skinhead?”
Thomas said calmly, “No, I am a Buddhist.” Thomas had identified early with Buddhist philosophy and at 14 shaved his head in the manner of Zen monks. They told Kate that they knew right then that this was a really cool kid. On that day, they stood with Kate by his bed and called him Little Brother, and they, cried, and shook their fists at God for the unfairness of it all. In the journal by his bed, one wrote: “Over time and many different hairdos, working together and talking about life, I knew I had a good friend. What a kind and good soul. I love you, little brother, and I wish you peace.”
One of Thomas friends said this after he died: “Thomas had Addison’s disease; a disease that debilitates your body’s cortisone levels and leaves you susceptible to the slightest ailment. He discovered the illness about three years ago, and since that point, he totally changed his view on life…He disregarded things that bothered him, and treated people kindly. Thus, he was always building his character to be stronger, smarter, nicer, and better. All I can say is that I wish him a safe journey, he has taught me numerous things about how to live life.”
After her death, a friend
of hers wrote to Sarah, “You make me want to be a better, stronger, more
dedicated, and more faithful person.”
Jim Brooks lifted both
Thomas and Sarah as infants here in this sanctuary and asked God to bless them.
This year he lifted up empty hands and said that his prayers at their birth
were answered. They taught us how to live a great life and endure to the end.
Jesus told us that a child would lead us into the kingdom of heaven.
In the midst of their pain and despair, each of the families of Thomas and
Sarah offered us a gift. They opened themselves to us and allowed us to share
their children, and their grief. They gave us the opportunity to be
community.
Jerry Gentry captured
something of this in a poem, and I would like him to read it now:
12 September 2002
A Mother Sings at Her Son’s Memorial Service
by Jerry Gentry
Swaying, standing among her friends,
A mother sings at her son’s memorial service
Standing not alone, but surrounded
Not silenced by her grief but singing
"I’ll Fly Away"
Because he flew away
A delicate quizzical boy
A beautiful boy
A rascally intelligent boy
Flown away, beyond
She sang to ears and eyes and faces
Gathered to float into the melody of longing
Resounding through the church
A mother whose son is gone,
Singing, with friends,
Is why we shall go on living
All Saints Day is Good Friday and Easter in the middle of Ordinary Time. We believe in a God who also lost a child, who watched as that child suffered, cried out in agony, and died. We believe that God’s child rose again and lives among us. Next to Thomas’ Hauk’s bed was a card with a picture of Mary, bending over the dead Jesus, with text from the Orthodox Christian liturgy: “My son, my senses are wounded and my heart is burned, as I see you dead. Yet trusting in your resurrection, I magnify you.”
In the spirit of Mary, with the communion of saints that surrounds us and sustains us, let us join together in the Affirmation of Faith printed in your bulletin:
We
believe in God: who has created and is creating, who has come in the truly
human Jesus, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by God’s
Spirit. We trust God. God calls us to be the church, to celebrate God’s
presence, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to
proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope. In life, in death,
in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.