Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

Sunday, November 6, 2022 | 4:00 p.m.

All Saints’ Sunday

Lucy Forster-Smith
Senior Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11–23

My dad died on the Sunday that we celebrated All Saints’ Day. It has been twenty-one years ago now, but I remember it as it was yesterday. We had been at my spouse’s, Tom’s, church that day. It was a big, fancy church like this one. At that time I was engaged with some work with single adults at that church. We had monthly brunches at a local restaurant. If I had a cell phone then, I don’t remember it, but I do remember sitting at the brunch with a table full of church members when Tom came in with a look on his face that I had only seen when his dad had died many years before. He motioned for me to step away, and when I did, he shared that my mom had called to let us know my dad had died.

That day, and many days after it, I became aware of what the writer to the church at Ephesus boldly reminds his hearers of: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.”

Yes, tucked into this amazing prayer for the community, the apostle knows that it is the eyes of the heart that awaken us to a glorious inheritance. It is the way of the heart that recognizes the power of the saints who contribute to our lives, contribute to a church community animated by hope. When our hearts are shattered by news, as I was that day, or our hearts are awakened by the light of all that raises hope, trust, renewal, we see with the eyes of faith.

So, what prompted the eloquence of this passage in Ephesians? At the very core of the book of Ephesians is unity. The author recognizes the jubilation that comes when kin in faith are bound together by unity in Christ. I think it is hard to put ourselves in the shoes of the early Christian community. They were so spread out across so many regions, cultures, ideologies. And trying to knit into one, Jews, Gentiles, rooted in Greek and Roman cultures, was nigh impossible. Simply the range of worship, gender, dietary, economic, and cultural practices that these diverse folks carried into this newfound tradition of being followers of Jesus would have shaken any hope of unity. But the Apostle Paul was undeterred. He not only instructed this community; he not only had the incredible capacity to understand the range of perspectives that this very diverse community carried into their life together, but Paul prayed for this community of early believers. He knew there was much tugging at their efforts to stay the course as early pioneers of the faith.

Like them, so much tugs at our hearts these days. I don’t know about you, but I find myself feeling really sad a lot. Sad for the way that the pandemic punched a great big hole in aspirations for our work here at Fourth Church. Sad for feeling so overwhelmed by the challenge of knitting our community back together. Sad for people whom I know personally who died of COVID. Sad for the intersection of George Floyd’s death and the pandemic unfurling and for the persistent racism that keeps us from being the beloved community God truly wants. Sad that just as we began to see our way clear from the pandemic’s force with vaccinations and infections getting us out of the egregious effects of it, that Putin launched an attack on Ukraine that has daily and tragic effects on life in that country and has sent the fragile global economy into a tailspin. Yes, so much grief . . . sadness.

And I often pause in these days, wondering where God is, where we are, where the heart’s ease might be. And even more importantly, I pause to consider the role of a church that sits in a city that holds so much in its history, both deeply distressing and amazingly bold!

Where I land, as I think of this text from Ephesians on this All Saints’ Sunday, is that our work at this moment is to tell the truth about what we feel, what our heart sees, what is scary, and also — large, bold capital letters — ALSO to tell the truth about the power of a God who sends messengers of hope. And that the power of hope is not just wishful thinking but hope that won’t give up; hope that won’t die; hope that binds us into community in powerful ways, is displayed in our living, in the way we pray for one another, sing together, cry with each other, and serve each other and those we encounter. And without each other we simply cannot make it.

There is an old Hasidic tale “of a disciple who asked his rabbi the meaning of community one evening. The rabbi sat in silence while the fire died down to a pile of glowing coals. Then he got up and took one coal out from the pile and set it apart on the stone hearth. Its fire and warmth soon died out” (Heidi Neumark, Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx, p. 61). Yes, it is the fire and warmth of the saints — living and those who have died — in whom we find our life and the courage to live out this inheritance of hope in God.

One of the most influential writers, preachers, bearers of God in my life is Frederick Buechner. For those of you who don’t know that name, Buechner has written so much on the life of faith. And he died this year at the age of ninety-six. His obituary was in the New York Times, and there were several famous journalists who wrote about him. He is a saint, I’d say. And what is quite uncanny to me is that Reverend Buechner — yes, he was a Presbyterian minister —wrote an autobiography for which he used as its title The Eyes of the Heart, drawn from this passage.

I love what he has to say about the passage. “St. Paul or whoever it was,” writes Buechner, “wrote to the Ephesians that he always remembers them in his prayers, asking God, among other things, to give them ‘a spirit of revelation in the knowledge of him,’ which is just about what you would expect him to ask. But then,” Buechner continues,

Paul added an explanatory phrase that I for one would not have expected and maybe for that reason never even noticed until it jumped off the page at me the other day—‘having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which God has called you.’ ‘The eyes of the heart’ . . . finding words where I never found them before when I needed them. . . . That day on the staircase when I met my first grandchild for the first time, what I saw with the eyes of my head was a very small boy with silvery gold hair and eyes the color of blue denim coming down toward me in his mother’s arms. What I saw with the eyes of my heart was a life that without a moment’s hesitation I could have given my life for. (Frederick Buechner, The Eyes of the Heart, pp. 165–166)

Where do the eyes of the heart draw you? And what is the hope to which you are called that these heart-eyes draw you toward? Indeed, in these days when the heaviness of our lives, the grief and sadness, seems to spring up at odd and unsettling moments, where does the hope spring eternal? For me, the hope that arises from the power of God’s light comes a lot when I pause and give thanks for the lives of those who have taken my hand and, even more, taken my heart to places I never dreamed would be possible. Yes, one of those was my dad, who, though often a little hard to get along with, was also a man who loved God without one morsel of hesitation. There are many ways I could enumerate that were evidence of this. But the one that comes to mind, through which my heart sees most fully, is his Bible. Yes, his Bible — a black leather Bible that was very, very worn. He was a man of the Book. He read it, studied it, led Bible studies with passion and a probing spirit. And even after he suffered a debilitating stroke, that Bible was always right on his bedside table, ready for a visitor, a friend, a medical person, a family member to read a passage or devotional thought to him.

My dad would often weep when someone read from the Bible, because his eyes were fixed on the light that radiated from it—a light of comfort or joy or challenge or guidance. He also loved the church and the community of faith that had been a guiding light and also a solace for him through his life. He had entertained going into ministry but had a stutter that would have made preaching difficult. But his love for God, for Jesus, for the truth of resurrection joy never waned. And I am deeply grateful for my dad’s witness.

I suspect many of you have those saints whom you can name or hold in your heart this All Saints’ Sunday. In a few minutes we will give you an opportunity to remember them. But in the spirit of Paul, we have an inheritance of riches from God, poured out through the saints, and you know what? You are a saint as well, a holy harbor with God’s light planted in you! And we give thanks for this bounty, for the way your eyes see on this day something rich, full, and simply beautiful. You are a reflection of that Divine glory. And we are all joined together in the unity of God’s Spirit. Amen.