Sermon (8 a.m.): When Our Hopes Meet with God’s Faithfulness

The Reverend Shirley Smith Graham,

St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Williamsburg, VA

August 12, 2007

            One warm evening, in September of 2004, I went to the Servant Leadership School in Washington, D.C., to hear a famed woman of faith speak of her experience.  This lady had, for 20 plus years, found  funding and support for under-served children.  I saw standing before me a woman in her late ‘40s, a woman with a joy-filled face.  Her chestnut eyes brimmed with intensity; her countenance had the cast of God’s peace.  She held herself with dignity, as she was introduced with credentials that spanned years of justice-making ministry: feeding the poor, educating people who had slipped through the cracks, giving hope for a future.  This famous woman had helped two generations of African Americans step up into the mainstream of American society, and she had helped two generations of white Americans reach across the color barriers.  She had been baptized in the crucible of the civil rights movement, and she remains an ambassador of hope, who ferries between black and white communities, helping us understand why racial reconciliation is still a worthwhile dream.

          I was captivated by this woman’s warmth, by her obviously deep caring for all people, no matter what the color of their skin or the dollars in their bank account.  However, until that evening, I had been unacquainted with her name.  For two hours, I sat listening to wisdom roll from the tongue of Ms. Ruby Sales without understanding that this was Ruby Sales, and that, because she was Ruby Sales, I was in a history-making moment that had started 39 years before.

            Perhaps you remember the original historical moment.  As your bulletin describes, over 40 years ago, Jonathan Daniels had recently been graduated from seminary and was preparing for the priesthood.  Few people outside of his home diocese or Episcopal seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had heard of Jonathan Daniels.  On his second trip down to Alabama, in 1965, Jon Daniels had returned to do his small part of trying to relieve the oppression of those Americans who wished to vote but could not; those who wished to find a way out from unremitting poverty but could not; those who wanted to hope for a future but dared not.  Now, his goal sounds like an idealistic and high-flying goal, a goal that makes celebrity.  But as we all know, even august goals, when undertaken for the benefit of others, almost always demand ordinary and mundane work.  And so it was that Jon Daniels, preparing for the priesthood, found himself outside the cash store in Hayneville, Alabama.

            So it was that, on August 20, 1965, there was a bunch of people; … then a deputy sheriff; … then a drawn gun; … then a young black teenager named Ruby Sales.  Before anyone knew what had happened, Jon Daniels had thrust Ruby Sales out of the way of the firing gun and had taken the bullet himself.  This is the bullet that took Jonathan Daniels to the nearer presence of God, as he ended his mortal life.  Now, fast-forward 39 years, and here stands before me Ruby Sales, who had not died, responding the question, “How did you get your start in the ministry of helping people?”

            I remember Ms. Sales saying something like this: “The trauma of that moment in 1965 still sits with me.  When I think that, if Jon Daniels hadn’t pushed me out of the way, it would have been me that were dead, I’m just overwhelmed.  The course of my life changed that day, not because I asked it to, but because one Christian man saved my life, while losing his own.  That’s a debt I can’t just ignore.  That’s a call to continue the work he started.”

            Because Jon Daniels had hoped in things not seen, Ruby Sales has a future.

While I was praying this week over the Scriptures for today, I thought of Ruby and Jon.  Jon had a hope: that the two-class system based on race in American could change … that the suffocating circumstances that led to the riot-hot summers of the ‘60s could be relieved … that black people in America could find more abundant life.  Jon had a hope, and this hope intersected with faith – God’s faith – God’s faithful loving kindness.  And this hope is the same kind of hope recounted in our lesson from Hebrews – the hope of Abel, and Enoch, and Noah and Abraham – hope for a future.  This human hope meets with God’s divine faithfulness, and God’s faithfulness honors that hope-filled dream, sanctifies that dream, and transforms the dream into reality.  For Abraham, hope -- met with God’s faithfulness -- produced as many children as there were stars in the sky.  For Noah, hope -- met with God’s faithfulness -- produced a new start, living in covenant with God.  For Jon Daniels, hope -- met with God’s faithfulness -- produced a future for Ruby Sales … and for the generations of children she herself would sustain.

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, in the tenth and eleventh chapters, is persistently and consistently clear: because one person had hope, and because God met that hope with His own faithfulness, someone else has a future.  I can’t help but think of this message in the context of our own life at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church.  In 1963, a group of persons had hope for a future, hope that met with God’s faithfulness, to produce a congregation worshipping God, first in the basement of Heritage Inn, and then in the “blue barn.”  Through the ‘70’s and ‘80’s and ‘90’s many of you, working with Pickett Miles, brought your hope to the table – this table – where Sunday after Sunday God blessed your hope and passed it back out to you, for you to share it with your neighbors and the larger Williamsburg community.  Every time someone new walked through those doors, they were partakers of the hope that you offered, the hope that God blessed.  This consecrated hope has made St. Martin’s a place of grace, of healing, of blessing, of worship, of sanctuary.  And now, in what Pickett Miles calls the “grandchild” generation, we gather this Sunday to put our hope back on the table and ask God to bless it again, to bless our hope with divine faithfulness again, that we and others might continue to be convinced of God’s work among us – a future that is not seen, but a future that is believed.  Our work is to hope, and we ask God to meet that hope with His own faithfulness, bringing forth a future for us and for the hundreds of people who walk through those open doors.

It is the work of hoping for something not seen that Jesus calls the disciples to, in today’s gospel lesson from Luke.  Jesus is preparing them: I won’t be here forever.  You will be left here to continue the revealing of God’s grace on earth, God’s healing on earth, God’s feeding and providing and justice on earth.  I will go, but you will be left here to do this revealing of God’s kingdom on earth.  But I will come back.  I’ll come back and see what you’ve done.  So,  “[b]e dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.”

Be ready to do the work that hopeful people do, to do the work that Jesus would have done.  The hymn we shall sing today at 10 a.m. points to this work and the purposefulness behind it.  The hymn reads this way:

“Can it be that from our endings, new beginnings you [God] create?

Life from death, and from our rendings, realms of wholeness generate?

Take our fears, then, Lord, and turn them into hopes for life anew.

Speak, O God, your Word among us.  Barren lives your presence fill. 

Swell our hearts with songs of gladness, terrors calm, forebodings still.

Let your promised realm of justice blossom now, throughout the earth.”

In this morning’s worship, in our collection of food for FISH, in our transportation of the homeless men at Vibrant Life Ministries, in our fellowship with families at the Grove, we bring our work and our hope to the Lord’s table.  We ask God to do what he has done countless times before, for us, for Abraham, for Noah, Enoch and Abel.  We ask God to bless the hope we bring to Him today.  We ask God to meet our hope with His own faithfulness, taking our fears and turning them into hopes for life anew.  Amen.