Let us pray: May these words be your words O Lord, spoken and shared for your glory and the good of your people. Amen.
The summer before my ordination, as part of my training, I worked as a chaplain at RiverBend Hospital. I was assigned to the intensive care unit and very quickly came face to face with death. My clinical pastoral educator, my chaplain mentor, and my colleagues were excellent, and the experiences, while challenging and intense, were some of the most meaningful and powerful that I have ever had. Here I learned how to accompany people in their grief. To just BE with them. I learned that there is no such thing as the “right” or “perfect” words to say or share, that, in fact, it’s often better to just be quiet and just be there with them in the moment. I did a lot of praying, a lot of listening, and a lot of walking among the trees and along the river path. These were powerful times. These were holy times. Times experiencing human mortality, the closeness of God and the mixture of grief and hope.
In my time at St. Mary’s I have had requests for two funerals. Neither of them were from people that I knew, but rather from people reaching out to us in their times of need and grief. In one case I was able to help plan a service for a woman whose daughter was Catholic but whose mother was not. The daughter was very concerned about her mother’s soul and wanted very much for to enter into her eternal rest. I assured her that I could help. And it was my privilege to be able to offer comfort, peace, and hope as I shared readings from scripture, prayed, and commended her mother to God’s loving care. The other request was for the cousin of a man from Mexico who was looking for someone to come to the family viewing and offer prayers in Spanish. In both cases, I was privileged to be with these families and their friends and to represent the church as we prayed, heard from scripture, said goodbye and commended their loved ones to the care of God. In my time at the hospital and in helping with funerals, I discovered a new kind of shared space, one that is quite liminal, what I’ve heard described as “thin places” the intersection of heaven and earth. Times when you’re aware that you’re involved in something sacred, moments of the divine drawing very near. Times that occur at the end of our loved ones lives.
Do you recognize the readings from today as ones that are often used at funerals? From the prophet Isaiah:
“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines strained clear.” This image of a great celebratory meal with the finest of food and drink for all to enjoy. “And God will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; God will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces..” God will swallow up death. God will wipe away ALL the tears. These images of a sumptuous feast, blotting out any reason for crying, offering the safety, care, and joy of life in God’s presence, are comforting and hope-giving as we face the reality of death. And the images from Revelation, the new heaven and new earth, with God’s home here, among us, once again God wiping away our tears, death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more. These are images filled with hope and promise. There is grief in death, yes, but there is also joy. Death and Resurrection go together, a normal part of life on earth, the cycle of life, death, and rebirth that connects us with each other in this world and in the next. There is a note in the prayer book concerning funerals that sums up this dual nature of death and how we connect and relate to it from a Christian perspective.
“The Liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy. It finds all its meaning in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised.
The liturgy, therefore, is characterized by joy, in the certainty that, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor 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.”
This joy, however, does not make human grief unchristian. The very love we have for each other in Christ brings deep sorrow when we are parted by death. Jesus himself wept at the grave of his friend. So, while we rejoice that one we love has entered into the nearer presence of our Lord, we sorrow in sympathy with those who mourn.” B.C.P., p. 507
We find joy knowing that none of us will be separated from the love of God, not even death can do that! And we still grieve, we mourn the loss of those who will no longer be physically present with us here on earth. In today’s gospel, Jesus is grieving the loss of his friend Lazarus. Twice John points out that Jesus was “greatly disturbed” and “deeply moved.” Jesus wept at the reality of his friend’s death. Even though he knew that Lazarus would live again, very soon in fact, he still felt the very real, biting pain of his leaving this world, and the waves of grief that it set in motion for Mary and Martha, family and friends.
Grief and loss are normal parts of our lives as humans. They are nothing to be ashamed of. They do not make us any weaker or any less Christian or any less anything. Jesus grieved. Jesus wept. Jesus knows the pain and sorrow of loss and abandonment. So too, Mary, his mother. So too, the Creator of the universe whose only Son was betrayed and killed. It is for this very reason that we CAN and should bring our pain and sorrow to God. Because we are bound together in the love of Christ, it hurts us to be parted from those we love. At the same time, because of our faith in the resurrection we know that we are still connected. This is what All Saint’s Day is all about! Listen to the collect for today one more time:
O, Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord
(We are knitted together in love, in communion with each other and with Jesus!)
Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living
(Yes, God please help us to follow the example of those saints, both BIG and small and remind us that they are here with us along the way)
That we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you. (ahh, we too may come to those unimaginable-by-our-human-mind joys that God has already prepared for us. This is our hope, this is our promise, not just for us but for All the Saints throughout time. Nice!)
Today we recall the dual nature of death, its sting and sorrow and its joy and hope. We remember our connection with those who have died before us, all the saints, and our connection in the love of God, and in the hope of the resurrection. And we look to their examples as we seek to follow God and look forward to one enormous, joyous reunion with all the saints in heaven and on earth.
