Sermon - for All the Saints/ Pre-election

Psalm 149

Luke 6:20-31

            Today we celebrate All Saints day.  And in that, it is a time of remembering, it is a joint, church-wide celebration of the lives of those who have gone before, a rejoicing that those who have passed are with God, a reminder of the vast gifts their lives have given and passed to us, and, honestly, an invitation to be open once more with our grief at the loss of those we have loved.  But most of all, All Saints Day is a reminder that in God, we have nothing to fear.  Even death has been overcome, our Saints, our loved ones live on.  We celebrate their continued living with God this day.  And we celebrate that as we are called to live bravely, with only love and faith as our shield and fortress, we will follow God’s will most closely when we can let go of our fear. For as Yoda said it, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.  We’ve seen exactly how true that is over the last few months and as we edge towards Tuesday.  This is the most fear driven election I have ever witnessed.  And in that, in that it is a fear driven election, it is also the least Godly that I have ever witnessed. 

            But it is in the midst of this angst that we are experiencing as a country, this fear that we feel as Tuesday approaches, that we are reminded that we have nothing to fear, not only by the declarations of the angels, “Be not afraid!” but by the celebration of All Saints Day itself.  I don’t say this with levity.  I need to be clear about that.  I am not saying it is an easy thing to put aside our fear and choose love.  It isn’t.  It’s the hardest thing in the world to do, especially when it comes to the fear of death.  As part of my job I have had the deep privilege and honor of walking with people in their last weeks and last days.  And it is common for even people of the deepest faith to have fear as they approach the unknown that is death.  We feel that fear from both places: both feeling afraid of our own deaths, but also the place of fearing the loss of those we love.  Last night at the Chromatica concert that took place here, there were two pieces that really “got” to me in the way of moving me to have a hard time not weeping as I listened.  The first was one of the “Children’s Letters to God” in which the child asked what it was like when you die and then said he/she didn’t want to.  In the middle of it was the noise of the question coming from many voices all being raised to God at the same time (or at least that was my interpretation).  And I felt it.  I felt the fear that even our children, perhaps especially our children, have of death.  A fear that is so intense, so real, so DEEP that it influences and guides so many of our decisions.  The second was Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, which I had never before known was written for his child who had died at the age of four.  Just that realization was beyond me.  I know some of you have lost children.  And I tell you, the fact that you continue on each day shows to me an amazing strength.  I’ve been through a lot, but I do not know how a person walks through the loss of a child.  And the terror of that, the terror of my children dying is overwhelming for me. The terror of my kids being hurt and in particular right now, honestly, of my girls being treated as less than fully human, of being molested, attacked, abused because of their gender terrifies me. I will own that many of my decisions, therefore also come from a fear that stems out of very specific love for very specific people, rather than being based on the love for all people that we are told must be the heart of all we are, including our decisions.

            But again, here we are on All Saints Day.  And we are called to remember that those who pass are with God.  We stand on the angels proclamation to “do not be afraid” again and again.  We lean on scriptures that tell us that the only thing we are called to do: the great commandments we are called to live by are loving God and loving all those we encounter.  ALL those we encounter.  The heart of what I am saying is this: Love is supposed to make our decisions for us, not fear. 

            Today’s passage from Luke reminds us that in the face of all of our loss and grief there is comfort.  We are also reminded that what we believe to be true will be turned on its head.  Once more we are told it is the poor who are rich, the hungry who will be made full, the grieving who will be comforted, and the weeping who will laugh.  When we rest in God, even when we are in pain, even when we are struggling, we will find what we need, we will find the hope, the peace, the laughter, the comfort.  Therefore we do not have to fear doing what God asks us to do: loving others, giving to others, sharing with others, welcoming others.  Because it is in our sharing and giving only that we will find we have enough.  It is in our loving that we will find ourselves loved.  It is in our seeing each other human being as a child of God that we will come to know ourselves as children of God.  We know that nothing stays the same, and that God is the God of change.  We also know that our faith boosts us up and keeps us strong no matter what we are going through, what we are feeling.  God stands with us when we are down, and God strengthens us for the times to come when we are joyful.

Death is scary.  Death creates loss and pain for us.  But this year especially as we look at the election about to take place in two days, as we see a country torn with fear, anger, and hatred, we must, as we look at death, the most feared thing there is, especially, rest in the truth that our faith teaches us we do not have to be afraid.  The bottom line in everything is to choose love over hate, choose hope over fear, and choose compassion over judgment.  We are never called to see others as anything besides our brothers and sisters.  We are called to love even those we consider enemies.  Always.

So on this, All Saints Day, and also “two days before election” day, I have two charges for you. First, be of comfort.  Know that God is with the Saints and that God is with you.  Know that as we rest in God, our fears will be eased, our struggles will be made into something good, and our pain will be transformed into life.

But second, do not vote out of fear, or anger or, worst of all, hate. Do not live out of fear, anger or hate.  If All Saints day is about anything, it is about trusting that as the Saints live on, we, too can live as God calls us to live, with love, with trust, with hope and with compassion. 

I want to share with you two writings. 

The first is a poem by W.H. Auden called “Better Fears”

O God

it is so easy

to be afraid

to be made afraid.

Demagogues of every sort

have always counted on our fears

to scare us into submission.

Politicians and preachers

commissars and evangelists

make people afraid—

afraid of what will happen to them

afraid of death

and therefore of life

afraid of differences

strangers

joy.

The fearmongers are so successful

because they find in us

such willing subjects.

But the gospel of perfect love

comes to us

to cast out fear—

from our beginning.

Some of us

have never affirmed

our first birth—

have never said 'Good!' to our emergence

'Very good!' to our creation.

