Remembering the Dead

All Saints Day; Yr. C, November 1, 2013

Daniel 7:1-3,15-18; 
Psalm 149; 
Ephesians 1:11-23
; Luke 6:20-31

Sermon preached at St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene Episcopal Church

            At my clergy Bible study this week, a colleague told me that she didn’t think it was any surprise that All Saints Day occurred at this time of the year.  Just think about it, she said, the days are getting shorter, darkness is growing longer, leaves are falling, and the temperatures are dropping.  The earth itself appears to be dying.  At her church, there are a large number of Burmese refugees.  During their first fall here, they saw all these changes taking place and they didn’t know what was happening.  It was totally foreign to them.  They live in the tropics.  They asked the pastor why people weren’t afraid to see all the trees dying.  The pastor assured them that that wasn’t so.  This was fall, and winter would follow.  The trees were not dead; they were becoming dormant.  But the Burmese had never experienced winter and they didn’t believe him.  So one day, he took a few of them outside and with a pen knife, he cut a small branch on one of the trees.  He showed them the green that still lived on the inside of the dead looking branch.  He told them that new leaves would grow on the tree the following spring. So it seems appropriate to remember the promise of resurrection as we begin our journey from fall into the stillness of winter.  Life comes out of death. 

            Back in June, I attended the Bat Mitzvah of one of Nancy’s cousins.  Part of that weekend celebration was the Friday evening shabbot service at the temple where her family belonged.  At one point in the service, the congregation prayed for the dead.  The rabbi stood in front of everyone and raised her hand.  She invited everyone who was mourning to speak aloud the names of those they had lost as she moved her hand slowly from right to left in the room.  As her hand moved she looked out at those gathered.  Slowly at first, the names came out of the silence, one, two, three, four of them … then more quickly as her hand moved across the room.  It seemed as though the room was filled with the many, many souls loved and lost.  Just speaking their names made them present with us.  They seemed to hang in the air around us, as though we were sitting in a cloud of witnesses, embraced by a communion of saints.

That sense came out of my Christian belief, a belief that tells me that those we love, who die in faith, are taken into the fullness of life with God.  We hold them in our love and they are alive with us in Christ.  When I worked as a chaplain at Strong, I spent a day with a mother who was losing her daughter.  She was brain dead, but her body was being sustained on a ventilator.  As we sat, I asked the mother if she had ever lost someone she loved before.  She had, a sister who died several years earlier.   I wondered if she had ever had an experience of her sister’s presence after her death.  The woman surprised me when she said that she had.  After her sister died, she had the job of cleaning out her room.  It was a warm sunny day, and she was going through her sister’s clothes.  Sorting them, and deciding what would be given away and what could be discarded.  As she went through the clothing, she found herself thinking about her sister and feeling very sad. 

Then, she said, I glanced over at the window sill, and there was this beautiful butterfly.  And you know how butterflies are, they come and light on a spot for a few seconds, and then they’re off to another place … to a flower, or twig, or a leaf.  They don’t sit still for long.  My sister loved butterflies.  I was afraid to move because I thought I might scare it off, so I sat on the bed and watched it.  That darn butterfly stayed on that window sill for a long time.  Just me and the butterfly, looking at one another.  I had the strangest feeling that that butterfly was telling me something.  I felt as if my sister was there, telling me not to be sad.  Telling me that she was okay … in that butterfly. 

Every Sunday we come to this table and we experience something similar.  We experience Jesus Christ coming in the bread we eat and the wine we drink and in the community we share.  And in that communion we are joined with all the faithful around this altar, the living and the dead, and all those yet to come.  Past, present and future come together in that marvelous act of thanksgiving.  We are One Body gathered in faith being held by God in love.

On All Saints Day, we celebrate that mystical reality by remembering in particular those who have died and gone before us death.  In a few minutes, we’ll speak their names aloud, just as I heard in that synagogue in June.  We’ll also remember those who have been killed in our city and county.  We’ll gather them around us in spirit, and together … with a heightened awareness of their presence with us … we’ll share communion together in this place.  We’ll all be one.  Just as a tree springs forth with new life in spring, our lives spring forth in resurrection after death.  That is our faith.  That is our hope. 

           

Amen.