In the name of the God who makes all things new ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen
A week ago, I attended a week-long clergy wellness retreat hosted by the Church Pension Fund. It was a rich and deep time for both spiritual renewal and forming relationships with clergy from around the country. In a few conversations, the question of All Saints and All Souls came up and I realized that if the group of 25 clergy is representative of the wider Church, we are in the very slim minority of congregations that mark All Soul’s Day. In fact, only one other priest said that their congregation marks this holy day.
In
a later conversation, another priest asked me how we mark All Souls that
differentiates it from All Saints. I said that my take on these two holy days is
that while both celebrate the fellowship of the Communion of Saints, All Saints
triumphantly marks our union in Christ and lifts up saints throughout the
centuries who are examples of faith to us. All Souls is a more tender commemoration
of our dearly departed. All Souls names the reality that we still miss and
grieve those whom we love but see no longer. As Christians, we need both of
these days and to combine them waters down both.
The
fact of the matter is that our culture is a “get over it” one. Society has virtually
no rituals to navigate grief. Sure, we have the funeral and then we leave
people to “figure it out” or “work through it.” All Soul’s is a day on which we
can be honest that we still feel the sting of grief, the pain of loneliness,
and the void of someone who is missing. We heard in Psalm 130, “Out of the
depths have I called to you, O Lord;
Lord hear my voice.” In grief, we
are in the depths. Sunnyside theology that just tells us to not worry about our
loved ones because they are in a better place doesn’t help anyone and denies
the reality that grief remains. To be clear – love is never something we should
“get over.” Love is eternal and love does not stop at the grave. Grief is a
holy emotion and All Souls is a holy vessel to hold us in our grief.
And
what this holy day does is bring the comforting promises of God to meet us in
our grief. As we heard in First Thessalonians, “We do not grief as others do who
have no hope.” What exactly happens in death, I cannot explain to you. And anyone
who claims that they can is a charlatan. Our hope is not grounded in our
understanding of death and resurrection, rather our hope is found in that God is
bigger than our limited understanding. As we heard in Wisdom, “In the eyes of
the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a
disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction.” In his letter to
the Corinthian church, St. Paul wrote that “we see through a glass dimly.” We
can’t understand it all.
Our
comforting hope is not in what we can understand, it is in that God is making
all things new. A great prayer is found in the back of the Prayer Book and is
entitled a prayer “For those we love.” It prays, “Almighty God, we entrust all
who are dear to us to thy never-failing care and love, for this life and the
life to come, knowing that thou art doing for them better things than we can
desire or pray for.” What a lovely prayer of trust in God’s mercy. That’s why
the color for today is purple – a reminder that in life and in death, we rely
on God’s gracious mercy to make all things well and to redeem all that is lost.
So even if we do not understand death and the promise of eternal life, our hope
is grounded in God’s abiding faithfulness, not our understanding.
First Thessalonians goes on to note that
though the dead might seem to be gone and lost, they are at peace. In John, we heard
Jesus say “Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when
the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”
The voice of love that spoke Creation into being by saying “Let there be” is the
same voice that calls to us all in death and says, in the language of the book
of the Song of Songs, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the
winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the
time of singing has come.”
This
tender call of our Good Shepherd to arise and come with him to the overflowing
table of God’s abundance is our hope. Our dearly departed have heard this voice
and are safe and at rest with God in Christ. The power of the voice that
created all things has the power to redeem all things. Psalm 29 proclaims, “The
voice of the Lord is a powerful
voice; the voice of the Lord is a
voice of splendor.” The loving voice of Jesus calls us both in life and death.
One
of the canticles that we often say at Morning Prayer is the Second Song of Isaiah
in which God proclaims, “For as rain and snow fall from the heavens and return
not again, but water the earth, bringing forth life and giving growth, seed for
sowing and bread for eating, so is my word that goes forth from my mouth; it
will not return to me empty; but it will accomplish that which I have purposed,
and prosper in that for which I sent it.” God’s promise of eternal life is not
empty, but will accomplish the God’s purpose of love: Our faith rests in that God
loves us all, the living and the dead; and that love is what ensures that we
are always alive in God. God’s love for us makes us alive to God, even after
death. What exactly this looks like and how that happens, we can’t say for
sure. But our hope is grounded in this loving word that never fails, never tires,
and never ends.
That
word of love has been spoken to all of our loved ones who have died, and so we
do not grieve as those without hope. Yes, we deeply miss them, would do anything
for one more conversation with them, yearn to again be with them. On All Souls,
we go into the depths of that grief and are met by the God who went into the
depths of grief and death for us and for our salvation. And as Jesus rose from
the grave, he paved the way out of the grave for us all. He calls to each of us
and all of us to arise and come away into his peace.
At
the Eucharist which we will soon celebrate, we all come, those of us gathered
in this columbarium, both the alive and the interred, and meet together in this
sacred meal. When proclaim “Therefore let us keep the feast,” we do so as the beloved
children of God who have heard the gracious call of Jesus to come to him and
find our rest. Those of us on earth and those who have passed through death
join our voices in response to the loving call of Jesus whose love is making
all things well.
