In the name of the God who makes all things new ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
“We seem to give them back to thee, O God who gavest them to us. Yet as thou didst not lose them in giving, so do we not lose them by their return. Not as the world giveth, givest thou, O Lover of souls. What thou givest thou takest not away, for what is thine is ours also if we are thine. And life is eternal and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”
The author of that poem is debated, but the truth of it is the Gospel. “Death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.” On All Souls, we come to the edge of that horizon.
Yesterday, we celebrated the Feast of All Saints—we sang grand hymns and extoled the God–given virtues of the saints. I don’t know about you all, but I don’t quite mourn the death of St. Augustine, St. Patrick, or St. Clare. But I still miss my college chaplain, Father Bob. What I’d give to be able to give him a call and catch up. I miss baking cookies with my grandmother. I miss the former head of the Altar Guild in Salisbury, Judy.
All Souls is a day when we can grieve, when we don’t have to put on a strong face and can shed tears. Our culture talks about “closure” and “acceptance” when it comes to grief. But it’s a lie. Because love is, indeed, eternal, missing our loved ones creates a hole in our lives. And that hole is called grief. Sure, we can surround it with other relationships and faith, but until we see one another again face–to–face in Resurrection light, grief will remain. There is no “getting over” a beloved.
The Church helps us to name and express this grief on All Souls. I love our Episcopal tradition; the ways in which we are united, formed, and supported by liturgy. And, truth be told, I think the All Souls’ Eucharist is one of the most profound gifts of our tradition.
And while it is absolutely true that death is only a horizon, the uncertainty of what lies beyond the horizon can be unsettling. As we said together in Psalm 130, out of the depths we cry out to God. Perhaps the depths are grief that feels overwhelming or the fear of our own deaths or that of a loved one. The author of Wisdom wrote that “In the eyes of the foolish they seem to have died.” Meaning, it seems like they are no more. Given the limits of our sight, we have a lot of questions.
Why does death happen? Why do poverty, violence, suicide, and disease take people from us so early? I understand the “why” question. I’ve asked it myself many a time, and I struggle for an answer that I can live with. Others ask the question of “where?” Where do we go when we die? Into oblivion? Do we live on only in the memory of others? Do we go to a place called “Heaven?” Some ask “What?” in terms of “What is heaven like? Will I recognize my loved ones? What does eternity feel like?” And still others ask “How?” “How does this all work? Do I have an immortal soul that somehow survives death? How old will I be in heaven? How about my estranged family members, how will we be reconciled?”
I won’t call those why, where, what, or how questions bad; it’s just that they aren’t the right questions to be asking when we stand looking at this horizon. No, the only question that really matters is “Who” and the answer is Jesus Christ! Who is the Good Shepherd that seeks out the lost sheep and walks with us in the valley of the shadow of death? Jesus Christ. Who is the One who died and rose again as the first fruits of the New Creation? Jesus Christ. Who promises to each of us “truly I tell you, you will be with me in Paradise?” Jesus Christ.
We heard in John that Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God.” Our limits are not his. Death may be the limiting horizon of our sight, but it is a limit that Jesus burst through when he stepped out from the tomb on Easter morning. As the prophet Isaiah writes of the Almighty, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Death is a limit that God has overcome in Jesus.
This is what leads St. Paul to write in his first letter to the Thessalonian church that since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we do “not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Notice that he does not say that Christians do not grieve. Of course we do. Because we are called to walk in the way of love, we grieve. St. Paul’s point is that our grief is not like those who grieve without the hope of the Resurrection. As Tolkien writes in The Lord of the Rings, we trust that “everything sad is going to come untrue.” Though Psalm 130 begins in the depths, it brings us quickly to this hope—“for with the LORD there is mercy.” Liturgically speaking, purple is the color of mercy, which is why that is the color we use for All Souls.
For ourselves when we cross that horizon and for all those whom we love but see no longer, our hope is what we heard in Wisdom: “their souls are in the hand of God and they abide with God in love.” We may not be able to see beyond the horizon and answer the questions of why, where, what, and how, but because we know the answer to “who,” we do not grieve as those without hope.
The most helpful way that I’ve encountered to understand this comes from something I saw when I was in Jerusalem. At the Israel Museum, they have a 1/50th scale model of the city of Jerusalem during the Second Temple period. Our tour guide was pointing out various aspects of the model with a laser pointer—showing us the Temple, the various gates of the city, and some of the residential districts. This was a Christian guide, and so he was orienting us to the city as Jesus would have known it. At one point, he moved the laser pointer to a wall that was separating one section of the city from another and he said, “Ignore that wall. It wasn’t there during the time of Jesus.”
He was simply giving us a tour of the model, but I immediately heard him as talking about our Resurrection hope. Ignore that horizon, ignore the finality of the grave, ignore the unknowns about death, for they do not exist for God. Because our lives are secure in the love of God as are the lives of all of our dearly departed, we all are residents of that holy city; all are alive in the love of God. As for now, we may have a wall that separates us from seeing them, but as Jesus says in John 10, “I am the door.”
Yes, we grieve our loved ones. We would give most anything for one more conversation, but we do not grieve as those without hope, for death is a horizon, and while a horizon may well be the limits of our sight, it is not a limit for our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God.
