For All The Saints

A sermon by The Rev. C. Dean Taylor

All Saints Day, 2008

It was a phone call that came unexpectedly, but very, very welcome. I was in my hometown of Eufaula, and I had just announced to my family that I had proposed to this person up in Tennessee, and that she had actually said “yes,” and that we would need to go right ahead and plan a wedding, before she could change her mind.

In Eufaula, news of that type takes about, oh, twelve seconds to get all around town, and that was when I got the phone call. It was from my great Aunt Arte, who lived around the corner on Barbour Street. She was my grandfather, Dean Blackmon’s, big sister, who, as family legend had it, after her mother had become an invalid in the 1920’s, had spent her “marrying years” raising her younger siblings, and never married. (There was a family “sub-legend”, promulgated by my mom’s cousin Katherine, who said that Arte was secretly in love with her first cousin Clyde, but that’s another story).

Arte taught fourth grade for forty years in the Eufaula Public School system, and taught just about everybody in town. And even in her retirement, when we were kids, she would tell us stories of the great battles, whole wars that happened right in our bodies, between the good germs and the bad germs; that, when we skinned our knees or got our hands dirty, the bad germs would line up and be ready to attack and make us sick and give us diseases, but if you washed your hands with soap, or cleaned your skinned knee and put a band-aid on it, the good germs would win. We listened, wide eyed, and then ran off to wash our hands.

One Christmas Eve she was visiting us, and she came in and said, quite matter-of-factly, “You know, on the way over here I happened to look up, and I saw this cloud, this particularly beautiful cloud, but it had a little hole in it—a little hole in it as if something had just flown through it. I don’t know what it could have been.” And she went on in the house. We all looked at each other and said, “Oh my gosh—do you think…?”

2.

Arte had a way of making the world come alive for children. And so, when the phone rang, on that happy day of my wedding announcement, it was, as always, good to hear her voice. “Dean, I’m just so thrilled that you’re going to marry this fine girl. And I want you to come right over, because I want to pay for the wedding ring.”

“Oh, yes ma’am, Arte, that would be so great,” I gasped, (as I was, at that time, quite penniless). I left the phone dangling and rushed to my car—before she changed her mind. About twenty seconds later I was on her porch, ringing her doorbell.

I came in, gave her a hug, and we sat and exchanged pleasantries, as you always did with Aunt Arte, no matter what. And I could see that check on the table by her big, Victorian chair from which she held forth. And finally, finally, she gave me the check. I thanked her profusely, and left. It was only when I got into the car and looked at the check that I saw. A check made out to me…for twenty-five dollars!

Now, I’m sure that, back in 1922, twenty-five dollars would have bought a fine ring. And that is, of course, how you have to think about these things. She wanted to buy me that wedding ring. She wanted to play a part in this special moment of my life. And she did. There is a picture, at our wedding reception, of bride, groom, in all our finery, and seated between us, well into her eighties, is my great aunt Arte. It was one of the last long trips she ever made. But she made it all the way to Sewanee to be there for our wedding.

All Saints Day is the day that we honor all the saints in the world, and all the saints in our lives. All Saints Day reminds us that there are saints all around us, and, that we, ourselves, are called to be saints to one another. And what is a saint? A saint is a person whom the love of God shines through.

My great aunt Arte never had children of her own, so all the children of the town were her children. That is the ideal of sainthood. There are not boundries, no distinctions, no “these people” versus “those others over there,” when it comes to sainthood. The love of God shines through to all God’s children.

3.

Who are the saints in your life? Who helped you when you were down, or provided an example to you of what a good or loving person looks like—or acts like? Who paid attention to you when you needed paying attention to? Then again, on this All Saints Day, Who might you be called to be a saint for right now? That’s one you never know.

You never know who, out there, is studying your life like a holy biography, looking for clues as to how, how to get through hard times, how to persevere, how to speak up and stand up for yourself when it would be easier to be silent, or, if you’re the one in power, how to be quiet when it would be easier to knock someone down. I know it’s a scary thought, but who might you be a saint for right now?

And so, on the All Saints Day, blessed are you saints, all of us, here, and those who have gone before: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the peacemakers, the merciful, those who do the right thing and pay a price for it; those who pay attention to the least of God’s children; those for whom all human beings are their children; those whom the love of God shines through. Happy All Saints Day.