In
April 1974, two missionary nurses were kidnapped in south Thailand. They had
been working with people suffering leprosy - suffering both the skin disease
and the social isolation. They worked with people whose hope was low, people
who could not experience a loving touch from another human being, people who
were told that they were outcasts and human trash. These nurses bound
their wounds, gave a gentle caring touch, and were able to restore some measure
of hope and healing to those broken hearts. When they returned to New Zealand
every few years, they would talk of what they had seen and done - how diseased
people had been restored to families, how their eyes lit up when they were
addressed directly, how their feet were bathed with gentle hands, and how they
had expressed increasing desire to know more about this Jesus Christ about whom
these nurses spoke - one who also had touched lepers and had spoken of a God
who cared for the least - and had suffered and was killed - and was raised to
life.
But
as I said, in April 1974 they were abducted at gunpoint. One of these was
Minka Hanskamp
- my aunt.
Almost
a year later, in March 1975, my father received news that the remains of his
sister and her friend had been found in a shallow grave. They had both been
shot through the back of the head.
Saints
come in many forms, and for me these two women come to my mind. For those
of us who knew them, these women were saints before they died - people
who touched the untouchable, and loved the unlovable, and opened the
possibility of God’s love and hope to those who were loveless and hopeless.
Lawrence
Stookey says this… “commemorating the saints is nothing other than a way of
affirming that the transformative power of Christ is at work all about us in
human lives…We are saints because God’s sanctity is at work in us, not because
on our own we have come to great spiritual attainment.”
Saints
create a sense of expectation - of a future that is possible. It is probably best expressed in the song "When the Saints"
"Oh
when the saints go marching in
When
the saints go marching in
Oh
Lord I want to be in that number
When
the saints go marching in.
This
was written by African Americans as a song of expectation and hope. While we
may sing it as a ditty, for them it is a powerful reminder of their hope in God
in the midst of their struggles, and more importantly, in their future. As with
many of these songs, it is also a protest
Two
of the verses include
“Oh
when the rich go out and work,
Oh
when the rich go out and work,
Oh
Lord I want to be in that number
when
the saints go marching in."
“When
our leaders learn to cry,
oh
when our leaders learn to cry,
Oh
Lord I want to be in that number
when
the saints go marching in.
One
can feel the hope, the expectation, the passionate desire and expectation for
the world to be right and justice to be done. This is a vision of comfort
and hope and possibility. It is the comfort expressed in "wanting to
be part of that number”.
Saints
- among us and going ahead. Exciting faith, acting for hope in our world; and
inviting us to join them.
