Witnesses Consumed by the Holy Fire of Love

A Homily on the Martyrs of Memphis, Mankato, and Minneapolis

Witnesses Consumed by the Holy Fire of Love

A Homily on the Martyrs

of Memphis, Mankato, and Minneapolis

The Reverend Howard Anderson

September 6, 2026

This is one of the weeks in the Episcopal Church when we remember some of the martyrs of our faith tradition.

The word martyr has been diluted in modern speech, attached to situations which have nothing to do with healing or sacrifice or even love.

But the root word of martyr simply means a witness. A witness to the indestructible power of love.

There are martyrs the church remembers who went willingly to their deaths rather than renounce their faith. This is a powerful witness for sure.

But I think there’s a special place for those martyrs who willingly put their lives on the line for the least of these, the poor, the voiceless, immigrants, refugees.

The preacher and author Barbara Brown Taylor once wrote of martyrs in a way that resonates deeply with me. True martyrdom is something that cannot be actively pursued or avoided, but rather a by-product of getting so consumed in living God’s life that one forgets about self-protection. It just happens to people who are entirely embodying the gospel.

Barbara points out that most martyrs were not seeking martyrdom. They were simply embodying the way of love of Jesus, who gave his life for all of us.

Our calendar of remembrance commemorates Constance and her companions, the martyrs of Memphis this week. But today at St. John’s, we will also remember the martyrs of Mankato and Minneapolis.

In 1878, a deadly yellow fever epidemic raged through Memphis, then the largest city in the American South. Thirty thousand of the 50,000 residents, anyone with resources to do so, fled.

Twenty thousand residents, mostly Black and mostly poor, had no way to escape and no place of safety. They were left behind to face an invisible, lethal enemy. Two hundred people a day were dying.

In that landscape of death, a few chose to stay, risking their lives for the sick, the dying, and the vulnerable whom Jesus commanded us to care for.

Among those who stayed were Mother Constance, superior of a small community of Episcopal nuns, the Sisters of St. Mary. Mother Constance and her sisters, Claire, Thecla, Ruth, and Frances, were joined by two young priests, Louis and Charles.

They did not simply remain. They turned St. Mary’s Cathedral, situated at the epicenter of the outbreak, into a makeshift hospital and orphanage. Tending to the least of these, they died one after another in selfless, loving service.

I’ve often wondered, having stood in the graveyard where they are commemorated and buried in Memphis, if these selfless, brave souls took courage from the words of our reading from 2 Corinthians, knowing that in this service they were participating directly in the sufferings of Jesus.

Martyrdom often happens in response to ugly or disgusting oppression.

The story of the martyrs of Mankato is one.

The largest mass execution in American history took place in Mankato in 1862.

The Dakota people who had lovingly cared for and inhabited much of the land that became Minnesota were skilled hunters and agriculturalists whose culture is rich and deep to this day.

But in the 19th century, the Dakota were confined to a narrow strip of land along the Minnesota River by treaties forced upon them.

Stripped of their vast homeland, they became dependent on federal promises of food, supplies, and annuity payments.

When those promised provisions did not come, yet everyone knew they were held in warehouses, the Dakota children and elders who were dying made the leaders of the Dakota people come and ask that those provisions be released.

The agent famously declared, “If they are hungry, let them eat grass.”

When the uprising began, that agent was one of the first killed. He was found with grass in his mouth.

In the conflict that followed, over 400 white settlers and soldiers were killed, and an estimated 150 Dakota fighters died. In response, Minnesota State authorities convicted over 300 of them and sentenced them to death in military trials that lasted mere minutes without defense or even translation.

The Dakota people as a whole were rounded up and force-marched to a concentration camp below Fort Snelling. And how cruelly ironic it is that this occurred in Madé-Ota, the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi, the very place Dakota tradition holds as the sacred site of creating the first humans.

Along that march, Indian men went miles through rocks and attacked the marchers. Among the victims was the infant son of the great grandmother of my dear friend, some of you knew him, the Reverend Gary Cavender, a beloved Dakota priest and scholar. He said she told him the child was torn from her arms and killed.

