The Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith: Saints of the Promise

Some years ago, there was a report in the news about a wealthy businessman who was invited to give a commencement address to a group of 61 sixth graders graduating from elementary school. All the students lived in a very underserved part of a large city where the statistics said that only about six or seven of them would graduate from high school and virtually none of them would go on to college.

As the Rev. Mark Radecke tells the story, “The business executive began to gather his thoughts in order to write the customary commencement address. You’ve heard it: the one that goes, ‘Work hard, keep your nose clean and your shoulder to the wheel and — with a little bit of luck — you can make it just as I did.’ But the speech had a false ring to it. Empty words, the man thought, hollow words. These kids had little reason to hope and even less reason to try to beat the overwhelming odds stacked against them. The man knew something radically different was called for if he was to make any impact whatsoever, if his presence in their lives was to be more than a momentary diversion, if the children’s future was to take a different shape, a different texture. And so, in place of a commencement address, he made a surprising announcement that graduation day. To each and every one of the 61 girls and boys, he made a promise: I will pay for your college education. Completely. He announced that he had established a fund and had made an initial deposit of $2,000 for each child. To that amount he would add each year until compounding interest and additional contributions would be sufficient to fund the college education of all 61 children.

Six years later, the students were in twelfth grade. All 61 of them! Not one had dropped out. Three had moved away, but they remained in touch with their benefactor, and the promise continued to hold for them as well. . . An astounding 58 of them finally attended college.”¹

I think that is such a powerful story. Do you see what happened in the lives of these students? Someone changed their future and as a result their present was changed as well. They were promised an education if they took their lives and their learning seriously and that promise changed how they lived and what they valued. As Radecke goes on to say, “In place of a conditional future – If you work hard and apply yourself, then you might, just might, overcome the odds against you and succeed, now there was an unconditional promise – Because the cost of your higher education is paid for, as a gift and not as an entitlement, your studies are not in vain. Your efforts . . . count for something because you have a future that counts for something.”²

For those of us who call ourselves Christians, we believe the good news of the empty tomb on Easter morning is our unconditional promise. Jesus’ resurrection has changed our future. We are given the promise that just as God loved Jesus so much that he would not let death destroy him, so you and I are loved so much that death is not our end but rather there is life after this life. Like those 61 students, we have a benefactor willing to make a deposit on our behalf. We have a God willing to guarantee our future if we want to accept God’s offer.

Baptism is the way the Church celebrates this acceptance of God’s free, unearned gift of a future. When we mark a child with the waters of baptism we say – Yes, we want this promise of a future for our children, we want it for ourselves. And being a saint means allowing this future gift to change the way we lead our present lives. Look at those students. They had hope so they stayed in school and took pride in their learning. They worked hard because the gift of a college education awaited them the day they graduated. In essence, they lived backwards – their promise of a future made it possible for them to live more fully in the present.

In a similar way, you and I as saints are supposed to live backwards as well. We are asked to live in faith, exuding hope and joy right now, in our present lives, because we know the promise that awaits us. We have nothing to earn, nothing to prove, God has already given us this gift; the investment has already been made. All we are asked to do is to live in light of this gift.

St. John in his letter to the seven churches that we call the Book of Revelation knew what he was talking about. This life is indeed an ordeal, full of challenges and struggles. Truthfully, there is enough pain and suffering to go around. We see it all around us, the seemingly endless suffering and death in Ukraine, tragedy after tragedy playing out hourly in Gaza and Israel where the lives of civilians and the innocent seem to matter little. But the promise of our faith says that, because of Christ, it matters how we live in the midst of this ordeal. It matters when we – “love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, pray for those who abuse us.” It matters when we bless the poor, when we show mercy, when we make peace, when we stand for justice. It matters because as members of the body of Christ our lives don’t just vanish after 80 or 90 years. We can stand as one of God’s saints now because God has promised that we will be one of his saints when this life is over. As Frederick Buechner once said, “Christianity is like a great spider web that stretches across 2000 years of history, a web that transcends past, present and future. You and I are each strands in this great web. As such we are connected together with the likes of Mary and Martha, Luke and Lazarus, Peter and Paul. Therefore, as we move through life let us never forget that the love we share, the forgiveness we show, the compassion we offer the people we meet sets that spider web trembling. For the lives we touch in the name of Christ will touch other lives, and those in turn will touch others, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place Christ love will be known.”

Remember, you don’t have to be anything special to be a saint you only have to be willing to climb down into life with Jesus where the needs of the world are great and the realities often difficult to understand. Because being a saint is not about holiness it’s about becoming infused with the life of God, and offering that life for others in the name of Christ. Being a saint is being a person with a passion to make a difference in a world in need of love and mercy. Being a saint is being someone who holds as precious that which the world considers worthless or useless. Being a saint is becoming a person whose purpose is to face in two directions: to face Christ in faith, and to face our neighbor in love.³ Let us pray:

For all your saints, we give thanks O Christ. For those who brought us into this world and taught us how to live here. For those who told us the gospel story and lived that story before us as our examples. For wise folk in the church who embodied for us the shape of this faith. For those foolish folk in the church who showed us how easy it is to wander from the paths of righteousness. For those dear, departed souls for whom we still grieve, those whom we hope to meet another day, on another shore. For all the saints we thank you. Amen.⁴

¹ God in Flesh Made Manifest, Mark WM. Radecke, CSS Publishing, 1995.
² Ibid.
³ H. King Oehmig, D. Min.
⁴ William Willimon