What Will Be?, a sermon based on 1 John 3: 1-3, preached on November 5, 2023

Last week, Russell Davis, who is not only a Sunday school teacher at our church but also a Marietta attorney, told me a story of a miracle he was right in the middle of. Russell was representing a woman who had been in a car accident. Many of us have been in car accidents. I’ve been in more than one. The best result of a car accident is that it only ruins your day. The worst result of a car accident is someone loses his life. Russell’s client was in a car accident that resulted in the death of another woman, a grandmother who was a mentor to younger women in her church, who started an international prayer hot-line, and also founded several mission efforts; one, which helped people during the big ups and downs of life, she named the Road to Damascus. You know the Road to Damascus story. It’s told with the most detail in the book of Acts, where Paul, then a persecutor of Christians, is struck blind. This blindness is not a curse, but a step on his spiritual journey where he meets Jesus, Who asks him, “Why do you persecute me?” Blind and helpless, Paul is invited by a disciple named Ananias into his house, where Paul is fed and cared for, which is a great sign of Christian love and hospitality, for Ananias knew Paul to be, not the saint we now know in Scripture, but one who arrested Ananias’s friends, terrorized his community, and helped to stone one of his fellow disciples. But back to the miracle in Russel’s courtroom. He was defending the driver who lived, while the family of the woman who died were on the other side of the courtroom. They were visibly distraught, not only mourning the loss of a saintly woman, but they were angry, and anger needs a place to go, so they were angry with the woman who caused the accident. Russell, being a saintly man himself, could relate. According to him, the key to retaining your humanity in the legal profession is the ability to feel someone else’s pain. Russell felt the pain of this grieving family, but in his client’s defense, he said, “If your mother were still with us, she would be among the first to support and care for my client, to hug her and comfort her and let her know it was all OK because she is in a better place. My client is broken-hearted over this accident that took your mother’s life, but what I want you to recognize is that this accident did not happen on Memorial Drive in Decatur, Georgia, as the police report reads. Considering the character of the deceased and the change in my client, this accident occurred on the Road to Damascus.” Not every closing argument turns into a sermon, but that one did, and truly, that accident occurred on the Road to Damascus, for just as Paul received grace from Ananias, so Russell’s client received grace from that deceased woman’s family. Christ was also there in that courtroom, for, inspired by his closing argument, the mourning family went from thoughts of punishment and revenge to inviting Russell’s client to church. They provided her with a ride to get there. When she arrived in her Uber, they welcomed her in. They embraced her as she arrived, and just as it happened for Paul, Russell’s client was baptized and became a member of that family of faith. As a preacher of the Gospel, I have the honor of being told stories like this often enough. Some call such moments coincidence; I call it God at work in the world, but on this All Saints’ Sunday, think with me, not only about how Jesus walks beside us, but how the memory of one woman’s faithfulness influenced events in a courtroom, even after she died tragically in that car accident. Think with me about those who are robed in white. Who have come out of the great ordeal already. Who will hunger and thirst no more, for they are before the throne of God in that place where God will wipe every tear from their eyes. This morning, I call on you to remember the saints and how they lived. I don’t just mean, “Remember with me Bill Fogarty’s smile, which was warm enough to melt snow, or John Wells and his bowties, which are worth remembering.” What I’m talking about today is how, at his funeral last December, Bill Fogarty’s daughter Jean read from 2nd Timothy: As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. My friends, we have so much to learn from a man who lived in such a way that his daughter would remember him this way. Sometimes, I worry that at my funeral, Lily and Cece will say, “When he came home stressed, we knew it because he would use his preacher voice in the house.” If those who have gone on could speak to us today, how would they tell us to live? Would they tell us we worry too much? That we spend too much money on stuff that’s only going to gather dust? Today, we remember those like Judy Williams, who so looked forward to her granddaughter’s high school graduation that it’s all she talked about, as though her granddaughter’s graduation were the most important thing in the world. Was she wrong? Remember Bill Paden with me this morning. If you walk into the choir room, you’ll see a plaque on the wall listing those members of the choir who sang with our choir for fifty years. There are only three names on there. Bill Paden is one of them, and today, his grandson Karl is in the choir loft following in his footsteps. Think about how they used their time, and if they had the time that we have, how would they use it? How many cards would Flora Speed send if she had more time to tell people how much she loved them? What would Bob and Better Bomar do with a little more time? Would those two, who died within months of each other, not tell us, who are married, to spend our time loving one another well? What would they do with more time? Think with me of Karen Davis, who fed every cat in her neighborhood, or Don Mills, who from his hospital bed at AG Rhodes told his friends how much he loved them, or Skip Zehrung, whose children and grandchildren remembered him so well in their eulogies because he knew where to invest his time, not in front of the TV, but in people. Today, we remember those who have gone on. Faith Adamson, Don Goldberg, Jo Johnson, Doris Kitchens, Bill Majoros, Annel Martin, Anne Ray, Carol Watkins, and Ron Young. How did they live? And how would they have us live? I can just see Bill Majoros driving Wanda Reese to Thursday Bible Study. I can almost hear Jean Reed’s voice, as she told me stories of her days as a code breaker during World War II. I think about my friend Leo. Leo would invite me over for lunch. A couple years ago, I developed a sensitivity to beef and pork. He’d invite me for lunch, and I’d have to tell him that I was on a special diet, so he invited me to his house where he’d prepared a spread of chicken salad, shrimp salad, crab salad, all beef and pork free, for such was the hospitality that he showed me, and such is the hospitality that he has now received. My friends, we do not know what will be. We only know who will be there with us, who will welcome us when we get there. Know that the Great Cloud of Witnesses goes on before us, and they will welcome us there when our time comes. Following their example, let us embody the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ until that time comes. Amen.