A View From The Bleachers
Rod Frohman Third
Presbyterian Church
October 29, 2006
Last week I was at School #35 with the Christmas Basket Planning
Team. This year families at School #35 will again be the recipients
of our Christmas baskets. The school was decked out for Halloween,
complete with decorations of ghosts and goblins and witches.
Apparently this was so because there were no objections from
the Christian right challenging Halloween commemoration as a
“satanic ritual.” Actually, in its current form,
the festival of Halloween is a cultural evolution of the early
Christian festival of All Hallows Eve, the hallowed evening
before All Saints Day, the day the Church remembers its past
members and leaders.
Today, albeit a little bit ahead of schedule, we are celebrating
All Saints’ Day with a Concert for All Saints’ featuring
Mozart’s “Requiem” at the 10:45 service and
then a more developed program at 7:00pm this evening in the
sanctuary.
The roots of All Saints Day are both pagan and Christian.
In Britain and Ireland the Celtic peoples celebrated October
31 as the new year with a festival of Samhein (pronounced sow-in
or sa-ven—Gaelic for November) at the beginning of winter.
It is the Celtic people who introduced ghosts, witches and goblins,
black cats, fairies and demons and who believed that the souls
of the dead visited their former homes on All Hallows Eve. (Encyclopedia
Britannica Micropedia, Vol. 5 p. 862, & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween
)
Perhaps as an antidote to Celtic traditions, All Saints Day
was first instituted by Pope Boniface IV in the 7th Century
and then solidified by Gregory III in the 8th Century when he
dedicated a chapel in St. Peters Basilica to all the saints
(Oxford Dictionary of Christian Church p. 15) It is amazing
to discover how the sands of time can cover a particular event
until it emerges totally different in the modern era. It is
a long way to the 21st century in which All Hallows Eve has
become an evening in which candy is begged from door to door
and sacred idols are toppled or defaced. I confess in times
past I too have engaged in such de-sacralization.
Despite these antecedents, this ancient festival of All Saints
Day is rooted in the New Testament. Paul seems to be the first
writer to use the term “saint” in the New Testament.
The term “saint” does appear in the Old Testament,
especially in the Psalms, as the English translation of the
Hebrew word “hassidim” from which we get the title
for Hasidic Jews, an orthodox branch of Judaism. But in the
New Testament Paul refers to Christians living in Rome (Romans
1:7), Corinth (I C. 1:2), Ephesus (2:19) the various cities
to which he writes, as “saints.” Paul also associates
the word “saint” with the final judgment time, the
“coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.”
(I Thes. 3:13, Col. 1:4) All throughout the Pauline correspondence
we have references the saints, both living and dead.
But it is the late New Testament “Epistle to the Hebrews”
that is rich in resources for All Saints Sunday. From this epistle
we understand that the popes were not inventing All Saints’
Day out of thin air.
Our epistle reading began with a litany of Hebrew saints and
then segues into saints in the recent memory of the author:
"Others suffered mocking and flogging, and
even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they
were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword, they went about
in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented
--of these the world is not worthy.” (11:36-38)
"Therefore," the author continues, "since
we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also
lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely and
let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,
looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
(12:1-2)
The Letter to the Hebrews, notes New Testament scholar Reginald
Fuller, is a series of several short sermons written by a church
leader (not St. Paul, who was long dead) to Italians—
residents of Rome and Italy—who had grown sluggish and
discouraged in their faith and who seemed to be complaining
about the conditions under which they were living, presumably
after the persecutions of Emperor Nero. (Proclamation, Hebrews,
James...1977, Fortress, Krodel, ed. Reginald Fuller: “Hebrews,”
p. 3-5) Hence the words:
“They were stoned to death, they were sawn in
two, they were killed by the sword, …”
Not exactly material for children’s Sunday school class.
It is quite a list of trials and endurance. Endurance and
hope in the face of suffering is precisely the point of the
list. But it is not a hope or endurance that is based upon a
kind of gritting the teeth or stoic refusal to admit to pain
during dark night of the soul. Rather this is endurance and
hope because of an audience that seems to be watching. There
is clearly an athletic metaphor being evoked here:
“...we are surrounded by so great a cloud
of witnesses, ...let us run with perseverance the race that
is set before us...”
