For All the Saints

On Sunday morning on the way to church I mentioned to the kids that part of the passage for the sermon was about ancestors and reminded them of a couple of stories of me and their great-grandparents and also told them again how much I think their great-grandparents would have enjoyed them. We were in the car because it had started to rain as we were leaving the house, and as we crossed Kalamazoo Ave the rain came down even harder, and one of them said, ‘You know our church doesn’t really have a good place to get out and go in that’s protected from the rain.’

And I said, ‘Oh yes we do! One of your ancestors at church, Ken Zaagman, thought of that when the church was adding the education wing, and insisted that we have a place for folks to get out that would be covered when it was raining – that’s why there’s that covering going over the driveway on the side of church.’ So we pulled up under it, I let the kids out, and then pulled around and rushed inside to open the doors for them. It might be the first time we’ve ever used that covering in the rain....

During the service and into this week, our Boston Square ancestors have continued to be on my mind. I’ve been thinking of some of the stuff in the building – the fan in the balcony that was also used in the church when it met in a storefront. The certificate of appreciation that’s framed and hanging in the council room from 1946 expressing gratitude to Boston Square Church from the Diaconate of the Gereformeerde Kerk of St Annaparochie in the Netherlands for sending needed clothing after World War II ended.

I’ve been remembering Tom Draisma setting up my desk and bookshelves in my office after he and Marilyn painted it yellow for me, fifteen years ago when I began working at Boston Square. Ray Van Sledright tending the beans and tomato plants along the fence in the parking lot. Nell Holwerda Bouwma, who fainted in church 2 different times, both when Jay was preaching on the Song of Mary, and who wrote on her ballot when the congregation was voting on whether or not to close or make significant changes, ‘Don’t close my church!’ And how a few months later it was a generous bequest from her estate that gave Boston Square the money needed to continue. So many people and so many stories....

As we celebrated communion together on Sunday morning, singing ‘Oh give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever,’ with folks scattered around the sanctuary and invisible on zoom, I found myself wondering what Boston Square’s ancestors from the 40’s and 50’s and 60’s and even the 90’s might think of our congregation now. I imagined them joining us in worship – it was one of those moments when the veil between now and eternity felt very thin. And I imagined them being delighted by who we are now and how the Spirit is still at work among us today.

I recently re-read the book Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson, who writes ‘We are all the dream come true of the people who came before us.’ Maybe this is some of what the author of Hebrews had in mind, when later in the book, he or she writes about us being surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, cheering us on. As we said in our words of sending on Sunday: “For all in whom Christ lived before us, thanks be to God. And, “For all in whom Christ lives beside us, thanks be to God.”