It was a day that was tinged with pathos. Forty-eight hours before, my parents and I had arrived in South Africa for the first time. It was in 1997. It was the major move in our life: we had left Bermuda and Canada and my father had taken up a ministry in the heart of Cape Town during the high days of apartheid. These were difficult times. We knew we were going into a difficult situation: I to begin studies at a new university; mother and father to run a congregation that was in the heart of the great city.
We had only been there forty-eight hours, and the home that we were going to move into wasn’t even ready for us, so we had to stay in a place for missionaries who were home on furlough – the famous Andrew Murray House, named after the great theologian and missiologist. It was breakfast on the second day in a new continent and a new land when the phone rang. It was a call for my father. My father was surprised to be receiving a call so early in the morning. He went and took the phone, and unlike my father who was loquacious, as I am, he said very little. There was a silence, a “Thank you very much” and he put the phone down.
He came back to the breakfast table to inform us that his father, my grandfather, had passed away in England. My grandmother was later to say that part of it was due to him having a broken heart that we had left for a continent so far away. He had been ill, but not so ill that we felt we couldn’t leave him. We were shattered! In a new land, we couldn’t just get on a plane and fly home. We couldn’t say our farewells; we couldn’t embrace our family. We just simply had to mourn and grieve in a new land on a new continent, a place of new beginnings.
About a month later, when we had moved into our new home, a package arrived in the mail. The package was addressed to me. It was the day after my birthday, which by the way was last week, just so you know, and thank you for your greetings. I thought it was a birthday gift, so I opened it. In it was a letter from my Uncle Ray, my father’s brother, with an enclosed gift – well, not a gift, an inheritance! It was my grandfather’s gold watch that he had been given when he retired from his service on the police force.
It was the watch he always carried on him in his retirement, and I remember when we used to go for long walks up into the hills on the border between Lancashire and Yorkshire. We would walk and we would talk, and I would take in every word he had to say, for I loved my grandfather deeply. On every walk, he would take the watch out and say, “Andrew, this says it is ice-cream time.” We’d stop, and we would go to an ice cream cart. Every time he took out the watch, good things happened! He must have taken it out an awful lot, because I ate an awful lot of ice cream!
I will never forget that watch. But, it is not the watch that is the inheritance, is it? It is the memory. It is not the physical asset or the value of it, which actually might not be worth a lot; it is what you remember. It is the conversations about the days when he had to grow up in the depression in Lancashire and there was no work, and he had to go and work in Poland and Germany and Holland. He talked about the pain and the suffering of people having belongings taken from their home when a means test was done, and their pianos were removed from their homes to pay their bills if they were going to receive social assistance. He talked about the need to take care of the poor and to make sure the down trodden were cared for.
There were moments when he talked about the Second World War, and about the fact that during the Second World War he was caught in Holland working when the Nazis came in, and how he had to get out of the country under the cloak of darkness, helped by Dutch families, and back to Britain. He talked about how important it was to maintain your faith and your dignity and to be compassionate. The inheritance wasn’t the watch; the inheritance was the memory. It always will be.
I reached into my drawer this week to take out that watch. I haven’t wound it for some thirty years, and immediately it began ticking and keeping time. Five minutes fast every day, but predictable I found. Just like my grandfather: Ahead of the times in many ways, a visionary.
Memories! You know, that goes for our faith as well. Who of us this morning is not here because of the example, the witness, the ministry, the testimony, the encouragement, the love of somebody who had faith? None of us just arrive in church by accident. We are here because of somebody, who used by the Holy Spirit, has been able to bear witness in such a way that their impact on our lives has brought us here. Maybe it was a musician, maybe it was an organist, maybe it was a parent, maybe it was a preacher, maybe it was a school teacher, and maybe it was a friend: somebody somewhere helped bring us here.
The Apostle Paul knew that. He captures it brilliantly in today’s passage from Ephesians. Paul talks about those people as saints. He addresses them as the saints who share with those who are new in the faith: the essence of the good news. He calls them in Greek the Hagioi, and Hagioi are “the holy ones.” These Holy Ones are the consecrated ones. They have been called and appointed by the Holy Spirit. But, they are more than that. They are “destined” according to the will and the purpose of Christ himself. They have been chosen.
