I’m going to start this sermon with a shameless name-drop: Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And this little story involves donuts as well.
This happened decades ago, before 1990, during Apartheid in South Africa. Bishop Tutu was the Archbishop of Cape Town, and was a constant thorn in the side of those in power in South Africa. He spoke out fearlessly against apartheid, but unlike other black leaders, he was never arrested. And he traveled widely.
He was invited to speak at our Diocesan convention. While we waited for him in the lower floor of Grace Cathedral, I came over to the donut table for a snack. That table was close to the door that connected to the Cathedral School for Boys, where Archbishop Tutu had just finished a little chat with the students and teachers.
Whoever was supposed to meet him from the Convention was a little late, and so there he was on the other side of the donut table. A few of us donut eaters were at first stunned, and then shook his hand. One woman there gave him a little hug and said she wasn’t anyone important.
He gave her — and us — a two minute version of what he then spoke of later to the delegates to Convention — that she was a creature of God, that she had a calling no one else could do. Here was a person of immense courage — some would call him a living saint — calling all of us to acts like God’s saints.
I have another name to drop — Dean Brackley. He was a classmate of mine when I was at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. I came across his name last week in a monthly publication called “Give Us This Day,” which provides daily readings and a section called “Blessed Among Us.”
It gives short biographies of notable people like Desmond Tutu or an “official” saint like Augustine or Teresa of Avila, or people like Dorothy Day or Thomas Merton. I was surprised to find Dean Brackley there. Why was my fellow student listed?
Back in 1989 in El Salvador, army commandos invaded the Jesuit-run Universidad CentroAmericana, killing six Jesuits and their housekeeper and daughter. I think a lot of us have heard about that atrocity. But then what happened? Well, the University there called our for volunteers to take over for the dead Jesuits.
Dean Brackley had been teaching theology at Fordham University, and he stepped up, volunteered, and went there. So I thought about that for a while.
If I were still in the Jesuits, living in the heart of New York City, would I have stepped up to take the place of other priests who were shot to death? Dean did — just an ordinary guy who made a heroic — a saintly decision.
Now, Dean was not shot to death — he did die of cancer after decades of service there. In addition to teaching theology, Dean Brackley became an unofficial tour guide for the many visitors who came through El Salvador on immersion trips. He’d teach his classes, and then just tell the truth about how life was there. Just an ordinary career in a place that became extraordinary famous.
For All Saints Sunday, we use a preface for the day that includes this phrase: “God, you have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses, that we may run with endurance the race that is set before us, and together with them, receive the crown of glory that never fades away.”
We are all challenged to act like saints, even though that sounds impossible. Of course most of us don’t think of our lives as heroic, because they seem routine. But telling the truth every day, and living out that truth, can be difficult.
Taking the side of the marginalized and the persecuted these days will include standing up for immigrants who are here legally, awaiting their court dates. At this particular time, it means stepping up our donations to local food banks. There are individual ways each of you are uniquely challenged to step up.
I’d like to end this sermon by mentioning a parishioner here in the 1990’s a woman named Thandi Puoane. Thandi was from South Africa, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, working on a Doctorate in Public Health. She lived in UC housing in Albany Village, and she was Anglican. So this was her local church. Her plan was to complete her studies and use her training back in her home country — which she did.
Here’s the part of her story that always chokes me up when I tell it. One Sunday she came up for the prayers for birthdays and travelers. She prayed in thanksgiving that — for the first time — she was able to cast an absentee ballot for the elections in her home country.
We take so much for granted in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Thandi Puoane is one of my great cloud of witnesses. All of you have such a cloud of people whose deeds and examples you treasure. So — lives your lives to be a part of someone else’s cloud of saintly people.