Sermon for November 4, 2012 All Saints Isaiah 25: 6-9; Psalm 24; Revelations 21:1-6; John 11:32-44 by Kim McNamara
This Sunday we devote our worship service to all the saints and souls who have gone before us. This is a day set aside for remembering and honoring those who have died; heroes, loved ones, and community members. On this day, as we celebrate the lives of our ancestors, we also come face-to-face with our own mortality and acknowledge the inevitability of death, our death, as well as others’. For this reason, today’s reflections are full of joy and reverence, but also some sadness and a little fear.
Beginning with Halloween, we are invited to spend a few days reflecting on life’s endings as we bring a glorious autumn and the church year to an end. Halloween, short for all Hallows Eve or Evening, falls on the evening before All Saints Day. Hallows’ Eve, which has its earliest roots in the Celtic culture, marks the end of the harvest and the beginning of the dark days of winter. According to the tradition of Halloween, the doors of the “other world” open up on Hallows’ Eve, allowing the souls of the dead to visit earth for a short time.
On All Saints Day, the day after Halloween, we commemorate all the saints, known and unknown, who have died and entered into Heaven. While Halloween has become a popular holiday filled with costumes, tricks and treats, All Saints Day is a day for reflection and prayer. All Souls Day comes one day later, on November 2. On All Souls Day, we pray for the recently departed, the faithfully departed, who may not have reached Heaven yet. Similar celebrations honoring those who have died are found in many cultures around the globe and share common practices, including praying, fasting or feasting, visiting gravesites, and attending worship services.
In the Anglican Church, All Saints Day and All Souls Day have been fused together to become one of our holy days. On all Saints Day we pray for those who have died. We remember and honor their lives and we pray that they have found or will find their way into Heaven. Several aspects of our tradition are reflected in our readings this morning. Our readings help us to understand the concepts of death and heaven, as well as death and resurrection; but, because they cause us to consider such difficult issues, our readings may confound us as much as they comfort us.
Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah gives us a glimpse of heaven as the mountain of the Lord. On this heavenly mountain, death will be swallowed up forever. The Lord, our loving salvation, will be waiting for us. He will wipe the tears from our eyes and will take our disgraces away. A feast of rich food and of well- 2 aged wine will be prepared for us and we will be glad and rejoice in the salvation of the Lord. This deeply comforting image of heaven has become ingrained in my own beliefs about death since I first studied these concepts as a child. If this compassionate and gracious love awaits us on the other side, in the other world, perhaps there is little to fear in our coming death.
But, of course, there seems to be a catch. Apparently, we are offered the promise of Heaven only if we have lived our life in a virtuous and godly manner. Psalm 24 suggests that only those who have clean hands and pure hearts will ascend the hill of the Lord and stand in his holy place. Those of us who have not pledged ourselves to falsehood nor sworn by fraud will walk through the gates and into the doorway to Heaven. There, the King of Glory, the Lord of Hosts, will greet us and we will receive a blessing and enjoy the just reward of salvation. The amazing beauty of this vision is clouded by a terrible possibility lurking between the lines of our Psalm. If we do not have clean hands or a pure heart, or if we have participated in falsehood and fraud, we may not be welcomed into Heaven. This thought strikes terror in my heart. If not Heaven, then what?
Our Gospel reading from John tells the story of Lazarus of Bethany, who is Mary and Martha’s brother and is much loved by Jesus. In the verses leading up to this morning’s reading, Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus asking him to come to Lazarus because he has fallen ill, so. But Jesus delays coming to Lazarus. His reasoning confuses the disciples. He tells them that Lazarus’s illness “does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Two days later, Jesus and his disciples set out for Jerusalem to see Lazarus. This time, Jesus tells the disciples that Lazarus is asleep and that Jesus will awaken him. When the disciples express their confusion, Jesus then tells them that Lazarus is dead. Upon arriving in Bethany, Jesus is told that Lazarus has been dead and in his tomb for several days. When Martha and Mary meet Jesus, their first words are, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Their tears, and the tears of all those who love Lazarus move Jesus and he responds with tears of his own. Reminding Martha and Mary that they need to believe in order to see the glory of the Lord, Jesus then offers up a prayer for the sake of the crowd standing around so, as Jesus explains, they may believe that the Lord has sent Jesus. “Thank you for hearing me, I know you always hear me.” “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus comes walking out of his tomb still bound in his grave cloth. Jesus has brought Lazarus back from the dead.
