While digging into this morning’s readings, I was drawn back to Hebrews, which we talked about last week, and was reminded of a poem written by onetime Poet Laureate of Kentucky, George Ella Lyon. Those who have participated in our Writing our Faith on Tuesday evenings and some of you who may have taught English or teach English may know her and this poem, as we’ve used it as a writing prompt, and teachers and activists have used this poem in prisons and classrooms and lots of contexts around the country for years. The structure is simple – it’s a list – and the poem answers one of those questions we often ask and are asked when we’ve just met – “Where are you from?”
Here is George Ella Lyon’s answer:
Where I’m From
I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.
I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I’m from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.
I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded —
leaf-fall from the family tree.
Part of the beauty in this poem is that in its list of details – the dirt under the porch, the box full of photographs, the forsythia bush, fried corn, strong coffee, “He restoreth my soul” – many of us hear something that reminds us of our own story, our own story of faith perhaps, and the people who have gone before us and shaped our lives – the know-it-alls and the grandfathers, the “sift of lost faces.” For me the memories it brings up are of the backyard where I grew up, which had kind of a magical circle of forsythia bushes we would run through as children. I also remember a box of black and white photos in my grandmother’s living room end table, opening that and saying, “who is this? Mom, tell me about this person, this picture?,” seeing my mother, my age, many years ago. I remember the crafts we made in Miss Amy’s Sunday School class.
What does all that have to do with today’s scripture, you may be wondering?
Last week, we dwelled in the language of faith, some of the near-poetry of scripture, hearing the words of the letter to the Hebrews, words of comfort to a people who felt discouraged and abandoned:
“Faith,” the writer of Hebrews says, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Or, as we heard in a translation closer to the meaning of the original Greek: “Faith is the very being, the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.”
This week, we return again to Hebrews, and understand faith in another way – as a shared path, a gift perhaps, from those no longer seen. This morning we experience a little bit of All Saints in this litany of the names and stories of those faithful who have traveled this way before us, a litany of so many life stories, so many perspectives on what faith has accomplished, what faith has endured, and what faith has strengthened and resurrected. Saints who, by faith and through faith, “conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight” – victorious, miraculous acts of faith.
And also, this passage includes a more grievous and difficult list of the lives of the faithful, who experienced persecution and suffering and violence, who wandered in the desert and lived in caves – and Jesus as the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” who “endured the cross, disregarding its shame.”
New Testament professor and Baptist minister Bryan Whitfield compares this morning’s reading to a photo album – snapshots in a “gallery of faith,” he calls it. We sit with this litany like we would sit with a photo album – remember the Christmas we got the bicycles – remember the summer Grandma came with us to the beach – remember the church where we got married – “Remember those who crossed over the Red Sea. Remember Rahab, who welcomed the scouts. Remember those who marched around Jericho. Remember Sampson and Daniel, who shut the mouths of lions.”
But these snapshots, taken together, are contradictions. Some of our ancestors are saved by faith, and some are killed because of it. Some are victorious through faith, and some are imprisoned because of their faith. How do we hold those things together? How do we read and remember these stories, and make sense of them?
“Why should we look at this photo album of faith and faithfulness?” Whitfield asks.
And he answers: “Because in looking, we learn who we are. We learn that we are not alone and that we are part of a family with particular traits and characteristics…”
We learn who we are, we learn where we’re from, and we learn where we’re going.
We are part of a family of human beings traveling not just through this present world together, but through the history of this world together. We are accompanied on our way, on this race that is set before us, by a cloud of witnesses that inspires us and teaches us and carries the heavy load of pain and joy with us.
Our stories are intertwined – they come from the same root, like the branches of a Dutch elm. Our faithfulness is not measured by our victories or losses, whatever those are – our faithfulness is what helps us keep moving and traveling through them, and gives strength to those who travel the way with us, past, present and future.
Yes, it’s a little early for All Saints – we’ll celebrate that feast in November – but the cloud of witnesses is never far from us, their stories surrounding us as we continue our path, our race, through our challenges, whatever they are – health diagnoses, the deaths of loved ones, divorces, estrangement – their stories strengthen our faith, and show us where God’s presence has been, where God’s presence is, and where God is leading us from here. As Methodist theologian Thomas Long describes it: “a great unbroken cord of faith that stretches from the beginning of human history all the way into the heavenly sanctuary in the City of God, where the cord has been securely fastened and anchored by Jesus.”
Who are the saints whose strength strengthens you, that unbroken cord of faith through the journey of your life? Who presently holds you in this faith? And who, in generations to come, might look back at you for that same strength, might ask your story and add it to the stories they carry with them, bringing all of us closer to God? What is the story of faith you add to this great cloud of witnesses, to the stories of the saints?
Amen.
