North Haven is a small town in Minnesota, just east, I heard, of Lake Wobegon. Michael Lindvall has written a couple of books about life in North Haven, tales about a minister and his flock.[1] Reading these stories you quickly get a sense that you know these people; they are your neighbors and co-workers, people you run into at the grocery store.
James Crory is one of them. He’s an overactive seven-year-old who talks a mile a minute and sleeps only sporadically. Calling him energetic would be an understatement. James loves to hang out with Angus and Minnie, both in their 80’s, and they, for the most part anyway, enjoy his company as well. They smile at his enthusiasm, and his stories and the seemingly endless stream of his questions and declarations about the world are way more entertaining than anything on tv.
It was in the afternoon of Halloween, the sun was already low, when James burst into Angus and Minnie’s living room complaining that his mom had gotten him the wrong costume.
“Spiderman? No one cares about Spiderman anymore. How can she not know that? I can’t possibly wear that costume! It will be the end! Everyone will make fun of me. Why did she do that to me? What am I going to do?”
Minnie waited a couple of seconds to make sure that he was finished.
“Perhaps you could be a ghost?”
Her boys had been ghosts every year growing up, even used the same costumes year after year—it never seemed to be a problem. Come to think of it, those ghost costumes were probably still up in the attic. And so Angus and James climbed up the creaky attic stairs to look for the costumes—and there they were! The classic design: a sheet with a couple of holes for the eyes, and a belt to keep the whole thing from blowing away.
Angus and Minnie insisted that James use a high-visibility reflector belt because it had already snowed, and you can’t see a ghost in the snow. The little boy could hardly stand still long enough to get the belt on. “Trick or treat! Trick or treat!” he shouted, jumping up and down.
Angus said he’d trail along behind to make sure the boy was OK, but before he could get his coat on, James dashed out the door and ran smack-dab into their maple tree.
Angus was rushing out to be sure he was okay, when little James picked himself up and rushed full speed ahead again. This time he ran into the neighbor’s pear tree. And this time, he stayed down a little longer.
“James! James, are you all right?” Angus quickly went over to the little boy. He looked down, and he realized that the holes in the sheet were not lined up with his eyes—not even close. James couldn’t see a thing. So Angus adjusted the sheet, and the boy’s eyes opened wide with surprise: “I didn’t know I was supposed to be able to see!”
I’m grateful for people like Minnie and Angus, old couples who become friends with young neighbors, and generously share with them their time, their food, and their love.
I thought about baptism, of all things, when I read this story from North Haven. In baptism we put on the white robe of new life. It’s not a costume that changes every year, nor is it a manufactured plastic dream that allows us to be the Hulk, Wonder Woman, or Chewbacca for a day. The white robe of new life is much more like a treasure from the attic, something generations before us have worn with joy and great reward. So you put on that robe, and you rush out the door to live your new life, only to run smack-dab into a tree.
“Something just hit me,” you say to yourself, but you rub your head, get up and start over, and—bang!—you run into the next tree. “Determination is everything,” you say to yourself, and you’re about to jump up and start over, when thankfully somebody helps you see a bit more clearly where you are and where you’re headed.
We are not alone in the adventure of faith, and this Sunday gives us an opportunity to gratefully acknowledge that reality. We are surrounded by saints, by a great cloud of witnesses who in generations past have walked the road we are on: they have faced challenges, they have kept the faith in the most difficult circumstances, and they are watching us, they are cheering us on, and they adjust our vision so we can see where we are going.
Frederick Buechner reminded us that “saints are not plaster statues, men and women of such paralyzing virtue that they never thought a nasty thought or did an evil thing their whole life long. Saints are essentially life givers. To be with them is to become more alive.”[2] Every Christian has them: precious people who have helped shape us, role models in the art of living well, people who continue to inspire and encourage us. Some of them may still be around, others have joined the church in heaven. Some of them you may have known in person, others you may have heard or read about. They are your saints, the people through whom God has made you who you are and continues to form you. Most of them are not faith celebrities or super heroes of piety, but people like Angus and Minnie, ordinary people whose lives reflect God’s grace like walking mirrors.
Saint John the Divine was a Christian leader, banned by order of Rome to the island of Patmos. Jerusalem was gone; the Romans, tired of the protests and revolts in the volatile province of Judaea, had destroyed the city and demolished the Temple—a pile of rubble was all that was left. With an iron fist they had brought peace to the troubled region, the Roman variety of peace, that is, PAX ROMANA.
Christians were suspect because of their refusal to honor the gods of the empire. Violent persecution of the church wasn’t the norm, but many Christian leaders were executed or imprisoned, or, as in John’s case, banned. He found himself far from home, a prisoner on the small island of Patmos, off the coast of Turkey. The world around him was falling to pieces, and he knew that across the sea, in the cities of Asia Minor, where arrests and executions continued, his friends were suffering. They were losing hope. They weren’t running into trees out of joyful exuberance, but because Roman imperial culture surrounded them with demands that turned their acts of faithfulness to the risen Lord into acts of rebellion. How could they possibly acclaim the emperor as Lord and Son of God when they had come to know Jesus as Lord? How could they praise the emperor as Savior of the World when that title belonged to Jesus Christ alone? How could they continue to live faithfully when all they could see was Rome’s overwhelming might?
John saw all that, but it wasn’t all that he saw. He looked beyond the horizon defined by Rome’s imperial reach. And he saw a holy city coming down out of heaven from God. He saw a city for all peoples, a beautiful city of true peace.
To what end do we put on the white robe of baptism? To what end do we follow Jesus on the way, and not other lords that vie for our allegiance? To what end do we love and serve God and our neighbor, and not our own ambitions? We are walking toward that city. In faith we have embraced the gospel as the story of our life, and those who are walking with us, along with those who went before us, adjust our vision and help us align our lives with the promises of God.
The end, Saint John reminds us, is not a handful of souls escaping to heaven; the end is the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth. The end is not one tribe’s triumph over the others, or one nation’s imperial aspirations fulfilled—the end is a city for all peoples, and God is at home among them, dwelling with them, wiping every tear from their eyes. The end is a city where death is no more, where mourning, crying, and pain are no more—because the old order has passed away for good.
The end is a feast for all peoples, a feast of rich food and well-aged wines where the nations join Israel in singing, “This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation,” and the one seated on the throne says, “See, I am making all things new.”
We hunger and thirst for righteousness, and we can already see what is coming. We long for redemption and a world where people come together to celebrate and share the gift of life, and in the company of God’s saints we can already see what is coming. We follow Jesus on the way, and in the company of Isaiah and John, surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses, our eyes are lined up with the promises and purposes of God, and we can see what is coming: the blessed communion of humanity with God, the joy of heaven to earth come down, unhindered and unending and complete.
To what end do we put on the white robe of baptism? To what end to we follow Jesus on the way, and not other lords that vie for our allegiance? To what end do we love and serve God and our neighbor, and not our own ambitions?
To be part of the great transformation that heals life’s wounds and fulfills the promise of creation. To receive and give the fullness of God’s love and grace.
[1] Michael L. Lindvall, Leaving North Haven: The Further Adventures of a Small Town Pastor (New York: Crossroad, 2002)
[2] Wishful Thinking, 102.