Sermon, November 2, 2003
All Saints' / All Souls' Sunday, Year B
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

I believe it was my fellow townsmate William Faulkner who once said, "The past isn't dead. It's not even past yet." Early churches met in the catacombs, not only for the privacy, but also that the worshipers might have a sense of closeness and communion with those entombed nearby. Paul speaks of those who have died as being asleep, in the same way you might turn to a beloved one who is asleep beside you -- very much alive and full of life, simply unable to communicate right now. "We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses" the Epistle to the Hebrews remarks, and you get the feeling it is a cloud more like the incense that clings to us with the smell of prayers than like a far-away puff of white in a distant blue sky. For the early church, those who had died in Christ were not gone, but still with us, still part of the community, still part of the communion, the foretaste of the heavenly banquet, our participation in a holy meal that breaks down the boundary between the finite and the eternal, the visible and the invisible. The early Christians buried their dead in areas known in Greek as koimetria, "dormitories," from which we get the word "cemetery," "sleeping places." They were not gone and distant. Merely sleeping, still part of the worshiping community, "with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven" still singing with us the ancient hymn of each Holy Eucharist. (kudos to D. Lorne Coyle's article in The Living Church, November 2, 2003, p. 5)

Just beyond the reach of my hand, just beyond that wall, are the dormitories of many of our friends, their memorial place of rest in our nearby columbarium. I like to think of them helping us with our prayers, encouraging us in our work, joining us in song and feast.

I felt that especially last week when I went home to Oxford, Mississippi to visit and to preach in St. Peter's, the church where I was raised. I like using that language. It was the place where I was raised. It was the place where God became very real for me. I walked by a small room that was Mrs. Whiteside's fifth grade classroom. Mrs. Whiteside taught The Church Year to generations of children. She planted in us a knowledge and appreciation for the rhythms and colors and themes and symbols of the church's seasons. I still remember the ritual at the end of her year with us. She gave each student a cloth bookmark with an embroidered cross on it. She taught us the names of each of the different crosses and some of their symbolism. My bookmark was green; I can still see its brightness in my memory. My cross was a Celtic cross, a cross with a circle -- St. Patrick's teaching tool combining the sacred circle of the native Druids with the sign of Jesus into a new symbol that communicated grace in a new context. I treasured that bookmark.

Twenty years later, I was ending my curacy as a priest in Natchez; I was looking for a new place to serve. One of the possibilities was St. Columb's Church in Jackson, Mississippi. When I drove into the parking lot of St. Columb's, there was an enormous Celtic cross silently witnessing and blessing that place. It was the first sense of welcome that led me eventually to accept a call and beginning a fruitful ten-year ministry with that wonderful community. I think Mrs. Whiteside's bookmark with its Celtic cross was part of the invisible energy that attracted me to that ministry.

I know her care and teaching are part of what led me into the priesthood. I am a priest today largely because of the nurture and love I received from so many people like Mrs. Whiteside who made St. Peter's Church in Oxford a place of both welcome and wonder. For me, the church was like a second home, a nurturing environment where I was treasured. But more than that, the church was a place of awe and wonder. Its size, its windows, its strange and wonderful rituals were all so evocative of something grand and mysterious, that it was completely natural for me to grow up able to imagine the possibility of a wonderfully mysterious divine being that was also intimately caring. All of that happened without my even knowing.

In 1980 I returned from seminary for my ordination to the deaconate at St. Peter's. It was a joyful occasion. The church was filled with the people who had raised me and been my friends. I processed to my place in the chancel, looked over the congregation and felt so happy. But then my eyes lit on Miss Dolly Falkner, standing rifle erect, primly dressed wearing one of her hats. I choked up. I was overcome with emotion. It wasn't because I had ever really known Miss Dolly. In fact, she scared me. She seemed so stern to me. She was one of the ladies who let us know that kids are not to run down the halls at church. But there she was in the same seat in the same pew where she had been every Sunday of my entire life, as far as I could remember. Her faithful presence and her obvious joy that night overwhelmed me. Until that moment, I had been totally unaware of the profound impression her faithfulness had made on me. Think about that the next time you really want to sleep in on Sunday. You never know what impact you are making on that bratty little kid across the aisle. I'm sure Miss Dolly never knew how profoundly she had influenced me with her faithfulness, at least not until her resurrection. Now she knows.

One of the gifts of growing up in the time and place where I did, was the experience of Mississippi's evolution out of racial segregation. The story of how Oxford and Ole Miss ultimately peacefully desegregated is a story that gives me confidence and hope whenever I've needed to live through conflict and change. It is a wonderful gift to grow up in a culture that was wrong about something important. It gave me the gift of open curiosity, a willingness to set aside my inherited knowledge and values and assumptions whenever they were challenged by something I didn't yet understand. I learned about shifting paradigms before I knew the words, thanks to the privilege of growing up in a culture that changed its entire world-view about race during my childhood.

So it happened that when I was a freshman at Ole Miss and a professor challenged my faith with questions I had no answer for, it was the most natural thing in the world to let go of my old understanding -- I announced to my family that I was an agnostic -- and still to come to worship regularly at St. Peter's feeling fully at home though an unbeliever. That church had taught me that seekers are welcome, that questions are part of the journey, that belonging is forever, that disagreeing and remaining in communion is acceptable. So I stayed in church until I discovered new answers and eventually returned to the faith of my childhood, though with a renewed understanding.

I carry that past with me. It colors and filters and influences everything in my present. In me Mrs. Whiteside and Miss Dolly and countless others are still alive, thinking, breathing, acting in my present shaped by our shared past. The same is true for you. There are saints and sinners who have helped make you who you are. And whatever bit of the truth and whatever portion of God's light you have absorbed, it is the sacrament of the lives that God has used on your behalf.

That is what we give thanks for today in this feast of All Saints' and All Souls'. Give hearty thanks to God for those who have been instruments of grace and revelation for you. Let those who have died be very near to you this day. Hear that cloud of witnesses sing with us the heavenly Sanctus. Let their smile of blessing be upon you; receive their prayers on your behalf. And embrace your own calling in this present time during which you are creating a holy past for someone else's future. Embrace your ministry and presence here. There is no way for you to know what impact you are making, even by your silent presence, like Miss Dolly. Parents, bring your kids to church so it can be their second home and a place where they encounter the awesome wonder of divine mystery. Congregation, continue your work and prayers that make this church such an energetic place of life in Christ. And each of us, may we continue to be open to transformation and change. We always have something to learn in this lifetime process of healing and growing. The church is a good place to search; it is a good place to ask questions; it is a good place to disagree and remain in communion. My goodness; it is a place where you can even be asleep, and still be fully alive! How wonderful that is for All Saints and All Souls.

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