The Community of Saints is Risky but Necessary Business

One of my favorite uses of imagery in the New Testament comes from Hebrews 12. The author of Hebrews describes a great cloud of witnesses. The author suggests that these witnesses surround us, and this is most often associated with the saints of light beyond this realm of earth. I’ve been pondering that of late, especially this week with the deaths in Oklahoma and the deaths of community members Woody Woodard and Brenda Laxton.

            Throughout life saints and sinners alike, those that are both living and dead, surround us. We are surrounded in such a way that allows us to live our lives in accordance to the grace extended to us. Frederick Buechner describes our existence and callings as a clamoring of ghosts and saints and living witnesses, all conspiring with our Creator to make our lives whole. What a beautiful thought, all we’ve done has the potential to be a culmination of those gone before us.

            This past week, I’ve been at a conference in Wingate North Carolina meeting colleagues in a program I am associated with. At the opening session, I had the opportunity to sit with two people who I now consider friends, Ryan and Emma. These two people reminded me all the more that there is more than a clamoring of saints on our behalf, there are people placed in our lives through holy coincidence or Divine providence that allow us to live out our callings more fully.

            There’s a wonderful British hymn that goes like this, “They lived not only in ages past, there are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.”  I plan to be one too; I really hope that in my life and time I might be like my friends and colleagues in ministry who continue to amaze and inspire me through their daily lives.

            I’m not one for military strategy, that’s certainly not my gift. I do know, however, that when you are surrounded the best hope we could ever have would be to surrender. Maybe, just maybe that’s what we’re supposed to do when we’re surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. When we surrender to so great a cloud of witnesses we are enveloped in a story that has been told long before we came along and a story that will go on long after we are gone. Much like the Eucharist we are like the grapes crushed together to make the wine and bread full of wheat brought together.

            In our time, and our place, be thankful that you are surrounded. Be thankful that there are so great a cloud of witnesses to light our darkest nights. I may not be a saint yet, there’s certainly more to understand. But in our surrendering to this cloud we cannot possibly hope to understand, I have a feeling we are well on our way to the communion of the saints.