What transpired in the camp, however, is why I speak of the martyrs of Mankato in the same breath as Memphis. Dakota oral tradition records that the elders among Wenčihaŋta, Wasíciŋ Waŋ, and Waŋtéto bands conspired among themselves to replace the younger fighters who had families to raise, knowing that the military authorities could barely distinguish one prisoner from another.

Minnesota’s first bishop, Henry Benjamin Whipple, was appalled by the state’s unlawful actions, so he traveled to Washington to appeal directly to President Abraham Lincoln, whom he knew.

Hearing of the great injustice, Lincoln commuted the death sentences of all but 38 men who it was thought had killed those who were unarmed.

When Whipple and the local clergy were ministering to the condemned, they learned that several of the elders who Whipple knew had harbored their white neighbors with whom they had worshiped Sunday by Sunday. They had taken the places of younger men with families to raise, and Whipple forgave them to go to the gallows because they were innocent.

One elder, whose name written history does not record, stood and addressed the bishop. “Bishop, was it not you that taught us that Jesus went to the cross wholly innocent to die for us? And was it not you that gave us the book that says, ‘No greater love has any man than to lay down his life for his friends?'”

Whipple relented, writing later that he never truly recovered from the grief of that loss.

Father Robert Twobulls, who many of you know, working with him at All Saints, painted a picture that’s in your bulletin, the 38 Tears of Bishop Whipple. Better than any of the words I could say, it vividly captures this tragedy.

On December 26th, the day after Christmas in 1862, as the 38 were brought to the scaffold in Mankato, a friend made this stole, and it depicts the scene. And here is the Dakota, the commentary

Eastern newspapers reported that the bloodthirsty savages were completely unbowed and proudly sang their heathen death chants.

But our witnesses who knew the Dakota language recorded that while some sang Dakota songs of courage, others sang “Many and Great, Oh God, Are Thy Works” from the Dakota hymnal. We will sing that hymn together today at the end of our service. It was written by a Dakota musician.

So as the hoods were drawn down, they reached out, trying to touch, hold hands in their final moments.

Their sacrifice bore profound spiritual fruit. The story of their witness and faith has been passed down through generations of Dakota Christians to this very day, and with hard work and advocacy, the martyrs of Mankato may well be added to the Episcopal Calendar of Remembrance to inspire more generations across the whole Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Martyrs do not only belong to distant history. Unnamed witnesses across the world continue to lay down their lives for others.

In recent times, our city has witnessed its own severe trials. An American administration has loosed violence upon an American city, our city.

Yet amid these crises, a powerful new grace has emerged on our streets, the practice of neighboring.

This recognition that love is not merely a warm feeling, that love is an active verb, is appropriate. In Minneapolis, neighboring has meant adopting a shared conviction.

My neighbor is my responsibility. If you’re going to harm them, you must go through me first.

Your former rector, sitting right there, Bishop Mariann Budde, has written that the people of the Twin Cities bravely stood between the violent and out-of-control masked army and the innocent people they are terrorizing.

Your former member, Mayor R.T. Rybak, put it this way, and I liked it. “Napoleon had his Waterloo. Trump has had his Minneapolis.”

So today, sadly, we must honor two modern martyrs of Minneapolis, Rene Good and Alex Frohlich.

They embodied what it means to be a neighbor. They stood with countless others as protective walls for their Black, brown, and immigrant neighbors.

They did not leave home intending to die or become martyrs. But in the crucible of crisis, they made the ultimate sacrifice protecting people who came here merely seeking safety from violence or a better life for their children.

Like Barbara Brown Taylor said, they were embodying the love of Jesus.

Rene Nicole Nicholson Good was a loving mother of three and a trained constitutional observer bearing witness to the violence inflicted upon Minneapolis residents of color, culture, and language.

A friend said of her, “Rene was one of the most docile, kind, shy, and sweetly empathetic people I know. Not exactly a terrorist.”

She was an award-winning poet. The president of Old Dominion in her own letter said of her, “May Rene’s life and courage remind us of what unites us, freedom, love, and peace.”

Renee Stobbe Becker shared that Rene had a heart large and overflowing with love and nurture, simple kindness wherever she went. Her love for others was so strong that I think she literally sparkled.

