Today's Sermon

 

"Reverence and Hope in the Face of Death – Who We Are Series"

 

Reverence and Hope in the Face of Death – Who We Are Series

            We continue our series articulating who we are as Christians on this All Saints Day by honoring the dead and proclaiming hope in the face of death.  This is who we are too.  We live in a culture that struggles to honor the dead.  We keep death out of sight, and leave only truncated periods for grief. We need to feel our grief.  A beautiful song from a singer-songwriter Stephen Wilson Jr. features the refrain, “Grief is only love that’s got no place to go.”  Grief is only love that’s got no place to go.

            Let us grieve the dead today.  In a moment I’m going to ask you to do something I almost never do in church.  Pull out your phones and find a picture of someone you’re grieving.  It’s okay if you can’t find one, but I’ll give you a minute to look and if you can’t or don’t want to, you can just spend time pulling up in your mind’s eye the image of someone…

            Hold up your phones…Everyone, look around at the saints in our midst…If you’d like, whether you have a picture to show or just a name to share, turn to a neighbor or two around you and share who you are remembering today.  If you are at home, spend a moment calling someone up in your mind’s eye.  Who were they and who were they to you.  I’ll call you back together with a tone.

            If you have some tears, of course.  Thomas Lynch said:  “There’s no easy way to do this.  So do it right:  weep, laugh, watch, pray, love, live, give thanks and praise; comfort, mend, honor, and remember.”  We carry them in us.  We are reunited with them at the mystical table of communion. 

The table reminds us that we also hold onto hope in the face of death.  The prophet Isaiah writes,   

6On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. 7And the Lord will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; the Lord will swallow up death forever. 8Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people the Lord will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken (Isaiah 25:6-8).

Jewish thought on death and afterlife is more varied than we often recognize. Here the prophet casts a vision not just of individual existence beyond the grave, but of an abolition of death itself. Instead of being swallowed up by death, it is death that is swallowed up by God.  The prophet says that one day God will wipe the tears from all faces, this universal vision.

            Paul, an expert in Jewish law and the beneficiary of a mystical experience with the risen Christ says,

³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).

How does one get convinced of that?  David Richo, who led our spiritual life retreat last weekend said in faith there’s no logical explanation, something just happens to us and it leads us to want to live in the world differently.  Here’s one thing that happened to me:  When I was a sophomore in high school, a beloved uncle died.  It was the first death that was close to me at an age where I could really understand it.  He was a musician, and he had requested that the music at the service be loud enough so that he could hear it from the rafters of heaven.  I remember walking from the graveside, having seen him lowered into the ground, the epitome of a chilling moment.   Yet, after I walked back to the car holding my father’s hand, crying, I got in the front seat—I can still see the floormat in my mind’s eye—and out of me came the words: “I’m not so afraid to die anymore.” 

            Now where did those words come from?  How did I know then?  Richo reminds us there is no understanding, just heeding.  He referring back to the 23^rdPsalm: “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me…” He would ask, “Who is this ‘thou’” this mysterious presence we sometimes feel, we on some level know.  It’s the source of our hope and as Christians we have nothing if not hope.

            In the end, just as hope has a source so does grief have a place to go, just as joy has a place to go in our thanks, just as worry has a place to go, just as pleading has a place to go.  What comes from our heart does not fall on deaf ears. When we hold onto that hope, what comes from our heart changes.  What I noticed about that Stephen Wilson Jr. song after loving it for some time is that while the refrain begins “Grief is only love that’s got no place to go,” near the end the, “got no place to go” part fades away and it ends instead with the phrase, “grief is only love.”  Grief is only love.  Who are we? We are a people who recognize in God, in Christ, in Spirit, all else gets stripped away until all that’s left, all that’s at our core is exposed, and it’s only love, only love, only love. 

            Amen.