May 21, 2005 (Present and Accounted For)

It was a Saturday pretty much like this one, albeit thirty years ago. The place was the Methodist Theological School in Ohio where I was a trustee in those days. Given its setting on the banks of a meandering river, the graduation exercises were held out of doors on the lush green quadrangle. The library formed the background. The platform was elevated for the seating of the dominant players. Everybody else sat in folding chairs, grouped on the grass. The graduates were robed in black. The choir, in white. The faculty and trustees, in every color of the rainbow….bedecked like peacocks. And seated to the rear of this robed army were the plainclothes people. The wives of the male graduates. The husbands of the female graduates. The children of the older graduates. And the parents of the younger graduates. Also seated there were parishioners from a number of rural Methodist churches in mid-Ohio. Three years previous, those churches had taken these would-be preachers under their wings….had loved them….fed them….nurtured them…..and suffered their “greenness.” Now that these student preachers actually knew something….and would momentarily have degrees to prove it….they would leave for more fertile fields.

On this particular occasion, the speakers were eloquent. The dean was eloquent. The president was eloquent. The visiting dignitary (chosen to deliver the commencement address) was eloquent. But there was one who was not eloquent. That’s because he was scared stiff. He was the only student on the platform, chosen to speak on behalf of the graduating seniors. As he approached the microphone, he did the things that every nervous speaker does. He played with his glasses. He played with his tie. He played with the microphone. He cleared his throat. Several times. Then he spoke. And this is what he said:

Indeed they were. The chairs had been trucked in that morning. And they would be trucked out that night. Had we folded our chairs and looked on the underside of the seat, we would have seen the name of the rental company woodburned into the surface.

The student’s point was a simple one. He was saying: “Seminary is a rented chair. Wonderful as it is….we can’t stay here. Somebody else needs our place. And greater fields of service need us. We gotta be movin’ on.”

But the student was making a broader point than he knew. Which I caught….pondered….and held for future reference. Life, itself, is a rented chair. We can’t stay here, either. We can get comfortable in the chair. But we can’t keep the chair. We can do amazing things to the chair….in the chair….and with the chair. We can repair the chair….repaint the chair….rebuild the chair….restore the chair….refurbish the chair….reupholster the chair…..or reposition the chair in the great living room of life. If we are wealthy enough, we can even endow the chair. If I have a million dollars to spare, some university will gladly establish the “Ritter Chair of Religious Rhetoric.” But I, myself, cannot occupy my endowment forever. I have to give it up and leave it behind. Life is a rented chair.

“What did you expect?” says the Letter to the Hebrews. “This is not your home. You are just passing through.” What did he call us? You know what he called us. He called us “strangers and exiles upon the earth.” In the ultimate scheme of things, “we ain’t got long to stay here.” My eminent and imminent successor, Jack Harnish (in whom I take great delight), says: “With each passing year, this memorial service is Annual Conference for me.” Knowing that the step that follows being retired is being remembered, I know the feeling. Pasture today. Heaven tomorrow. But far from finished, I suspect….even then.

Many of you remember Archbishop Romero. He lived and served in El Salvador during the great “trouble” in that country. It was a strife so pervasive that it allowed no one the privilege of neutrality. The revolution in El Salvador politicized everybody, even Catholic priests. Some would say “especially Catholic priests.” Every time I complain about the trials of my profession, I think of people like Archbishop Romero. And I recognize that while it is never easy to preach anywhere, there are some places where it is a whole lot harder to preach than others.

Preaching in some places can get you killed. Which was what happened to Romero. He was martyred. Murdered. Brutally executed. And his martyrdom was different only because of his visibility. Because we knew of him in life, we heard of him in death.

I am told that on the day of his funeral, there was a great Requiem Mass in the Cathedral of San Salvador. The place was packed with people sympathetic to the cause. Together they sang the hymns, prayed the prayers, chanted the liturgies and partook of the Eucharist. But something else happened in that mass, which went on to become a custom each time a priest or nun was sacrificed to the conflict. The celebrant began to read the names….slowly….one at a time….of all the “religious” who had been killed in the great revolution. And after each name was read, a pocket of worshipers in that great congregation would cry out “Presente,” meaning just what the word implies….present….here….accounted for….still with us in the struggle. One name after another was read. One shout after another was heard. “Ramirez….Presente.” “Ramos…. Presente.” “Rivera….Presente.” And then the last name, which was followed by the loudest shout of all: “Romero….Presente.” The communion of the saints!

That shouldn’t seem strange to you. Think back to your childhood. Go back to grade school. Your regular teacher was sick. They called in a substitute. Sometimes the substitute was an experienced pro. You couldn’t rattle her. She was wise to every trick. Cunning like a fox, hair tightly coiled in a bun, flat shoes laced to her ankles, she’d seen it all. She knew she would be tested. And she was ready.

But other times you got a green one….fresh out of sub school….unsure of herself. You could smell her fear from the minute she entered the room. You knew you could test her, rattle her, confuse and confound her. While you might not be able to drive her screaming from the classroom, you could certainly delay doing much work that day. And so you started pushing her buttons when she commenced to call the roll. Class book in hand, she starts down the list of names. “Adams….here.” “Bowers….here.” “Carpenter….here.” “Dillenberger….here.” And on it goes. Twenty-six names, called. Twenty-six children identify themselves as being “here.” But wait. She counts the heads. There are only twenty-two heads in the room. Back to the class book. One more time through the list. Twenty-six names, called. Twenty-six voices answer “here.” Twenty-six children, marked present. She counts heads again. There are still only twenty-two. Giggles abound. Finally, she decides to call the roll from the seating chart rather than from the class book. She finds the four vacant desks. Now she knows. But you had her going for a while.

