Sermon Reflection on “The Eye of the Storm” Collaborative Service with Wollaston Congregational Church and Quincy Point Congregational Church November 1st, 2020 Scripture: Revelation 7:9-17 All Saints day is a day when I feel all the feels, so to speak. It’s a day when I fill up on the hymns and music, hymns such as “I sing a song of the Saints of God, patient, and brave, and true.” These songs and hymns, and the imagery of the scripture passages we read on this day, give me a place of comfort and hope in the midst of our rapidly changing world. They provide a place to hold on, remembering that there are so many who have gone before us, so many who have come through great ordeals such as the martyrdom Rev. Kim described. Whenever I sing the hymns that I remember from my childhood Methodist chapel, I hear my grandmother’s voice, high and warbly, echo in my mind. There I see her, with her snowy white old-lady curly hair, in the little boxed-in pew. She, who was patient, brave and true. Faithful to the last, she’d attend church twice on Sunday, even when she could no longer hear the sermon. The village chapel was the center of her life, where she met her husband and where they raised their daughters. She lived out most of her life barely half a mile from that hub. Today, I have a confession to make, especially to the Wollaston congregation. Last year, when I took a week off to travel to England to visit my family, I moonlighted. I preached on that All Saints Sunday at my old home chapel. I wasn’t physically at the chapel, as the building has been sold and the congregation have moved. But I preached at the community center where the congregation meets now, together with a neighboring church that was actually named “All Saints” church. Preaching to the congregation that provided my formation in the faith was a powerful experience. I truly felt surrounded by the saints: my former Sunday school teachers, family members, friends of the family, all a little older than before, but still showing up on Sundays to sing the hymns. I was surrounded in another way, too. As I stood up behind the table that would serve as the pulpit, I teared up a little at what I saw. The table had been spread with a white cloth that I remembered from years ago. When I was a young girl, my grandmother had brought the cloth home from her “Ladies Meeting” to have me sign my name on it. I had written with my best handwriting. Apparently the cloth had circulated around all the women of the church, their signatures had been collected and then embroidered in various colors. As I paused to draw my breath to begin the sermon that All Saints Sunday, I was surrounded by names: my grandmother, my aunts and great-aunts, cousins, elder church members and Sunday School teachers no longer with us. This cloth had been carefully preserved and the names had been carried from the old church building to the new location, so that the congregation would still be surrounded by their saints. There have been many artistic renditions of the scene we read of in our scripture today. This week I have focused on a particular painting that shows a sea of the great multitudes from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, gathering around the throne of God. The elder tells John of Patmos that these are the ones who have come out of the great ordeal. In the sea of people, you can mostly only see heads and the color of hair. And so I search that sea for a soft white head of old-lady curls. For my grandmother, Edith Scott née Hornsby, had certainly come through a great ordeal. She lived from 1901 until 1999. Almost the entire spread of the 20th century. She was born in a small row house, back to back and side by side with neighbors, with outdoor plumbing. The eldest child of 5, she was educated in the same village school as my mother and myself, until the age of 13 or 14. She had the smarts to enter higher education but failed the test because she did not know the tram fare into town. She had always walked. The timing of my grandparents’ birth was fortuitous. My grandfather was just old enough to join the peacekeeping force in Germany following World War I, and by the time of World War II he was too old to be called up. During that second war, my grandparents had dug their air-raid shelter in their lovely long garden and grown the carrots that would help their night vision. When the air raid siren sounded my grandmother would gather my aunt and my mom and their gas masks and head for the shelter. My grandfather served on air raid police duty, patrolling the village for any houses allowing even a glimmer light to show. My grandmother knitted for the troops. She refused to pray only for British soldiers but for all those who were in peril. She had the empathy to imagine that both British and German mothers and fathers, not to mention those of all the allies and the foes, were agonizing over their sons. Throughout the war and for the remainder of her life, my grandmother stretched resources. My mother remembers that she could provide the most nutritious meals from their meager weekly rations, “salmon” paste and meatless meat loaf with her specialties. She conserved water, saved elastic bands and pieces of string, sharpened pencils until they were less than an inch long. A neat stack of used envelopes were clipped together to make her note pad. She was quiet, but she had opinions. Sadly as she aged, her hearing loss increased and it was harder and harder to hold a conversation with her. Of all the questions I asked my grandmother, it never occurred to me to ask what was it like when the 1918 flu pandemic swept through their community. She had come through that ordeal too. All I know was that her little brother had died of croup around that time and that she’d never quite gotten over the loss. This is the story of one very ordinary, and at the same time extra-ordinary saint. My grandmother came through the great ordeal that was the 20th century: times of global warfare, pandemic, and political upheaval. And yet somehow she lived her life in the eye of the storm. She was devout, patient and calm. She served God and neighbor, and quietly challenged the assumptions of the time. And there are many, many saints who have done the same, enduring depravations and celebrating the joys of life throughout human history. Over these past 20 years, the pace of life and cultural change has gotten faster even than it was in the 20th century. The ordeals seem to keep coming and in this moment they are swirling around us with the force of a tornado: a pandemic, a contentious and divisive election, climate change: hurricanes, melting ice caps, immense forest fires. In the passage we read today, God makes a tent, a tabernacle to shelter the ones who have passed through their ordeal that was martyrdom. These are comforting words, and hope for our future, even when we pass from this earthly life to the next. And so, may we hold onto the memories of those who were patient and brave and true. We stand on the shoulders of those multitudes. We are buoyed by their prayers. May we remember they walked this way before us, and there will be more saints who follow us in the future, too. And so may we find our eye of the storm, a place of peace and hope, in the memory of those very many saints. May all God’s people say, Amen
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