Betty's Prayer

November 04, 2007

All Saints Sunday
Ephesians 1: 1-2, 11-23; Luke 6:20-31
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman

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A short while ago, I had a pastoral moment that I want to share with you. It’s a very small story – I’m not certain if it will sound like much in the telling. It concerns the recent passing of a long-time member of this family, Flora McElhattan. Most of you did not know Flora. She had not been present for these last years due to failing health. A short while ago she exhaled her last breath at the age of 98. I liked her quite a lot. She was very sassy, salty, and funny – a wonderful woman.

My story concerns her last hours when I was present at Flora’s bedside. No longer conscious but well cared for by those who loved her, I went to her home where she lay in quiet repose to be with her loving watchers, to be with Flora, and to pray. Among those at Flora’s bedside was her very best friend, Betty Baker, also in her nineties.

Betty has been a quiet but dynamic presence here for several decades. She supported me and my young family in important ways in our early days in the city twenty years ago. To give a flavor of her style, as a near neighbor and resident of Park Avenue she never made much of that. At one point some years ago, during the summer months she turned our courtyard into a neighborhood happening by collecting and selling used books. It became quite a thing for local passersby; they came to count on picking up a few titles they had intended to read and dropping off others they had finished. It grew into something of a neighborhood book-swap. It also gave Betty an opportunity to advertise her church home. Her quick wit and personal warmth were quietly magnetic. Early on, I surmised that Betty was a builder of community, even among the more cynical elements of the Park Avenue crowd.

At Thanksgiving and Christmas, along with Inez Grant, she sponsored a dinner for the homeless who slept in our courtyard, since she had long since befriended them all. A smart, accomplished and worldly woman, Betty never met anyone who couldn’t be her friend. She embodied our value of dynamic hospitality. I learned something about holy hospitality from her.

Now 90+ years have diminished Betty’s powers. She sleeps more, and sometimes loses track of where she is. Her mental abilities have retreated. Yet her robust spirit remains in this simpler container.

Betty sat next to me at Flora’s bedside, and took my hand when we prayed. But after I finished my words, the real prayer began as Betty released my hand and took hold of Flora’s and began to lovingly stroke it. She said, “Flora, I love you very much. And you know that God loves you. Soon you will be with God who you know loves you very much. And soon I will be joining God, too. And God loves me very much. Everything’s going to be all right. Remember, I love you Flora and God loves you. And everything will be all right.”

It’s hard to describe, really, the spirit that filled the room then. It was as though in her diminished state, imbued with innocence, Betty spoke with astonishing confidence of what was true from out of a very deep place. It was her innocence that took her there. Something clear, very, very clear came through her words. She spoke Truth with a capital “T”; she was mostly unaware of that, I think. She just said what she knew. She touched the essential Truth, I suppose. And as she said it, the rest of us in the room recognized it. A profound assurance settled among us. It was deeply comforting, satisfying, and holy. Afterwards, we all spoke of it.

It brought to mind the night I received a call from Betty some years earlier, during her husband’s last hours of life. I went over to her apartment and, together with her daughter Elaine, we kept vigil until Bob released his last breath. Betty felt so profoundly grateful at the time – I was struck by her overwhelming gratitude – and though there was sadness, I was also aware of a sense of joy leaking around the edges of the night. That same sense of distant joy was present in the room with Flora. It was the joy that attaches to authentic love – the deepest variety – and the things that matter most of all.

I’ve wanted to tell you this little story for several reasons. Among them is that in our daily routines we don’t often speak intimately about these holy transitions of life and death, and life again. As a subject, death doesn’t usually pop up in cocktail conversation, or any conversation for that matter, beyond reporting the news of who happens to no longer walk among us.

Fortunately, in here we can and do speak of these things. And we give ourselves the opportunity to reflect deeply upon the content of our own lives, the quality of our loves, our relationship with our creator and the direction we’re headed; we give ourselves permission to consider matters of ultimate concern.

And I wanted to share Betty’s story because it needs sharing. That is, I think we need to tell one another about our experiences with life and death and life again, the holy moments that give shape and meaning to our days and help us interpret the content of our lives. I think we’re a bit too shy about this. Elaine and Betty were pleased to give permission to share their story – I know I’m the richer for it. The truth is, praying with Flora moved me further along my own spiritual road. Even though her powers have dimmed, Betty was my teacher as she took Flora’s hand and spoke her words of love and confident expectation of what was to come.

The church has a long history of telling the story of its saints. And by saints, were speaking of anyone who has thrown in with the party of Jesus. That includes all of us. Earlier you heard the opening words from Ephesians: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus:” Notice that the saints include at least those who are alive and thriving as part of the church. Extrapolating, that would include all of us.

We tend to distance ourselves from that moniker, because saint would seem to denote some holier-than-thou type personality, when in fact, it includes everyone who resembles us – sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, children and friends together, with all their warts and foibles, making their way in this world loving God and neighbor under the banner of Christ.

It’s important to see ourselves in this light, friends. You can tell as soon as you attempt such a thing that it dignifies our existence, and the existence of those who share our pews. You can feel that, can’t you? Look to the person to your right and to your left and attach the descriptor “saint”. Like yourself, they are people, who when the time arrives, can die well claiming love as their banner and God as their future.

That’s another reason I wanted to tell you Betty’s story: her utter confidence that God was her future. That gave her great peace. She was way beyond questioning it. Those of us in the room understood the truth in her claim, and it evoked a distant joy.

If we live as persons who know that God is our future, it changes how we live the present. There’s a reflexive quality to this belief. We begin to take on the character of our future role, not as an attempt to be better than others, but as a simple result of discovering what love requires of us. Because that’s where we’re headed if we’re going towards God – we’re moving towards love.

Today we also remember those who have preceded us – that they are one with us, now, in love, for love. As we are bound together as one, here, so we are bound together with these others, there. On All Saints Sunday we ackowledge there’s but a slim membrane of breath that separates us from each other. It’s an awesome thing to consider how our life and faith has been spawned and nurtured through a wondrous cloud of witnesses. They, too, were imperfect saints, pointed towards their destiny with the God of love. They have marked the path. They’ve shown the way as we gather around our reunion table. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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