REMEMBER
Richard P. Buchman
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa
October 31, 2010

Back in the middle-1960s, when I was living in Brooklyn, New York, I was invited to a Halloween party. The invitation suggested that I come in costume. Having little imagination, and even less money, I decided not to buy or rent one. Instead, I put on my dark suit, a white dress shirt with French cuffs, a severe necktie, black winged-tip shoes, a Goldwater for President button, and a gold earring in one ear. My nametag read: Conservative Gypsy. I did not win a prize.

That was the last party I have attended on the day which, I am told, is now second only to Christmas in terms of the money we Americans spend observing it. This has been going on for some time. Eleven years ago, on Halloween, I was at the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. Every single employee of Southwest Airlines was in costume, and that’s probably more people than live in Wauwatosa. In our public schools, where our children are no longer permitted to observe Christmas, Halloween has become almost a national holiday. I often wonder what might happen if the Supreme Court and the people who run our public schools were to figure out where Halloween comes from. It is, of course, the hallowed or holy evening, the night before the Day of All Saints, and All Saints Day has something to do with (you should excuse the expression) religion.

In the Presbyterian Sunday School of my childhood, we spent little or no time on saints. Saints were something that other people had, and since the Pope had neglected to canonize John Calvin, we had nothing to talk about. But I went to Sunday School during the first service. Then I went upstairs to the Big Church to sit with my father for the second service, and every Sunday we stood and said the Apostle’s Creed (which I still like, by the way. Don’t tell anybody!) At the end of that creed we professed to believe in the communion of Saints. My father explained that the communion of Saints included everybody who had ever believed in God and followed Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. I have since added some people who do not quite fit that definition, but who must be all right because they are of the same religion as Jesus.

But there was something else. On Sundays after the death of someone in our congregation, our minister went to the lectern, where the big Bible was. He told who had died, the date of their birth and death, the names of the survivors, and the time and place of the memorial or funeral service. Then, in a voice growing steadily louder, he said: “For all the saints, who from their labors rest. Who thee, by faith, before the world confessed, Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.” He slammed the Bible shut. “Alleluia!”

Wow! I must confess that I was a bit disappointed on those Sundays when nobody had died.

Tomorrow we are to remember those who have returned to the Lord. It’s a little bit like Memorial Day. I am a member of the American Legion Post in Cedarburg. Every year, on Memorial Day, the post puts on a service of honor for those who have died in the service of our country. Every year the service gets longer and longer. I finally came to the conclusion that the service has less to do with our honored dead than it does with the people who are conducting it, and who have apparently fallen in love with the sound of their own voices.

Last May, on Memorial Day, I skipped that service and went to the Veteran’s Cemetery at Wood. I walked through and around the thousands of white crosses and Stars of David, remembering. I remembered my mother’s cousin, Don Gordon, a captain of infantry, United States Army, South Pacific, World War II. I remembered my cousin, Jack Buchman, Lieutenant, United States Navy, gunnery officer on a destroyed escort, North Atlantic. I remembered my cousin, Bob Buchman, a Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army Air Force, at the age of 21, flying bombers over Europe. I remembered my ministerial colleague, the Rev. Robert Vornholt, who received a battlefield commission in World War II. He liked to say, “I joined the Army in 1942. When I got out, in 1945, the war was over and we had won. I’ve always been proud of that.” I remembered my skipper, Captain Robert B. Lander, who had commanded a submarine in World War II. On the day he reported to my ship, I was on the quarterdeck with the chief Boatswain’s Mate. Captain Lander handed me his orders, we saluted and chatted briefly before I had the petty office of the watch take him to his quarters. When he was gone, the Chief said to me, “Man makes you want to work for him, doesn’t he?” I said, “Chief, you’ve only known him for about two minutes.” “That’s long enough,” he said, and he was right, as Chiefs almost always are. In just a few months, without raising his voice or issuing any sweeping orders, the captain turned the ship around. Next June, Sandy and I are going to take a cruise on Chesapeake Bay. When we are at Annapolis, I plan to go to the chapel at the Naval Academy and remember Tex Lander, Class of 1938, with whom I stayed in touch until his death four years ago. And I will remember another graduate of what some of us called “the trade school”: Lieutenant Marvin D. Martin, Class of 1950, my roommate on my ship, and my dear friend for almost sixty years until his death in 2009. I will never forget Marvin Martin.

