So we gather today not so much to mourn Alan’s loss, but to give thanks to Almighty God for his life and the lives of those who he has touched. We give thanks that Alan’s life and witness have made a difference and that many of us are richer for having known him. We are tempted—although the span of Alan’s life managed to equal that of the Psalmist’s threescore years and ten—to say that he was snatched from us prematurely. But that’s our personal agenda. Less selfish reflection enables us to say to Alan, as the Good Shepherd has said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord.”
Let us pray:
O what their joy and their glory must be,
Those endless Sabbaths the blessed ones see:
Crown for the valiant, to weary ones rest:
God shall be all, and in all ever blest. AMEN.
“Do you have anything to declare?”
RICHARD BEAMON MARTIN, Bishop (1913–2012)
Preached in St. Philip’s Church, Brooklyn 15 April 2012
Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself. (Wis 3:4)
About fifty years ago, as an acolyte, serving at the altar of this great parish, I sat in the sanctuary, vested in a starched cotta and a black cassock. The palms of my hands were flat on my lap (one of the strict rules of the acolyte warden, Mr. Butler) and I sat mesmerized by the words emanating from this very pulpit. The preacher was Father Martin, St. Philip’s third rector, and he preached a sermon on the roads in the New Testament. The journey along each of these roads—to Bethlehem, Damascus, Jerusalem, Calvary and Emmaus—according to the preacher, had special significance for the Christian life. Fast-forward twenty-five years. I found myself sitting in the chancel of St. John’s Church on the island of St. Croix, resting my vocal chords after having sung the litany at the consecration of E. Don Taylor. Bishop Martin was holding forth from the pulpit on the other side of the chancel. I found myself saying, “My goodness, he sounds just like me,” then quickly realized I had put the cart before the horse. It was I who sounded like him. At that moment, it became clear to me just how much that holy man of God had served as a role model and mentor.
Nearly sixteen years ago, Bishop Martin graced the pulpit of Calvary Church, Pittsburgh, on the occasion of my institution as fifteenth rector. He started off his forty-five-minute sermon (delivered without the benefit of so much as a three by five index card) by saying that white parishes had been known to call black rectors before, but normally that happens when the senior warden looks to the church’s ceiling and sees the sky, and when all kinds of sounds emanate from the organ when there is no one near the console! But this evening, I want to share with you, verbatim, the last sermon I ever heard Bishop Martin preach. His pulpit was a bed in the intensive care unit of Interfaith Hospital; no alb or rochet and chimere draped his frail frame, no brocade stole hung about his neck—a flimsy patient’s gown, precariously tied at the neck and the waist, was the only vestment he wore, and then he preached a sermon in answer to my query about how he was feeling. “Harold,” he proclaimed, “I am ninety-nine years old, blind, and I am marching on the King’s Highway. Please give me your blessing.” At that moment I felt like Timothy listening to Paul’s valedictory: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7). In dying, my friends, Bishop Martin taught us how to live.
My sisters and brothers in Christ, we have come together tonight to give thanks to Almighty God for the life and witness of Richard Beamon Martin, bishop in the church of God, master of the homiletic art, consummate pastor, and Christian gentleman. We commend to the never-failing providence of Almighty God a faithful servant who lived into his one hundredth year and whose ordained ministry spanned seven decades. I would like to suggest that King Solomon had Bishop Richard in mind when he wrote the words: “Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself” (Wis 3:5). Richard Martin lived his long life because he possessed, by the grace of God, an inner fortitude. It is precisely because he had been tested, precisely because he had borne the burden in the heat of the day, that he was able, at life’s end, to appear before his Maker in full possession of his intellect. Bishop Martin had lost the use of his eyes, but he was hardly blind.
Richard Martin was able to see through the folly of the commonly held misconception that everything in the church was just fine until the ordination of a gay bishop. The grandson of slaves, who worked as a yard boy for a white family and to whom cotton-picking was an everyday occurrence, he knew firsthand that, during the reportedly “good ol’ days,” there took place the historical disenfranchisement of a people who, in this country and this church, have been called successively Africans, coloreds, Negroes, Afro-Americans, and African Americans. Bishop Martin was instructed in the faith in a tiny, one-room chapel in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, while whites worshipped their Lord on several acres of prime land a few miles away. He remembered being told by his bishop that attending the Philadelphia Divinity School was not an option, because colored men who trained north of the Mason-Dixon Line had trouble adjusting to life in the South when they returned (read “they didn’t stay in their place”). So like scores of men of his vintage, he attended the all-black Bishop Payne Divinity School. He also suffered the indignity of attending colored convocations at a time when blacks in Southern dioceses were not allowed to participate in diocesan conventions. And long before assuming the role of Archdeacon of Brooklyn, he was Archdeacon of Colored Work in the Diocese of Southern Virginia.
Even as a bishop, he learned that a black face often trumped a purple shirt, as when he was told by a rector whose congregation was expecting a white bishop that allowing Bishop Martin to officiate would be like offering hamburger to his flock when they were expecting sirloin—or when, upon his election and consecration, the not-so-subtle message was conveyed to Bishop and Mrs. Martin that taking up residence in the see city of his diocese would be problematic.
But let it be said that these and a host of other incidents never caused Bishop Martin’s faith to flag. Racism never consumed him, never embittered him, and never deterred him from his mission and ministry. A clue to the reason for this is found in his book, On the Wings of the Morning: “Suffering,” he wrote, “is distilled love that reveals the true nature of the spiritual stamina and foundation of the soul. Our part is to live with the questions; to live into the questions, to live beyond the questions.” Such a view is part and parcel of his theology of ministry: “The essence of priesthood,” believed Bishop Martin, “is reconciliation. It is by the grace of God that the priest stands as a sign and symbol of the reconciling Lord.”1
Richard Martin was sometimes asked why he and other black people remained in the Episcopal Church. He answered that he believed “the black presence in the Episcopal Church is like yeast permeating the body politic to rise above exclusiveness to an acceptance of the reality that we are all God’s children, one family under God.” He believed, too, that black people offer their ability to joyfully overcome injustice and suffering.
Moreover, Richard Martin could find humor in the most painful experiences. My favorite