She was a Christian who understood the foundational truth. We are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe.

She faced danger with clear-eyed bravery, knowing full well, as she said, that we carry whistles and ICE carries guns.

But Rene also knew that as she and others walked beside the least of these, Dr. King’s words were true, that love would defeat the guns, because while the arc of history bends slowly, it does bend toward justice.

Her last words, spoken to the man who killed her, were trying to calm him, saying, “It’s okay, dude. I’m not mad at you.”

Alex Jeffery Pretti was a nurse at the VA hospital, a devoted caregiver who spent his daily life attending to veterans and their families. He was so much a part of the fabric of the VA hospital that people would ask him to come and meet their relatives.

His colleague spoke of him also as a super competent nurse, someone who routinely went that extra mile for those in his care.

The colleague added, “I think that if Alex had lived, he would’ve said, ‘I just did what any decent person would’ve done.'” That’s how martyrs would’ve talked, I think.

Alex’s parents said that he was unfailingly kind, whose life was committed to helping those in need as an ICU nurse. He loved his family, friends, colleagues, and patients at the VA hospital, and they said, “We do not throw this around lightly, but our son was a hero, and I think a martyr.”

Alex was documenting the violence of the ICE officers and giving comfort to those he could. He was making a video of the interactions on his phone. He was bearing witness to the pain of the least of these when so many of us turned away.

His final act on earth was attempting to protect a neighbor being violently thrown to the ground. His last words to her were typical of his life of service. “Are you okay?”

Both Rene and Alex showed us what it looks like to fulfill Christ’s command to care for the least of these. And like martyrs from all the ages before, they put their own safety aside for others.

Okay, some may say, “Howie, why did you stop preaching and start politics?”

This is what I answer, and I urge you to as well.

Political questions regarding the treatment of a fellow human being become immediately the province of theology the moment we fail to begin with acknowledging their God-given humanity and dignity.

When our first instinct is to say, “Are they legal? Did they commit a crime?” Or, “Why would they cross like this?” We know that our politics have evaded the sanctuary of our fundamental faith commitments.

As followers of Jesus, those are not judgments we are allowed to make.

Our primary calling is written directly in our baptismal covenant.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?

Most of us have made those promises together over and over. And things like race, sexual orientation, religion, or legal status do not alter one iota the identity of a beloved child of the Creator.

When one asks, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, making the outsider, the other, the focus of how love can be shown to a neighbor. All are our neighbor. No exclusions, even the ones we don’t like.

I’ve spoken of the idea of martyrs as witnesses.

In today’s America, being a witness can and has ended in tragedy, and yet thousands of you across the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota, ordinary people have put flesh on the bones of those baptismal vows, delivering meals to those living in fear, walking children to and from school when parents feared to leave their home, and standing peacefully between threat and the vulnerable. I see people here that I know have done this.

There’s an Ojibwe word, Ogichidaa. It applies to all the witnesses who stand with the least of these. It, in some translation, means warrior, but its literal translation, and the one used in the Ojibwe community is the one who stands between danger and evil and the people.

Across the nation and the globe, people have cheered the courage and commitment of Renee and Alex, and tens of thousands more of you who I can now look at you and call you Ogichidaa.

The cross, the gallows, disease, bullets.

The lives of these witnesses we remember today were ended by vastly different means across different centuries.

But they shared something infinitely more powerful. They were consumed by the holy fire of love.

Christianity can be boiled down to this, when Jesus gave his disciples the summary commandment that fulfills all the others. Love one another as I love you, and love your neighbor as yourself. It’s very simple.

We are called to live out that love in tangible, daily, yes, and sometimes costly ways.

The impact of the brave choices made by these witnesses, these martyrs from Memphis in 1878 to Mankato in 1862 to Minneapolis in the Twin Cities in Minnesota today, ignite a holy fire that we are all called to tend.

When we choose to live without self-protection in the service of love, our small corner of the world is transformed.

These martyrs deserve an honor song, and I will sing a Dakota honor song for them. [Dakota honor song]

Constance.

Mankato elders.

Renee and Alex.

The words are, I stand facing the west, praying for those who are in need. Amen.

10am Service