It is an image of a crowd in the bleachers, at a track meet,
an Olympic event, a marathon.
“...we are surrounded by so great a cloud
of witnesses, ...let us run with perseverance the race that
is set before us...”
Who is “we”? Who is watching and who is running
the race?
We, the alive and struggling, are running the race of the life,
a race of faith that is laid out before us. As we run the race
we are looking toward the finish line where, says the writer,
stands the pioneer of our faith, Jesus the Christ, the one who
ran ahead of us and has already completed the race, who seems
to be standing at the finish line beckoning us to turn on the
power, to spurt ahead, to “kick in” for the finish
as runners would say. Not only is Christ at the finish line,
but all along the sidelines, in the bleachers, there are thousands
cheering us on, a “great cloud of witnesses,” who
are watching our performance in the race of faith. So we are
urged to throw off the sluggish weight of sin that “clings
so closely” and “run with perseverance the race
that is set before us.”
So, who is cheering you on today?
On my basement wall is my cloud of witnesses. As part of my
genealogy hobby I collect pictures of my ancestors from both
sides of my family, my wife’s side and mine. Some of these
pictures originated as small as one quarter of a inch square,
which, thanks to high resolution scanner technology, I have
been able to magnify to 9” x 12” portraits. There
are 24 of them mounted on the wall staring at me, reminding
me of my origins, reminding me that they are all watching. It
is both exhilarating and humbling all at the same time to feel
the eyes of these saints. One thing is very clear. I am not
alone, nor will I ever be alone. There is Carl Eitelgoerge,
civil war bugler. There is John Rodman, farmer and preacher,
planter of over 40 Lutheran congregations along the Red River
in western Minnesota. There is elegantly coifed Elizabeth Cobine
Pollock, faithful member of Ballybay Presbyterian Church in
County Monahan Ireland. Her farmer husband was killed by the
kick of a horse. She raised eight children as a single mother.
Her grandson and my wife’s uncle, was Sinclair Thompson,
a Presbyterian missionary in Thailand until he was killed in
a train wreck in 1960. He chaired a committee of scholars, which
translated the entire Bible into Thai.
On Monday, November 6 at 7:00pm, here in the chapel, we will
remember the great cloud of witnesses from Third Presbyterian
Church who have gone before us and now cheer us on. Among them
is a dedicated teacher in the Rochester public schools for 40
years; and a world traveler—an agent of mission—crippled
in later years by disease; and a faithful member who lived well
into his 90s, the last 10 years was not able to come to worship
continued to be an faithful supporter of this congregation;
and a dedicated deacon who struggled in latter years with dementia;
and a faithful trustee who downplayed his own illness as long
as he could.
On each All Saints’ Day we affirm, by the power of God’s
Holy Spirit, that new people are added to our cheering section.
On All Saints’ Day we affirm that they are watching us,
reacting with compassion to our tragedies, standing beside us
when we are lonely and cheering us on when we are discouraged
and sluggish. There are times in which we sense their very presence
with us, a presence that defies all rational explanation, but
a presence that is clearly more than just attributable to an
over-active memory.
I have here a treasure from one in the “great cloud
of witnesses” on my basement wall that I sense is cheering
me on. This is a portable communion set (Shown to the congregation.)
given to me by my father when I was ordained. Eric Frohman used
it for many years during his 60 years as a pastor. The glass
cups are hand poured crystal, the metal is pewter. I once tried
to wash it in the dishwasher. Not a good idea. The value for
me is more than sentimental. The value is in what happens to
me when I use it. When I am in someone's home, or at a hospital
bed giving communion and praying for the sick or shut-in person,
it is as if the words which come out of my mouth and the hands
which hold the tray and break the bread are not my words or
my hands but those of my father. He has been dead almost 20
years now, but he still witnesses my acts of ministry. There
is a very real sense in which he stands by me cheering me on.
Who cheers you on? There are many, known and unknown to us.
Actually, when you think about it, tens of thousands.
“We are surrounded by so great a cloud of
witnesses… let us therefore lay aside every weight and
the sin that clings so closely and let us run with perseverance
the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer
and perfecter of our faith."
