Bible Text:

Hebrews 11: 32-12: 2a

And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets? who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. 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 whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.

Sermon Text

A long time ago a Vietnamese fisherman invited me to his humble home for a celebration. Just inside the door were several photographs, flowers, saucers of food, and burning sticks of incense arrayed on a crude table. My host shared food and drink with me, and afterwards said how honored he was that I had come to visit on his father's death day.

Some students of religion might say that he was engaging in ancestor worship. I wouldn't call it that, but rather, ancestor awareness. He was just marking with me his awareness that he and his father were still very much connected. Death had not separated them.

Sometimes when I walk home on Washington Street and look up the hill toward the YMCA I am aware that my father and I are still connected. His death did not separate us. When he was sixteen or so he used to retreat to the roof of the Y, taking refuge there from fighting in his family, trying to get his head straight. Shock waves from such tempests roll down the generations and overflow the levy of death. Whether we like it or not, we are who we are in connection with others, both the living and the dead. That's what the Nguni people of Africa convey by their word, "Ubuntu," which means: I am who I am in connection with others. I am not an individual who stands alone.

In this north American culture, if we appreciate that wisdom at all, we tend to do so with respect to the present. "No person is an island," we say, meaning that each of us lives within a web of relationships to other living beings. But many other cultures, such as that of my Vietnamese fisherman friend, maintain that this connection extends into the past as well. We are who we are in connection with our ancestors.

The letter to the Hebrews, referring to people who have passed from this world, says that we are surrounded by "a great cloud of witnesses." A witness is someone who is watching, paying keen attention to what is going on in the world which he or has left. That's what I feel when I smile up at the roof of the YMCA. From his special place for centering my father watches over me with deep compassion. I imagine him spying the shock waves that were generated in his time. They are rolling in to pound me; and he's pulling for me to swim.

Our Hebrews passage this morning says something very interesting about the faithful strugglers who went before us and who now constitute a caring cloud of witnesses. It says "all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect." How interesting, this idea that apart from us, they cannot be perfected! In other words, the fullest meaning of their lives is getting worked out through us. We are still connected, then. They are who they are in connection to us, and we are who we are in connection to them--ubuntu!

In a little while we will light candles for our loved ones who have passed to the other side of a veil, a veil that only seems to separate us. Among those whom we will remember this morning is the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., a saint whose faithfulness puts him in the class of those who were imprisoned and tortured and killed, those of whom scripture speaks so respectfully this morning. We certainly will remember Martin for his wisdom and bravery. But I would invite you to recognize also that Martin's spirit is very much with us, and that the meaning of everything he accomplished is still getting worked out through us. I think that Martin cares deeply about what is happening to us and to our world, perhaps even more than we care about memorializing him. So, let me suggest that we will be doing far more today than celebrating the birthday of a saint. We will be lighting a candle for a person whose spirit wants to burn bright within us, if we will let it. This is not ancestor worship. It is ancestor awareness. We are who we are in connection to others, both the living and the dead. Thanks be to God that nothing can separate us from that divine love which connects all creatures past and present, a love that we have known through the incomparable witness of Jesus. Amen!