His name was Bob Sanders; yet, at 78 I’m still calling him Mr. Sanders. In the 1950s Mr. Sanders and his wife Alice lived next door to us on a farm in the rural area that surrounded Princeton, New Jersey. Mr. Sanders was a potato and tomato farmer. He was also my Sunday school teacher at the Dutch Neck Presbyterian Church. It was an all-boys class with four of us “regulars” attending. Mr. Sanders was the only Sunday school teacher we had in those years; each time we were promoted to the next class we were always surprised and pleased to discover that our Sunday school superintendent had the good sense to also promote Mr. Sanders.
In addition to his truck farm, Mr. Sanders had a small coal business. He used his green, tandem-wheel Chevy trucks to haul coal from Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania to be sold and delivered throughout the winter months when the fields were fallow. Here’s how our class worked: Each time two of us would learn a significant passage of the Bible, such as the Twenty-third Psalm, the Lord’s Prayer, or the books of the Old or New Testament, we would get to go to Jim Thorpe on a “coal run” with Mr. Sanders
Alice died long ago; Moses has been dead for 28 years now. Mr. Sanders died nine-teen years ago at 93. In their last years, he and Alice retired to a little cottage in Saint Petersburg, Florida where most of their neighbors were African American. Every year for twenty years, Gloria (Mrs. Marple) and I made a pilgrimage to Saint Petersburg to see Mr. Sanders and Alice. The last time we visited he took me to his church --an African-American Methodist Church, two blocks from his home. I’ve been a minister for fifty-four years now; yet, Mr. Sanders remains my best connection with the Bible. We stood in front of his adopted church as he said, “Ken, I know you would love the folk at this church; they’re just wonderful.” Mr. Sanders was still teaching me the words of Christ, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
Yes, I would have loved the folk at Mr. Sander’s new church; perhaps, that was one of the best compliments I ever received from my old Sunday school teacher --that he knew that I would love the folk at his African American church. Mr. Sanders long-ago discovered that love is not just being nice to people, it’s also being fair with others, respecting others, and being “human in the world with everybody else in the world”. Mr. Sanders joined an African-American Methodist Church --and he was welcomed. It is a wonderful dream, Martin --it’s a wonderful, wonderful dream, and it has come true here and there. Not everywhere; but, here and there –and more and more. Let’s all pray that it will be even more true. Then, let’s do our part to answer our own prayers. We could help God a little –right?