Honoring the Saints on the Balcony

Today is All Saints' Day - a day for remembering and celebrating "all the saints who from their labors rest".  Presbyterian preacher John Buchanan uses a metaphor for the communion of saints that he says “ought to be told at least once a year.”  The image originated with renowned preacher, author, and seminary professor Carlyle Marney (1917-1978).  Buchanan writes:  

Marney used to say that your personhood, your personality, persona, is like a house, and it’s a fairly elaborate and complex structure.  Some are fancy.  Some are sophisticated.  Some are simple and functional.  Some are ostentatious.  Some are modest.  Each has a number of rooms:  a formal parlor for greeting guests, a family room, bedroom, kitchen.  Marney said each of us has in the structure of our persona a basement where the plumbing is [located] and the trash is stored.  NO need to spend your life down there, Marney used to say.  Everybody has a basement.  Come on up into the sunshine.  Sometimes we act as if the plumbing and trash bin are all there is to us, Marney observed.

And if you come upstairs and step outside onto the lawn and look up, you will see that the house that is you has a spacious, gracious balcony.  There are people up there on your balcony.

Marney was a Southerner, so his balcony was white wrought iron with wicker rocking chairs.  There are people in the rocking chairs on your balcony sipping iced tea or bourbon, depending on whether you are a Baptist or Presbyterian, Marney used to say.  The people on your balcony are the strong, positive influences in your life.  Your heroes and heroines.  Your models and mentors.  Your parents are probably up there ... your grandparents.  There are some folk up there you never met but they influenced and helped shape you and there are some really big names up there:  people whose lives inspired you from afar and called deeper faith out of you and courage and stamina and love and discipline.

The people on your balcony are your saints.  The way to observe All Saints’ Day is to walk out onto your lawn, look up and greet them.  Call the roll.  Name them.  Wave to them.  Your saints – your dear ones – the great ones and small ones:  your mother and father maybe, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, your old coach, your piano teacher.*

The folks on our life’s “balcony” are our mentors, models, prophets, teachers, witnesses – our saints. They're the faithful who went before us, and in whose footsteps we tread.  On this All Saint’s Day may we remember them all with gratitude.  And may the example of their lives inspire us to be mentors, models, prophets, teachers, witnesses – to be saints – for those who follow us.