“The Church’s Scrapbook”

Revelation 7:9-15

November 6, 2005

St. Paul UMC

Rev. John A. Fleming

Almost four years ago, my parents moved from my hometown in Jackson, Tennessee to their hometown, Conway, Arkansas. They sold the house of my growing up years to a high school classmate of mine, a house that we lived in for more than twenty-nine years. It was the house where we sat in the den in front of a fire. It was the house in which we awoken, excitedly on Christmas morning. It was the house where we had thousand of meals in both the kitchen and in the dining room.

It was a big house, complete with five bed rooms, a living room, a den, and a sun room. And because the house that my folks were buying in Conway was smaller than it, a three bedroom house, my parents arranged for an estate sale and sold some of what I might call our prized possessions. On one of the walls in the den was a wardrobe, an antique that held some of the family valuables. I can remember that in the bottom of that piece of furniture were two drawers that housed our family pictures. Scattered in there, without the benefit of a photo album home, were these pictures. Most of them were taken with a Polaroid camera. Do you remember Polaroid cameras. They were the cameras where you hit a button and the picture magically appeared, black at first, and then after a minute or so of waiting, the picture appeared. There were pictures of me in my first ball uniform, a red t-shirt with the word Warriors printed across the front of it. There were pictures of me playing in a sprinkler in our front yard. There were pictures of birthday parties and Christmas mornings. There were pictures of me with my aunt, Julia Lee, and there were pictures of me with my sister and brother. And there were pictures of our vacations.

When my parents moved from my house to their house, they packed up these pictures, divided them as equally as they could, with the ones in which a particular child was the main subject, placed them in a manilla envelope, asked us to come by their new house for dinner, and handed us the package. To be honest with you, at first, it felt as if I was being disowned and

thrown out of the family. I told my mother that. I think that she said that they were downsizing, not disowning. What I remember most about that night was sitting at the table where we had eaten so many meals, and going through those pictures and remembering being there and what the day was like. Nestled among the pictures were the keepsakes. Things like the church newsletter article that reported that I had been approved to be a candidate for the ministry. Report cards from my junior high years, and the worship bulletin from my wedding. Those kinds of things. A few of the pictures in my envelope included pictures of the saints in my family, those people, like my aunt, Julia Lee, and my grandfather, Louis Henderson Moore.

There was another house that was moved out of shortly after my parents moved to Conway. This house was the duplex that my aunt, Julia Lee Moore, lived in for more than thirty years. My parents called and asked me to come to Conway and to go through some of her belongings, after she had moved to a residential care facility that, ironically was next door to the house of her growing up years. There was just one thing that I wanted out of her house. In the guest bedroom, standing proudly on top of a dresser, was a picture of my grandfather, her dad. That is all I really wanted. I like looking at the pictures of my ancestors, because they remind me of my roots, important things, where I came from.

On a summer afternoon in 1980, at my grandfather’s funeral, Rev. John Shell, the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Conway said this of my grandfather, “It is hard to separate the life of Louis Moore from the life of this church. He was born on the day our church was organized, March 2, 1892. He and his parents were charter members, though understandably, they were not here on that first day.” My grandfather was a leader in that church, an elder. His blood runs through my veins. I am his legacy. Louis Moore is to me, one of the saints.

Today, more than any other day of the year, is a family reunion day for the church. The Sunday after All Saint’s Day, today, is the day for pulling out the old photo album of the church. We flip through it’s pages. We remember where we came from. We recall the ones who paved the way. Flip through the album this morning and you will see R.G. Gray with Lucille by his side making his way across the parking lot on their way to their worship service of choice, the 8:30 worship service that happens in the annex. Watch R.G. long enough and you will see a smile on his face as he makes his way to his seat, greeting Bryan Gray on his way there. Though they were of no blood relation, R.G. would greet Bryan with these words, “Good morning, Cuz!” Turn another page and you will see a picture of Margie Fenn, mostly likely working in the kitchen, preparing a meal for the Lion’s Club. Look on the opposite side and perhaps you will see a picture of Lucille Hefley sitting in a UMW meeting or standing near the front giving one of her famous testimonies about stewardship. Flip over to another page and perhaps you will see Virginia Simpson on her way out of the church, maybe with a bridge game planned for the afternoon. In the church’s scrapbook there are pictures of Marion Ballard, Tom Melton, Rebecca Bell, and Mabel Chudy. There others, of course. I stand in the pulpit this morning where pastors who have finished their course in faith once stood. Pastors like Charles Richards, Everett Vinson, and George Wayne Martin to name a few.