Be midwife to our self-respect

and mother to our growth.

Perfect love

will cast out fear

and when You are through with us

we will be fearless.

  

in the mean time

at least help us

to move from petty fears

to better ones;

from fears of hell

to admissions of joylessness;

from quaking before opinions and modes and fashions

to fearing

loss of our integrity

and untruth in our very souls.

We would say 'Bravo!'

to

our birth

our re-birth

Your will that created us

our choice to be

and to become.

amen.

Let go of fear.  Remember that the thing that is most feared, death, ends with life.  God is with us, making those we have loved, those we love still, into the Saints that remind us of the value of living but also the value of remembering what they have been, what they have given us, who we are called to be.

This second poem I want to share with you is called “life Unbroken”. It was written by Harry Scott-Holland in 1910.

Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room. 

Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.

All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

We can feel safe in the assurance that our loved ones still exist, that they are with God, that our love for them still matters, and their love for us is endless.  We honor the Saints by living in the love God calls us to extend to all creation.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - All Saints' Day

John 11:32-44

Revelation 21:1-6a

Today we celebrate All Saints Day – the day when we remember those who have passed on, and we celebrate their continued lives with God.  It is also the day that we look forward with anticipation to the time when, as we heard in Revelation, “Death will be no more.  There will be no more mourning, crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”

            The story about Lazarus has many levels of meaning for us.  We are reminded that even Jesus grieved.  The shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept” is an important verse for us, reminding us that grief is normal, that God, too, has experienced it, that it is a necessary and yet healing part of life.  We are also given our first real glimpse into that time when death will be no more, when things such as grieving and loss will be no more because even death will be overcome.  Jesus ends death for Lazarus, and in doing so shows us that we don’t have to just grieve, remember and celebrate the past lives of those saints who have passed, but that there will come a time when we can celebrate with them together again.

            Additionally, as we know, our relationships with those who have passed haven’t even ended now – they have simply changed.  In the early church, walls in the sanctuaries were hung with pictures of the “saints”.  These pictures were there to remind congregants that they were not worshiping alone.  The pictures, the images represented a cloud of witnesses that were all worshiping with us.  Some traditions include the practice of kissing those pictures or icons – again as a way of recognizing that though that person has passed, they are still part of our community, they remain part of the worshiping body, that they continue with God and remain here with us as part of our worshiping community as well.  For us, we don’t separate out some people as Saints.  Instead, we recognize that all who have passed on are the “Saints”.  Still, we are also called to recognize that they are here with us, too, worshiping God as we do.  In this way, our connections to those who have passed on also serve as reminders that we are connected to something else, something bigger that unites all of us – that connection is God. 

            We keep the spirits of the saints with us through our memories, through our time spent with them in thoughts, in stories, in looking at pictures, in sharing with others our connections with those who have passed on.

            For awhile, when the kids were very little, we had a Beta fish named Jeriah.  We also had a daily ritual or routine where I would sing Middle to sleep every night with the song, “the more we get together, together, together, the more we get together, the happier we’ll be.”  And then I would name the members of our family.  “With (Middle) and (Eldest) and (Youngest) and Daddy and Mama and Sabbath and Jeriah and everyone.”  Well, as happens with all pets, eventually Jeriah died.  After Jeriah died, the kids and I had a little “service” to say goodbye to the fish and to give Jeriah a proper fish burial down the toilet.  Middle, the most sensitive of my children, was the hardest hit by the death. 

You wouldn’t think a person could get that connected to a fish, but I was wrong.  Middle, at two years of age, was very sad that Jeriah had died.  That evening when I went to sing the good night song to Middle, I came to the names of everyone in the family and for a moment hesitated when I came to the place where I had always said, “Jeriah”.  For a moment I didn’t know how to proceed, especially because Middle had been so hard hit about Jeriah’s death.  But Middle quipped up with, “Say Jeriah.  Don’t forget Jeriah!”  Still I hesitated.  Did he not understand that Jeriah had died?  Did he think that maybe in the morning Jeriah would just be right there in the fish tank like always?  Finally, I said, “You do understand, honey, that Jeriah is dead, right?” 

“Yes,” he responded, “but even in death, he is still a part of our family.”  Yes, he was right.  Jeriah was still a part of our family.  He will always be a part of our family because death doesn’t end that.  Death doesn’t end those connections, time doesn’t end those connections.   A few years later, my grandfather died.  Now Middle was 5.  And this death, too, hit him hard.  He talked about my grandfather regularly for the next year and still mentions him on occasion.  But again, he continued to proclaim that even in death, great grandpa remained an important part of our family.  And he was right.

 After the death of a loved one, the relationship does change.  And while the new relationship, the changed relationship with our departed loved one may start with intense grief, over time that changes as well.  We grieve differently, we may spend less time in the pain of the grief, less time focused on that person and the loss of that person.  But a connection once made always remains in some way.  That “saint” that has passed is part of our history and is therefore part of us.  We incorporate their soul, their being, in a different way into our psyches but they remain with us – they have affected who we are, our memories of them, the stories of which they are a part have become part of our very being.  That connection with the Saints, that remembrance of lives once spent together and now connected in a different way, and the future anticipation of a time when death is no more, all of that is a great gift to us.  Following the sermon, I will invite you to bring a flower forward and say the name of someone who has passed but who is still a saint for you, someone who is still part of your being, has been part of making you who you are in some way. I invite you to remember that while those saints have passed, we remain united to them, and they also remain part of our worship, that they, too, are worshiping God with us now even as we are.  And even as they are apart from us physically.  Amen.