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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 story, which he always told with a chuckle, was about one of his first parish visitations, shortly after his consecration, in 1967. The church member assigned to meet the bishop’s car and escort him and Mrs. Martin into the church waved frantically as the bishop approached, saying, “This spot is for Bishop Martin.” When the bishop said that he was indeed Bishop Martin, the parishioner responded, “Excuse me, Bishop, but all the bishops of Long Island drive Cadillacs” (the bishop had arrived in an old Chevy). When Bishop Martin told the story to Bishop Sherman the next morning, the fifth bishop of Long Island picked up the telephone, called the Cadillac dealer, and ordered that a Cadillac be delivered to Bishop Martin. Hanging up the receiver, Bishop Sherman announced, “They won’t have that excuse again.”

When Bishop Walker telephoned me to inform me of Bishop Martin’s death, he said, “This is the end of an era.” And so it is. He was of the old school, in the best sense of that word. That means you could cut your finger on the crease in his pants and see your reflection in his shoes. That means that he was a catholic churchman who took seriously the fact that he was ordained to administer both word and sacrament; and took seriously the fact that the church of Jesus Christ, as Archbishop Temple reminded us, is the only organization that exists primarily for the benefit of those not its members. But he was not the kind of priest who could tell you how many times you should kiss the altar during the mass (seven, for the record) but found it difficult to offer an extemporaneous prayer of condolence or encouragement. When I entered the parish ministry forty years ago, Bishop Martin reminded me of the importance of being a pastor: “You can make the parish machinery hum, double the budget, and build new buildings, but unless you are there when your people need you, everything else you do is for naught.”

Richard Beamon Martin was the oldest living bishop in the Episcopal Church. He witnessed sea changes in the life of the Episcopal Church and lived through the upheavals caused by women’s ordination, Prayer Book revision, the civil rights movement, and, more recently, the debate over human sexuality. He was a deputy to the 1955 General Convention that took place in Honolulu because Tollie Caution and Thurgood Marshall stormed the Presiding Bishop’s office demanding that the Convention not be held in Houston—where the bishop of Texas could not guarantee that housing could be provided for Negro deputies.

So what more can be said about a pastor, priest, and prophet who did so much in recent years, even after his so-called retirement, to keep the church on an even keel as she navigated uncharted waters, providing nurture and guidance, even from his bed of affliction, to his fellow bishops and to yet another generation of clergy?

The simple answer is we can say nothing at all. We who are dwarfed by his spiritual stature, humbled by his holy demeanor, and pauperized by the wealth of his experience and intellect can add not a jot or tittle to the legacy that Bishop Martin has bequeathed to us. What we can do, however, is imagine the words that were exchanged between him and the blessed Apostle Peter on the occasion of Bishop Martin’s interview for admission to the Pearly Gates (one of Peter’s easier jobs). The form of Saint Peter’s question is identical to the question that customs agents ask at the airport:

Richard, bishop of the Church of God, do you have anything to declare? Bishop Martin responded “I declare that, like Jeremiah, the Lord God knew me before he formed me in my mother’s womb, and sanctified me, and made me a prophet unto the nations.”

Richard, bishop of the Church of God, do you have anything to declare? “I declare that I have endeavored, day by day, to be faithful to my vows as a deacon, to be modest and humble, and to have a ready will to observe all spiritual discipline.”

Richard, bishop of the Church of God, do you have anything to declare? “I declare that I have endeavored, day by day, to be faithful to my vows as a priest, that I never cease in my labor until I have done all that lieth in me, to bring all such as are or shall be committed to my charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and that there be no place left in me, either for error in religion or for viciousness in life.”

Richard, bishop of the Church of God, do you have anything to declare? “I declare that I have endeavored, day by day, to be faithful to my vows as a husband, and did plight my troth to my beloved Annelle, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part.”

Richard, bishop of the Church of God, do you have anything to declare? “I declare that I have endeavored, day by day, to be faithful to my vows as a bishop, remembering to “stir up the grace of God, . . . for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and soberness.”

Richard, bishop of the Church of God, do you have anything to declare? “I declare that I have endeavored, day by day, to be a source of and a force for reconciliation, bringing together all sorts and conditions of men and women, so that together we can sing:

I’m gonna sit at the welcome table,

I’m gonna sit at the welcome table,

I’m gonna sit at the welcome table,

One of these days.

Richard, bishop of the Church of God, do you have anything to declare? “I declare, in the words of the great priest and hymnwriter Charles Wesley,

A charge to keep I have,

A name to glorify,

A never-dying soul to save,

And fit it for the sky.

To serve the present age,

My calling to fulfill:

O may it all my powers engage

To do my master’s will.

Arm me with jealous care,

As in Thy sight to live;

And O Thy servant, Lord prepare

A strict account to give!

AMEN.

1. Martin, Wings of the Morning, 39.