In seminary I had a classmate named Frederick Buechner. After he was ordained, he served as a prep school chaplain for a time and then began to write books, both fiction and non-fiction, books which have been most helpful to parish ministers, or at least to this one. In one of those books, called “Whistling in the Dark,” he wrote these words about the word “remember”: “When you remember me, it means that you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart. For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost… If you forget me, part of who I am will be gone.”

It is good to remember those whom we have loved on All Saints Day. It is good to remember them every day, lest they be lost. I remember my sister, Barbara, who died four years ago. She was a great repository of information. She knew everything and she knew everybody. She knew the Clapsaddles, to who we are supposedly related, in Northern Ohio. I never met a Clapsaddle, but Barbie did, and she knew where they lived and what they did. She kept up with four distant cousins of ours, four men called the Sommers boys. Actually, they were known as the “nice Sommers boys” and I was regularly compared to them, unfavorably, when I was a boy. And the worst thing about the Sommers boys is that they were genuinely nice, a whole lot nicer than I was. I remember my sister, Barbie, every day, and tomorrow, in her honor, I will remember the Sommers boys.

I often remember someone I worked with in this building, the best boss I ever had in the ministry. When I joined Norman Ream’s staff here, 49 years ago this coming December, a lot was going on in this place, not all of which we learned about in seminary, but with his quiet wisdom and graceful good humor, Norm kept it all together. I learned a lot from him and I kept in touch with him, too, until his death. I operated on the principle that when you meet good ones, you hang on to them, and when they are gone, you remember them.

And let me suggest this, too. Not all the saints are dead. Not all the saints are resting from their labors. They are all around us, and there is still time for us to thank them, to let them know that we appreciated their being here.

There was a woman in one of my churches who did more for that congregation in one hour on Sunday morning than most people did in a year. She gave her time and her talents and, as the stewardship people say, of her worldly goods, not just to the church, but also to dozens of organizations and countless individuals. She gave away so much money that someone warned that if she continued to do that, she would run out, but she told me, once, that “the more I give away, the more I seem to have.” What do you know? I thought. Those old dead guys who wrote the Bible got that one right. She became very ill, on one occasion, and when I went to visit her she asked me to lay hands on her and I did, and she recovered, almost immediately. Believe me, that said a whole lot more about her than it did about me. But that incident reminded me that we would not have her around forever, and I thought it would be a good idea if we did something nice for her to show our appreciation.

I suggested to the powers-that-were that we name a room after her, one of the lounges where people went, after services, to drink the coffee and the refreshments, which she, almost always, provided. “Oh no,” they said. “That would set a precedent.” I reminded them that she set a precedent every time she walked in the door, but they were adamant.

I have never understood why we wait so long to do the right thing. An organization to which I belong on the other side of town receives lots of contributions in memory of people, but it also receives contributions in honor of people who are still around. That always makes me think about how nice those honorees must feel. And nobody seems to worry about the precedent it might set.

After I was ordained, I was called as Assistant Minister in charge of youth work and Christian Education at a big church in a suburb of New York City. Thirteen months after I started there, I was allowed to preach my first sermon. It was, of course, the Fourth of July weekend. My audience consisted of the organist, the choir, the ushers, and ten or twelve people who had absolutely no place to go. I preached about two thieves who were crucified with Jesus. I don’t remember what I said, and, to be honest, I don’t want to know. I said some real dumb things fifty years ago.

The one who has come to be known as the “good thief” said this before he died: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Of those words, my friend Fred Buechner says, “There are, perhaps, no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well.”

I wish I had said that. Amen.