It is a mystery I often think to see that the faithful have been called or have been chosen. Why does it appear that way? Why were certain people chosen, destined and appointed? But, if that is not the case, then as John Calvin says, “God ceases to be sovereign.” God destines people. God calls people. God invites people. Faith is the response to that invitation. Faith is the acknowledgement that in fact we have already been destined and appointed by God. It is at the heart of the Reformation. It is the heart of what we believe to be true. It is a mystery, but it is a mystery of great comfort.
If it is not true, then it is only we ourselves who can determine who the saints are, who the holy ones are, and we all know how dangerously wrong we can get it when we try to choose our saints and our leaders and our guides. No! It is God’s destiny and God’s calling to which we respond. The saints therefore are not a particular person of high standing in the church or society. It is not the Church who determines the saints: it is Christ. It is for them to be called and to respond. It doesn’t matter their age, it doesn’t matter their upbringing, their ethnicity, their status in life: simply that they are the Holy Ones appointed by Christ. As we look at this, and as we look at what it means to be a saint, in a sense it applies to each and every one of us, for the saints are the household of God, the saints are those who are the “holy ones” and we have received this most glorious inheritance that we are in fact surrounded by a crowd of witnesses.
The great Dr. John Gladstone, who was minister as nearly all of you know at Yorkminster Park, was a very good friend of mine, and in his later years, a dear friend. My, how he would love it that his beloved Arsenal is at the top of the Premier League right now! Dear John! In one of his books he tells a wonderful story about a Congregational minister in the United Kingdom, who after church would invite people to come into a nearby sanctuary to receive Communion, like Dr. Hunnisett does with us. But, when he went in there he was discouraged because he realized no one was there, with the exception of maybe two people, who were actually going to serve the Communion.
He was discouraged but, nevertheless, having two there, he felt he should continue. So, he began to read the Liturgy of Holy Communion. And then, he got to this point, and it reads as follows: “Therefore, with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven we laud and we magnify your glorious name.”
The minister stopped. He read it a second time: “With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.” At the end of the service, he said, “God, forgive me for not realizing how powerful and important this sacrament is! We count numbers, but the numbers in your kingdom are uncountable.”
Indeed, the saints have this great inheritance. They have the inheritance of the kingdom of God now. It is as if the gold watch is in our hands. We have it! It is the Good News of Jesus Christ! It is the grace and the power of life in the spirit and eternal life now. It is a great gift, but it is one that is not only for now, as Paul says, but for all time, when all will be in awe. It is a heavenly thing. This inheritance is not just now; it is also in the age to come. It is not only now; it is in the ages that have preceded us.
I love reading an interview that was given to Billy Graham by Christianity Today many years ago. The interviewer asked him a very challenging question. He said, “Don’t you think, Rev. Graham, that it is different for you than for all other preachers, because you get to preach in front of great auditoriums and football fields and large sanctuaries. You know you are going to get large crowds hear you. But what about the pastors in small, rural country churches, who do not have the large crowds and the adulations. How would you feel if you were them?”
Billy Graham’s answer was one of the greatest I have ever heard. He said, “Even if I were in a church and was about to preach, and no one was there, it wouldn’t matter. I would preach the same way, because I am actually never preaching just to the people who are there. I am preaching to God. I am never just preaching to the audience that is before me, but I am preaching to a crowd of witnesses who are all around me. I never, ever, preach alone.” He understood what Paul understood. He understood that in this age we have the Gospel, but in the age to come we have the Gospels. We wait for the consummation, for the final Resurrection from the dead, yes. But we also know we never preach in isolation from those have gone before us, those who have toiled, those who have set an example, those who have loved, those who have preached, those who have been in Christ! We are surrounded by that great crowd of witnesses.
What does their status look like? Well, clearly they are saints, because they have obtained sainthood. It has been given to them. I love the language that Paul uses here to describe Jesus Christ. It is some of the highest language in The New Testament. This is what he says about Jesus:
God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come. He has put all things under his feet, and has made him the head of all things for the Church, which is his body: the fullness of him who fills all-in-all.
In other words, the Church that we have, the ministry that you have, the call to sainthood that we all have, is in response to He who is seated at the right hand of God the Father.
It is not for us to determine, it is not for us to say who the saints are, it is not for us to determine what the ministry of the Church should be; rather, what the ministry of the Church should be is determined by Christ. The saints throughout the ages, those who have bowed before him, who have glorified his name above all other names, they are the ones who have been faithful. But, it is also sealed. Paul uses this sign, uses this seal for us. In other words, it is like the inheritance that has been given has been signed by God. Here is the inheritance! Here is my will! I have signed it!
