A week ago our
congregation in Sumner, Maine said, “Fare Well” and, “Godspeed” to one of the
saints of the church.
Tom Bragg
was just a month shy of his 93rd birthday. Serving as sexton of our local cemetery, he had completed
the last mowing of the season the week before he died, and his list of
remaining chores included weed-whacking around the stones, and rototilling and
sowing winter rye on the 100’ x 100’ pumpkin and veggie garden at the
church. A man of deep faith, Tom served
as Deacon, and Trustee over the years, and was out in front of about every
major church project. His advice when
one of his sons asked about ageing was, “Don’t get old. They’ll try to talk you into it, but
don’t let them.”
This week on
All Saint’s Sunday, we will lay to rest another of the saints. George Jarvi, age 90, led a more
private life than Tom, but he was no less a practitioner of the faith.
Both men were,
as they say, generous to a fault, freely sharing the produce of their gardens
with anyone in need, and likewise the meat they raised or the results of their
hunting. They didn’t hesitate to
speak of their faith, but never pushed it in ways that put down or demeaned
others. They were genuinely
humble, and had bone-dry senses of humor with which they could make a point, be
self-deprecating and very funny, all in a few well-chosen words.
In this age of
self-absorption, when awkward traffic situations too often lead to incidents of
road rage, George once used that humor to defuse a situation that could easily have
gotten out of hand. It was a hot
summer day, and George’s car overheated on a busy bridge over the Androscoggin
River. While he was trying to get
it started, a Cadillac pulled up behind him, driven by a large florid-faced man
who, while chomping on his cigar, leaned on the horn, and blew it without
letting up. George calmly walked
over to the car, and in a friendly tone of voice said, “I’m having a devil of a
time trying to get this thing going.
I wonder if you’d be willing to go over and give it a try – I can stay
here and keep your horn blowing.”
The honking ceased.
Two of the
saints, but that’s a widely misunderstood word, so perhaps I ought to explain
what I mean. In the New Testament
the word (Hagios), which is
translated “saint,” signifies "separation to God," or putting God first, and is used of all believers, not just of certain exceptional
characters we could call “Super Believers.” By this definition, Tom and George are two of the saints, in
that their lives testified to their love and trust in God. Neither was perfect, but each of them
understood his imperfection and sought to move beyond it. With the rest of the gathered community
of faith they did things they ought not to have done, and left undone things
they ought to have done. They had
moments of strong conviction and belief, and moments of doubt and wondering. It is of people like this that Paul and
others write in the numerous references to “the saints” that are
sprinkled throughout the letters of the New Testament.
Recovering
this word, and the corresponding sense of our churches as communities of saints could go a long way toward drawing us out of the sense of malaise that
afflicts many churches. After all,
there is a big difference between seeing our churches as voluntary associations
defined by membership, and communities of disciples growing into the love of
God as seen in Jesus Christ. In
the first instance our church connection is one more community commitment among
many. In the second, our
commitment to live and pray and work together as the body of Christ can give
shape and meaning to the living of our lives. Understanding who the saints really are can relieve us of
the fear that we are not good enough, and it can save us from exaggerating our
own self-importance. We do this trusting
that Christ calls us to bring our imperfect lives together, to be re-formed by
him, and used by him to change whatever corner of the world we inhabit, be it
large or small.
There is a
song written in England in 1929 that captures this understanding of the
saints. The writer, Lesbia Scott,
was a young mother in her twenties, who wrote a number of hymns for her
children, to help them understand some of the basic concepts of the Christian
Faith. It is usually sung to a
bouncy tune, and while the lyrics show the song’s English origin, it is actually
better known on this side of the Atlantic than in the United Kingdom. It captures for children what I’m
saying here for adults:
I Sing A Song
of the Saints of God
I sing a song of the saints of God,
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green;
They were all of them saints of God, and I
mean,
God
helping, to be one too.
They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
And his love made them strong;
And they followed the right for Jesus' sake
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
And there's not any reason, no, not the least,
Why
I shouldn't be one too.
They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at
sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at
tea;
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
And I mean to be one too.
An alternate third verse, found in some hymn books,
aims to relate more readily to North American language and society:
They lived not only in ages past;
There are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, on the street, in
the store,
In church, by the sea, in the house next door;
They are saints of God, whether rich or poor,
And I mean to be one too.
This weekend may we celebrate the lives of the Saints, great and small
alike.
Howard MacMullen
© November, 2013
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