November 3, 2024
Revelation21.1-6a
+ You’ve heard me say it before and
I will no doubt say it again.
I certainly don’t make any secret
about it.
But, I LOVE the feast day of All
Saints.
After all, from the very earliest
days of the Church, this has been one of the highpoints of the Church year.
It’s an important feast.
And it’s important not just because
we honor saints like St. Stephen, or Mary the mother of Jesus, or any of the
other saints.
It’s an important days because it
is a day in which we honor also those loved ones in our own lives who have gone
before us.
This feast and the one we commemorate
yesterday on November 2, All Souls, are very important feast days for me.
And because both of them came this past
week, I am going to touch on both.
Actually, I’m kind of guilty of
combing the two.
One is about the SAINTS.
One is about all the rest.
I’m just going to talk about
everyone because, let’s face it: you know I’m an unapologetic
Universalist.
I do not believe in hell, or
purgatory.
Though I would be more willing to
believe in purgatory than hell any day.
So, this is a time for us to honor
our departed loved ones, as well as those we might not know about.
Honoring and praying for those who
have departed this life has always been an important part of the Church.
But, there are some branches of the
Church that do not honor saints or our departed loved ones in this manner.
Being brought up Lutheran, we
didn’t make a big deal about the saints.
If you come from a Methodist or a
Presbyterian background, there have been some honoring of those who have gone
before, but prayers are usually not prayed for
them.
After all, the departed are where
they are, and our prayers aren’t going to make much of a difference.
But, for us, as Anglicans and
Episcopalians, honoring saints and praying for those who have died has always
been a part of our tradition.
You will hear us as Episcopalians
make a petition when someone dies that you won’t hear in the Lutheran Church,
or the Methodist Church or the Presbyterian Church.
When someone from our parish dies,
you will probably get a prayer request from me that begins, “I ask your prayers
for the repose of the soul of…”
Praying in such a way for people
who have passed has always been a part of our Anglican tradition, and will
continue, I hope, to be a part of our tradition.
And I can tell you, I like that idea of praying for those who have
died.
But, and this is important: we
don’t pray for people have died for the same reasons other branches of
Christianity do, like Roman Catholicism.
In other words, we don’t pray to
free them from “purgatory,” as though our prayers could somehow change God’s
mind.
(Prayer does NOT change God’s mind)
So, why do we Episcopalians pray
for the departed?
Well, let’s see what the Book of
Common Prayer says.
I am going to have you pick up your
trusty old Prayer Books and look in the back, to the Catechism.
There, on page 862 you get the very important question:
Why do we pray for the dead?
The answer (and it’s very
good answer): We pray for them, because we still hold them in our love, and
because we trust that in God's presence those who have chosen to serve [God]
will grow in [God’s] love, until they see [God] as [God] is.
Now, that is a great answer.
We pray that those who have
chosen God will to grow in God’s love.
So, essentially, just because we die, it does not seem to mean that we stop
growing in God’s love and presence.
But, if you’re still not
convinced, here’s an answer from no greater person than one of the treasures of
the Anglican Church—none other than C.S. Lewis.
Lewis wrote,
"Of
course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but
inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would
deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those
for the dead were forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we love best are
dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were
unmentionable to [God]?”
I think that is wonderful and
beautiful.
And certainly worthy of our
prayers.
But even more so than this
definition, I think that, because we are uncertain of exactly what happens to
us when we die, there is nothing wrong with praying for those who have crossed
into that mystery we call “the nearer Presence of God.”
After all, they are still our
family and friends.
They are still part of who we are.
This morning we are commemorating
and remembering those people in our lives who have helped us, in various way,
to know God.
What this feast shows me is what
you have heard me preach in many funeral sermons again and again.
I truly, without a doubt, believe
that what separates those of us who are alive here on earth, from those who are
now in the “nearer presence of God” is truly a very thin one.
And to commemorate them and to
remember them is a good thing for all us.
I do want us to think today long and hard about the saints we have known in our
lives.
And we have all known saints in our
lives.
We have known those people who have
shown us, by their example, by their good, that God really does work through
us.
And I want us to at least realize
that God still works through us even after we have departed from this mortal
coil.
Ministry in one form or the other,
can continue, even following our deaths.
That quote from Lewis is a prime
example.
Even now, 61 years after his death,
Lewis can still preach to us.
His words still reveal God’s truths
to us.
He is still doing ministry, even
now through his words.
Hopefully, we can still, even after
our deaths, do good and work toward furthering the Reign of God by the example
we have left behind.
For me, the saints—those people who have gone before us—aren’t gone.
They haven’t just disappeared.
They haven’t just floated away and
dissipated like clouds out of our midst.
No, rather they are here with us,
still.
They join with us, just as the
angels do, when we celebrate the Eucharist.
For, especially in the Eucharist,
we find that “veil” lifted for a moment.
That belief comes to us from the
Eastern Orthodox Church.
In this Eucharist that we celebrate
together at this altar, we find the divisions that separate us are gone.
We see how thin that veil truly is.
We see that death truly does not
have ultimate power over us.
That is the way Holy Communion
should be.
It’s not just us, gathered here at
the altar.
It’s the Communion of all the
saints.
In fact, before we sing that
glorious hymn, “Holy, Holy Holy” during the Eucharistic rite, you hear me say,
“with angels and saints and all the company of heaven we sing this hymn of
praise.”
That isn’t just sweet, poetic
language.
It’s what we believe and hope in.
In these last few years, after losing so many people in my family and among my close
friends, I think I have felt their presence most keenly, at times, here at this
altar when we are gathered together for the Eucharist than at any other time.
I have felt them here with us.
And in those moments when I have, I
know in ways I never have before, how thin that veil is between us and “them.”
You can see why I love this feast.
It not only gives us consolation in
this moment, separated as we are from our loved ones, but it also gives us
hope.
And let me tell you, hope,
especially now, is vitally important.
We know, in moments like this,
where we are headed.
We know what awaits us.
No, we don’t know it in detail.
We’re not saying there are streets actually
paved in gold or puffy white clouds with chubby little baby angels floating
around.
We don’t have a clear vision of
that place.
But we do sense it.
We do feel it.
We know it’s there, just beyond our
vision, just out of reach and out of focus.
And “they” are all there, waiting
for us.
They—all the angels, all the
saints, all our departed loved ones.
So, this morning—and always—we
should rejoice in this fellowship we have with them.
In our collect this morning, we
prayed that “we may come to those ineffably joys that you have prepared for
those who truly love you.”
Those ineffably joys await us.
They are there, just on the other
side of that thin veil.
They are there, in that place we
heard about in our reading today from Revelation.
That place in which God “will dwell with them as their God;”
Where we will be God’s peoples
They are there were God wipes “every tear from
their eyes.”
Where “Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."
This is our hope.
This is our future.
Let us, with all those who dwell there now,
rejoice in thanksgiving for that glorious place.
Amen.
