From the pastor

November 2, 2003

The tree outside my study window has lost its leaves. It looks like someone came along with a giant vacuum cleaner and sucked them all off. At first glance, the tree has been reduced to a stately monument of branches and twigs. But the more I ponder its presence, just beyond my window, the more I comprehend its life—and its engagement with life around it. I don’t see them, but I do behold the roots, the sap, the potential for budding in another 5 months. Wind, squirrels, and sparrows dance in the branches. Microscopic critters thrive under the cover of the fallen leaves.

And what is true of this tree is true of the church. At first glance, the church may seem to be merely a monument to the past. Empty pews where people once sat. An education wing in the décor of another decade. Rooms, closets, and cubbyholes cluttered with stuff no one knows whether to throw out. Rituals and customs and attitudes surviving from the last century.

The tree we see in November is dead—a structure of cells once alive. But lest we judge too quickly, we note that the structure now preserves the life of the tree and gives order to its future life.

The church sometimes resembles that November tree. The structure may irritate us at times. We grumble about the "institutional church." The deadwood gets in the way and sometimes pokes us in the eye and sometimes erupts into a brush fire.

Today is ALL SAINTS DAY in the church. It is the church’s Memorial Day. We look carefully and gratefully to the dead—to those who have gone before us—to comprehend more fully the life that God has given the church today.

ALL SAINTS DAY is an occasion to have a parade in our minds—a parade of all those people of faith who have gone before us, blessed us, and live on inside us. The saints are all those ordinary and sometimes extra-ordinary people who have bequeathed us our hope, our songs, our stories, our grace. Who are the people in the church, now gone, but who still touch your life?

For me, some of the saints are famous: John and Charles Wesley, Martin Luther King, Jr., St. Benedict. Others are not famous, folks who showed me love when I was a child—and who planted a lifelong love for the church in my heart: Ed and Alma Oldhues, Erma Pritchard, Howard Monroe. Others are writers of books and professors that quickened my thinking and brought new life to my relationship with God: William Stringfellow, Dorthee Sollee, Clarence Goen. Others are members of my family: my grandparents. Like a November tree, the church is protected by the dead that have gone before us on this journey of faith. And like a November tree, our hope and future life is guided by their faithfulness and legacy. --Mike