Don’t you know that the photo album of the early church was full with picture after picture of those who had finished their time here. One of those pictures can be found in our scripture lesson for this morning, from the seventh chapter of the Revelation or vision to John. When I saw that this passage was one of my options this morning, I went to the notebooks that contain the sermons of my eleven years as a preacher. The notebooks that house the gospels were full, maybe even overflowing. The one that is marked Revelation has two measly sermons in it, both on the 21^st chapter of the book where John gets a glimpse at what the new world will look like. I have avoided Revelation. There are usually two reactions to it. The first is one of fascination. There are people who cannot get enough of the last book in our Bibles. They read everything that they can get their hands on about it. They are like the junior high Sunday School class who said to their preacher, “We want to study Revelation!” He says that he had the same feeling when his children, near Halloween, said, “Daddy, tell us a ghost story!” The second reaction is one of avoiding it at all costs. I’ve tended to be in that camp!

There is so much in Revelation that is hard to understand. There are seals and symbols and angels and winds and stars that fall from the heavens. There are locusts and dragons and fiery pits and lakes of fire and smoldering coals. Good comes up against evil and in this book God battles the devil. What I think that we forget is that the main message of Revelation, it’s main purpose was to comfort people who were going through a great deal for their faith.

If that is it’s purpose, and I believe that it is, then I cannot think of a better passage than ours for today. John’s vision has him seeing a multitude of people, so great, that no one could count them all. Notice that in the verses just ahead of our verses, John has just counted 144,000. These that no one can count are from all over the place, from every nation and every tribe. There are palm branches in their hands and they are crying out in a loud voice about salvation. Somehow John is allowed to be a part of it all. He is there, standing back, and watching. One of the elders is near him, perhaps walks over to him and asks, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” Like he has before and like he will again, John says, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Listen to the answer of that elder. “They are the ones who have come out of the great ordeal.” That is a great biblical line. They are the ones who have come out of the great ordeal. Some Bibles translate the word ordeal as persecution. Commentators are not sure what the great ordeal was. It could have been a number of things. It could have been persecutions in Rome, under Nero, in 64 AD. The great ordeal could have been the persecutions in Asia Minor under Dominitian. We do not know. There is no way to know.

The great ordeal, huh. We probably will never be persecuted for our faith, but we do not about ordeals. Life can be an ordeal. I used my thesaurus to come up with some similar words to ordeal. How do these fit with your life: trial, torment, tribulation. How about this one, nightmare?” Most of us have experienced a time that we might describe using one or all of those words. We have all known particular hard times in our lives. We know about temptations and distractions and interruptions. Most of us have been pushed and pulled and sometimes even pulverized by things that happen on this side of heaven. The loss of someone that we have loved, a marital problem, a conflict with someone that we love, a time when we questioned who we are and who we are supposed to be. The best that we can do, the very best that we can do is to try to stay close to God. Some of us have been bloodied by life, and yet stand before the Shepherd now as Saints of God.

Listen to the promises of this passage, friends. There will be a time when we will hunger no longer, whether it be for food or whatever it is. There will be a time when we will thirst no more. Recall the promise of Jesus where he tells a woman drawing water that He is the water that wells up to eternal life. If you will remember, she wanted to drink deeply from that water.

There will be a time when no one will abuse them and the sun will not wear them out. I like those promises. But the one that means the most to me is that there will be a time when there will be no more tears. Says John in this vision, “God himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes.”

I do not mind telling you that when I was a kid, I did my fair share of crying. I am tenderhearted and have been all of my life. As a kid, I cried for many reasons. I cried when I did not get what I wanted. I cried when my feelings were hurt. I cried when my sister pushed me down and for a lot of other reasons, too. All around me were people who could comfort me.

My mother was good at it, but my dad, well, he was the best. He was not always home when I was in the middle of a full-blown cry, but sometimes he was. When he was, he would wipe away my tears. My dad could take away the tears, but often he took away the fears that went with them. John says that God will do that for us.

On All Saint’s Day, we make the very bold claim that we are all saints. The blood that ran through the ones before us also runs through us. The light that we see shining in them shines in us. We are supposed to have baptisms today because we want the new saints to meet the older ones. We want our children and anyone who is new to the body of Christ to know who their ancestors are, and to understand that being a saint really means first and foremost, belonging to God. Let us pray.