One of the things I love doing with couples when I perform their marriage is that they have exchanged vows and we have gone into the Vestry and they have signed all the documents and all the witnesses have signed, I just tease them for one moment, and I say, “You do realize that none of this will mean anything until I sign the certificate. Now, for the last time, do you want me to sign the certificate?” And, they are all pleading with me, “Please sign it! Please sign it!” Of course, I take my good old time in doing it.
But it is true: until I have signed it, it is not sealed. Until I have signed that final document as the legal witness, then in many ways we cannot send the certificate on. So, I think one of the most passionate things about the Good News is that the inheritance that we receive has been signed by God, it has been signed by Christ, and because of that we inherit what he inherits. We inherit his kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven. We inherit the history of Israel and the Covenant of God with Israel. We are participants in the inheritance of God, and it has been sealed by him, and it is sealed for glory. It is sealed for praise and the glory and adoration of his name.
The question then remains: what kind of inheritance is our life leaving? Paul puts a very interesting word in this text. He says, “That you might live for the praise of His glory.” It is a living thing! The Christian faith is a dynamic thing. It is not just frozen in time. It lives on afterwards.
Last Sunday, I was privileged to be worshipping in a congregational church in Andover, Massachusetts. I have worshipped there many times over the last twenty-five years when I have gone down to study. I love that church and I have seen it change over the years. One of the things that they have every year is what they call “Church Sunday.” I mean really, Church Sunday! I think every Sunday is “Church Sunday!” But oh no, this is “Church Sunday!” It is a special Sunday.
Every year, on Church Sunday, the names of all those who have passed away in the last year are read, and there is a moment of silence, as we do at our Congregational Meeting, but then, at the end of the service, the family members of the people who have passed away stand up and they lead the processional out of the church. They take, in a sense, the remembrance of their name and they carry it forward out into the world. They take it out into the world that this is a living memory of those who have gone before: that this is a living encounter with those who have borne witness in the past. It is a powerful thing.
The question then for us is: what is our inheritance that we pass on, what is the gold watch in our pocket of faith, to what extent have we been faithful to those who were faithful before us, at what point, as all saints, do we pass on what we have received? That was Paul’s great concern for the Ephesians: that they carry on the ministry with all the saints to the glory of Christ and the praise of his holy name.
Last Friday, I attended a lecture at The Kennedy School of Government. It was by a man called Rahm Emanuel, who is the Mayor of Chicago. He was the former Chief of Staff for President Obama. Rahm is a controversial character by every stretch of the imagination. But I wanted to go and hear what he had to say. He lectured for an hour around life and work in Chicago, and what he was doing now. It was really brilliant. He is a clever man. But it was a politician at work, so one had to keep that in mind!
After this, though, in the quadrangle of the school, there was a refreshment time and a question and answer time. During the question and answer time, one of the students asked a most incisive question. He looked Rahm Emanuel in the eye and he said, “Yes, I have heard all this, but what difference are you making? Oh, we get the power and all the things you have said and done, but what difference are you making?”
Then, it was as if Emanuel left the script completely. He said, “I’ll tell you the difference. The difference was that when I was Chief of Staff for the President of the United States, I don’t think I really made much of a difference really, or if I did, I never knew about it. But as a Mayor you see things more intimately: you deal with people one-on-one.
He went on to say, “I went to a school, an impoverished school in the south side of Chicago a couple of weeks ago. I sat down with some of the students. There was a young girl who was clearly from an impoverished background, a community with tremendous gun violence and drugs. It was obvious that this was a bright young girl. She had talent. You could just feel it. She challenged me. She looked me in the eye and said, ‘Mayor Emanuel, I want you to promise me that I am going to get an education. I want you to promise me that it is the best that I can get. I really want you to do this.’” He continued, “As I gazed into her eyes, I realized that the only way out of the predicament that this girl was in was through my fulfilling that request and ensuring that she and those in her community got the finest education. I realized that when it is all over politically that is my legacy, the inheritance that I leave.”
He is right. All the more so when it comes to the saints. The watch is in our hands; the memories are there. They are never to be forgotten. The gift has been given. It has been handed to us. The question now is: what would you do with what Christ has given you? The answer to that will be the true test of the saints. Amen.