All Saints Sunday
Hebrews 11: 1-2 and 23-29
November 3, 2024
Today is All Saints Sunday. At the end of this message, I’ll give you an opportunity to share about a saint you’ve met.
Today, I’m going to talk about my favorite saint: the one who was my best friend Allan Byrne. Allan was my senior pastor as we worked together in Hammond, Indiana. He also invited me to join him on ten trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Allan died 17 years ago now. But I still remember him often.
I remember Allan telling me what it was like in our country in the early sixties. Allan served a church in Gary, Indiana during some of that time. It was a time of segregation throughout our nation. Cities in the north were segregated as a result of housing. African Americans were restricted to living in certain neighborhoods. There was also segregation in the hospitals.
I remember Allan telling me about the segregation in the Gary Methodist Hospital. White people and black people were not allowed to stay together in the same hospital room. In the early sixties, blacks began to protest this injustice. The senior pastor Allan worked for was on the board of the hospital. The board agreed to let black people stay in the rooms of white people, but only if the white people gave them permission. This still seemed like injustice and segregation to both Allan and the blacks of the community.
The injustice of segregation in housing and hospital rooms was common in the north. In the south, segregation’s pervasive influence was enforced by unjust laws.
The Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. rose up to call for justice in our land. The result was a backlash of opposition by the whites of America.
This struggle came to a climax in March of 1965 as African Americans marched on behalf of voter’s rights. The march started on a Sunday afternoon in Selma, Alabama. The 500 marchers soon found themselves face to face with the Alabama State Police. The police brutally beat many of the marchers. The scene was televised around the country and became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
The scene of police brutally beating marchers reminds me of a Biblical scene related to our Scripture today.
Moses is walking by an Israelite worksite. He stops when he hears a scream. He turns to see an Egyptian officer beating one of the Israelite bricklayers. The Egyptian screams, “That’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut, boy.” Blow after blow comes down on the Israelite man. Blood starts flowing from the facial wounds.
At that moment, Moses feels like he’s being torn in two different directions. He’s being stretched by this difficult predicament. His arms are being pulled to the breaking point.
Pulling one direction is that Moses is an Egyptian, raised in Pharaoh’s household. He’s enjoyed all the benefits of living on the right side of the tracks. He’s gotten a good education and one of the best jobs in all of Egypt. He has a nice house in the suburbs and a summer home on the water, thanks to his Egyptian connections. All his friends are Egyptians. They’ve been so good to him.
Pulling him the other direction is that Moses is an Israelite. He was born to Israelite parents who saved his life by giving him up to the Pharaoh. And there is the whole pull of justice and doing what’s right.
It’s not easy. We’re often pulled in different directions. We are given many rights, privileges and advantages because we’re a part of the dominant white upper middle class culture. We also have some degree of sympathy for the oppressed culture around us. We’re pulled both ways.
I read more about what was going in the biblical book of Exodus – the first chapter. It reminds me of the struggle of the African Americans in our country. Listen to the biblical story:
“A new king came to power in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph. He spoke to his people in alarm, ‘There are way too many of these Israelites for us to handle. We’ve got to do something: let’s devise a plan to contain them, lest if there’s a way they should join our enemies, or just walk off and leave us.’
They organized them into work-gangs and put them to hard labor under gang-foremen… But the harder the Egyptians worked them the more children the Israelites had – children everywhere. The Egyptians got so they couldn’t stand the Israelites and treated them worse than ever, crushing them with slave labor. They made them miserable with hard labor – making bricks and mortar and back-breaking work in the fields. They piled on the work, crushing them under the cruel workload.”
I think of the slave labor market from Africa coming to America…the generations of abuse they experienced…the terrorism of the white KKK members who were also the leading members of the community. I think of the brutality of the Alabama police on the day of that march from Selma. I realize now why African Americans often turn to this biblical story in their spirituals.
Moses watches as blow after blow comes down on the Israelite man. Blood starts flowing from the facial wounds.
As he watches this brutality, Moses feels like he’s being torn in two different directions. He’s being stretched by this difficult predicament. His arms are being pulled to the breaking point.
Finally Moses chooses to take justice into his own hands. When no one is looking, he kills that cruel Egyptian and hides the body in the sand. Unfortunately, he’s seen. So Moses runs. He leaves everything he’s come to love in Egypt. He gives all that up and runs to the desert of Midian.
The author of Hebrews describes what happened this way, “By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house. He chose a hard life with God’s people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors. He valued suffering in the Messiah’s camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff.
By an act of faith, Moses turned his heel on Egypt, indifferent to the king’s blind rage. He had seen the invisible God and wasn’t afraid of the king’s anger.”
Forty years later, Moses returns to Egypt. He returns not as an Egyptian, but as an Israelite, come to help his Israelite brothers and sisters. He comes in God’s power and guidance to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.
As he watches this brutality, Moses feels like he’s being torn in two different directions. But then Moses responds.
By faith, Moses sees which side God is on.
By faith, Moses stands with God on the side of the poor and oppressed.
By faith, Moses renounces Egypt – it’s wealth and power.
By faith, Moses burns his bridges and leaves Egypt.
By faith, Moses later returns and leads his people to freedom.
By faith, Moses sees the invisible God and isn’t afraid of the king’s anger.
My friend and dear saint Allan told me his story of responding to injustice, “The year is 1965. I’ve followed closely the Civil Rights movement in the South.
At this time, I’m the pastor of the county seat church in Rochester, Indiana. I’ve tried to do my part, preaching some messages about the importance of racial equality. But it’s been difficult because there are some strong John Birch Society activists in our congregation. They think Martin Luther King is a communist. They don’t want me talking about him or about the issue of race.
One of the incidents that really got me upset was the bombing of that church in the South, which was integrating. That bombing from the KKK killed some black boys attending Sunday School. I was infuriated. I wanted to do something to respond to that atrocity.
In March of 1965 I watched on television the beating of the marchers in Alabama. They were marching to promote equal voting rights.
That was it! I was going to do something. I arranged to rent a bus. I got the word out to other churches in North Indiana. I told them we were driving down to join the Civil Rights March in the South.
People responded. Some were Methodists. Others were Presbyterians, Lutherans and other denominations. Some were pastors. Others were lay people. They agreed to join us in traveling to Alabama to support our black brothers and sisters.
We were not able to get there in time to start the March. I heard there were about 3000 people who gathered in Selma to start the March. We joined the March about halfway between Selma and Montgomery.
We walked about five abreast down the highway. We traveled about ten miles a day. Even though there had been violence on the earlier march, I didn’t see any violence on this march. I didn’t feel afraid. We were a large group.
But we did have to face the crowds who gathered along the sides of the roads. They shouted at us. They even spit on us.
By the time we arrived in Montgomery, there were about 30,000 marchers. We gathered in front of the capital and listened to Martin Luther King Junior speak. What a powerful preacher! What a powerful message he shared with us that day!
Eventually, we returned home. This was the difficult part. Many in the community were angry I had marched. We started getting anonymous phone calls at the house. I started getting some angry letters from people. Church members were visibly hostile to me at church.”
Allan concluded telling me the story by saying:
I believe it was important for the church to stand on the side of justice, to stand with the blacks marching for their rights.”
The following Winter the Rochester church where Allan pastored told the District Superintendent, they wanted Allan moved to another church at Conference Time. Allan had to move on to a new appointment. Sometimes there are consequences to the work we do in standing up to injustice.
God will be with all of us who fight against injustice, who stand on the side of the poor and oppressed. God will give us courage, the courage of the saints: Saints like Allan and Moses.
Tell us now about saints you’ve met. It could be that some of your saints have also courageously stood against injustice.