While the story of Lazarus is only found in John, this is not the only gospel reading about Jesus bringing someone back to life after they have died. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus brings the daughter of Jairus back to life. In Luke, Jesus brings the son of a widow from Nain back to life. Of course, Jesus himself is resurrected three days after being crucified. The message? Jesus is more powerful than 3 death. Jesus can bring people back from the abyss of death. Jesus himself will be raised from the dead.
In Revelation, John pulls together the Old and New Testaments and tells us about a new heaven and a new earth where the holy city, heaven, the home of God, is among mortals -- a new world where God dwells with us just as his son, Jesus Christ lived among us. In this world, just as we heard in Isaiah, John tells us that God will wipe every tear from his peoples’ eyes, death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more.
The Old Testament readings acknowledge and accept death but offer hope for salvation when we pass from this life to the next. We are also encouraged to live well on Earth so that we will be welcomed into Heaven when we leave this life. The Old Testament strikes a little fear in our hearts. We are thus encouraged to pray for those who have died and ask God to welcome them into Heaven. In turn, we pray others will do the same for us when it is our turn.
The Good News of Jesus Christ introduces us to a new world. Jesus has been sent into the mortal world by God and is able to overcome death with God’s help. Not only does Jesus heal others, he also takes on and conquers death, for himself as well as others. We have been taught that Jesus died for us. The New Testament seems to suggest that if we have enough faith, we may join the resurrected Christ. This is a promise built on our belief, not on our good works.
Despite this good news, our reflections on life and death quickly become deeper and more challenging. Death, our own, as well as our loved ones’, is a fearsome fact of life to contemplate, confront, and wrestle with. Much about our modern-day culture invites us to deny, out-maneuver, and stall our inevitable end. Between seemingly miraculous medical cures, extended life expectancies, and anti-aging creams and surgeries, we are often dragged kicking and screaming to death’s door.
Does our faith in some ways encourage us to be in denial about death? Somewhere, deep within the secrets of our soul, do we hang onto the hope that if we are faithful enough we won’t really die? Do we imagine an everlasting life in heaven that we enter into after death? Is it our hope for heaven or our fear of the alternatives that motivate us to live a godly life, to pray, to worship? When it is our turn to die, will we find ourselves on the holy and heavenly mountaintop where God and our loved ones wait for us? Or will we find ourselves somewhere else or even nowhere else?
Last Sunday, Jim Neal reminded us that we do not know where our loved ones go or where we go when we leave this world. Will we go to heaven? Or will we be 4 chased around and tortured by strange and scary creatures like the ones I saw on Halloween this past week? We really do not know. For those of us who have sat beside a loved one journeying towards death, there is an amazing sense of peace and love that seems to hover in the shroud that surrounds us. There are now many documented cases of people who suddenly come back to life after they have seemingly died. (I just learned that these events are referred to as the Lazarus phenomenon.) These people often share similar stories of being greeted by loved ones and a loving presence that guides them back to the world of the living. But, really, just as Jim stated, we do not know what awaits us despite what our bible tells us. In our Circle class last Tuesday night, Paddy Gilson reminded us that these are the great mysteries that we can never truly know the answer to. I imagine her downstairs with the children in Sunday School telling them about these mysteries. I want to include myself in her class discussion because when it comes the to a conversation about death, I know no more now than I did as a child.
In the meantime, we remember and honor those who have crossed over before us. May we take a few moments during these last days of autumn to reflect upon our feelings, fears, and hopes about our own death. Let us keep these reflections ever present in our hearts so that when our time here on earth comes to an end, we might be ready for the next journey. We pray to our God who always hears us, in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God, our Alpha and Omega, our beginning and our end.