Four children were absent that day. They were not present in body or in spirit. But on that day in the great cathedral of San Salvador, when the celebrant of the mass read the names of the martyrs and the people cried “Presente,” they were playing no joke on an inexperienced liturgist. Those persons were present and accounted for. They were there in death every bit as much as they had been there in life….one in the struggle….one in the faith….one in the Lord….“friends on earth and friends above” (as the hymn says). It was the communion of the saints.

How can this be? Darned if I know. But enough people have experienced it….and enough people have felt it….so as to convince me that it is something more than wishful thinking or poetic imagination at work.

Frederick Buechner….novelist….theologian….masterful sculptor with words….is one of my all-time favorite writers. He speaks of the same experience, putting it this way:

I remember the first time I went to the great Palace of Versailles outside Paris, and how, as I wandered among all those gardens and statues, I had a sense that the place was alive with ghosts which I was barely unable to see. Somewhere, just beneath the surface of all that was going on around me, the past was going on around me too, with such reality and such poignancy that I had to tell somebody else about it, if only to reassure myself that I wasn’t losing my mind.

I’ve had experiences like that. I’ve been places where it almost seemed as if you could “fold back the air like a curtain” and the past would enter in and become one with the present….and the people of the past would enter and become one with the people of the present….so that, after a while, you couldn’t tell where the past ended and the present began.

The dead make their witness! That’s what our text of the evening affirms. The author details the legacy left by past heroes and heroines of the faith. He details it name by name….contribution by contribution….trial by trial….victory by victory….and, most importantly (lest the poor reader think that keeping the faith was all “ups” and no “downs”), he details it defeat by defeat. He even apologizes because he lacks the time and space to tell more stories in his litany of the faithful.

And then comes the clincher: “Wherefore we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, every sin, every encumbrance that clings to us like a barnacle on a ship’s bottom or a burr on a saddle, so that we might better run the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus….the pioneer and perfector of our faith.” What language! What an image!

The cloud of witnesses. We need them. Why? Because the powers that are aligned against us are too much for us. When the Apostle Paul talks about the powers, the principalities and the hosts of wickedness in high places (all of which are symbols used to describe the magnitude of the evils against which we contend), we know what he is talking about. And sometimes it seems as if we come to the battle woefully underarmed, undernourished, undermanned (and under-womaned). Which leads my British hero, Colin Morris, to conclude:

For such a battle, the militant church requires more allies than it can muster in any one place or at any one time. But it has them in the church triumphant. We must not, in assessing our strength, forget to count those regiments camped over the hill. So before we dismiss our numbers as paltry and our faith as weak, we would do well to wait until the whole army is assembled.

What an image! The regiment camped over the hill, ready to share in the fight…. comes to our aid….and tilts the odds more favorably toward our side. If this be true, it means that when we sing of the “company of heaven,” the word “company” has an entirely new image. The “company” of which we speak is not so much a convivial gathering of like-minded people enjoying Happy Hour in heaven, so much as a company of combatants….a battalion of those who, having fought one good fight, are now ready to take on another.

And why, pray tell, would they want to do that? Why would our struggles concern them? Why would they give a passing thought to our sorry plight? The author of the Letter to the Hebrews addresses that question, too. Because, he suggests, “they did not receive what was promised and, apart from us, they shall not be made perfect.”

What does this mean? Does it mean that God is a stern parent, withholding whatever reward may come to the faithful until all have died, so that all might receive it together? This would equate God with the parent who looks around the dinner table, counts heads, finds a couple of heads missing, and promptly sends the dessert back to the kitchen, saying: “There will be no cake for anybody until there is cake for everybody.” No, that misses the point. That’s not it at all. The dead need us for a very different reason. They need us to make their joy complete. Why? Because they didn’t get the job done. They didn’t get to see the work finished. They didn’t get to see the promises fulfilled. They didn’t get to see the Kingdom made manifest. “They all died in faith,” says the author of Hebrews, “not having tasted victory."

To be sure, they had a good time. They did good work. They left a good witness. And they occasionally sipped the sweet nectar of triumph on a few lesser fronts. But even the most celebrated of them still died, never having tasted the victory the Gospel told us we were supposed to long for.

That is why they need us so desperately. That is why they are the regiment camped over the hill. That is why the ghosts are alive in this room and the present moment trembles with the “presences” of yesterday. And that is why the favorite hymn in heaven is “When the Roll is Called Down Under, I’ll Be There.”

So indulge me as I call my own selected version of the roll.

Note: At the end of the sermon, I called out the names of several clergy from my personal memory bank. Some died more than fifty years ago. One of them died scarcely more than fifty days ago. But they impacted my life once and sustain me in the struggle now. The list was highly personal and far from inclusive. But following each name, an ever-increasing chorus of voices was heard to respond “Presente.” The names included:

Marshall Reed	Calvin Blue	Jim Wright
Dwight Loder	Lois Glenn	David Jordan
Mike Rice	Wild Billy Mercer	John Parrish
Henry Hitt Crane	Bobby Brubaker	Hugh White
Ray Lamb	Gary Kellerman	Elsie Johns