Sermon: Death, Life, and Holiness (All Saints Day 2015)

All Saints Day

November 1, 2015

            As most people do when they suddenly become parents, Michael and I have been thinking back on our own childhoods a lot, considering what from those years we want to do with our own child. One thing we’ve been working on putting in place is a bedtime routine. Mine growing up was that we read a story, then said prayers, then mom or dad sang a song and scratched our backs while

we fell asleep. And of course I still remember the prayer I said as a very little girl, until I was able to

say the much longer Lord’s Prayer that my older brother said. Maybe you said it, too, as a child, and remember it: “Now I lay me down the sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”

            I remember as a child, I didn’t have any trouble with mentioning death in my prayer. Of course I didn’t ever plan to “die before I wake,” but if there was a chance I might, I was glad to pray that the Lord would take my soul straight up to heaven. I also loved a frequently sung bedtime song, which I now sing to Grace, which has a similar idea: “Four corners to my bed, four angels there a-spread. Two to feet, and two to head, and four to carry me when I’m dead.” Never once as a child do I remember being concerned about this – in fact, I rather enjoyed the peaceful image of angels carrying me to heaven someday. It seems as a child, I had no concerns about speaking so explicitly about death, at least not in the context of prayer and song.

            Adults, however, are another question. I have seen an updated version of my beloved bedtime

prayer that changes the second line to, “Guide me safely through this night and wake me with the morning light.” Maybe the change is to spare children from this inappropriate topic, but I think more it is to spare adults. Adults, I have found, do not like to talk about death so openly. We don’t even like the word. We say people “pass away,” or, “we lost him.” Even in hospitals, the proper language is to say someone has “expired” – something that drove me crazy when I was a hospital chaplain one summer (as if people are yoghurt or something!). But to talk about death outright – proper etiquette considers it crass and disrespectful.

            As a pastor, I’m not quite sure how to manage this reality. Because talking about death is kind of why the church is here. Our faith depends on a man named Jesus who died for our sins. We would never say Jesus “passed away” for our sins, that he “left us” on the cross, that he “expired” so that we would have eternal life. Our faith, ultimately, is about life – everlasting life, yes, as well as living in fullness of life here on earth – but you can’t talk about life until you’ve talked about death.

            That’s why All Saints Day is one of my favorite days of the church year, because it is a day when we do, all together as a community of faith, acknowledge that death is a part of life. Traditionally on this day, we name all those who are members of this congregation or close friends or family of members who have died in the faith in the past year, and remember them – either by ringing a bell, or lighting a candle, or just taking a moment to remember.

            But it is not just a day when we remember. Though remembering is a good thing to do, and a biblical thing to do (God is often inviting God’s people to “remember” past acts and history), there is more to our faith than this. Do you notice what the color is today? … White. In what other season of the church year do we see white in the church? [Easter] Exactly – it is the color we use to celebrate new life, and specifically the new life that resulted from Christ’s triumph over death. We use the same color for baptismal gowns, and funeral palls. On Easter, and in those other events, we celebrate that triumph, that resurrection. And so when we use that same color on All Saints Day, it puts death in its proper context: in the Christian faith, death is a means to life, not the other way around.

            When we can accept this, that death is a means to life and a chance to celebrate Christ’s triumph over death and the new and everlasting life we find as a result, two things happen. First, we no longer have to be terrified of death. David Lose says it beautifully: “It is from the light of Easter dawn that we confront the darkness of death. And it is from the other side of Christ’s resurrection that we gain the courage, not to deny death, but to defy it, to defy its ability to overshadow and distort our lives, for the Risen Christ has promised us that death does not have the last word.”

            The other thing that happens is that life no longer terrifies us! That may sound strange to say – death seems like the more terrifying of the two. But how many of us are afraid to really live – we fear taking risks lest we fail, we fear investing energy in something important lest we end up disappointed, we even fear helping others lest we put ourselves in danger, or be confronted with our own weakness. But because Christ has triumphed over death, these things don’t need to terrify us. We can live, trusting that our lives have a God-given purpose, and we are called to fulfill that purpose.

            And that brings us once again to baptism. We always think about All Saints Day as the day when we remember those who have died. Certainly that is a part of it – we remember them, we give thanks for their lives, we remember their faith, and we remember that they are now partaking of the heavenly everlasting feast that is promised to us. But it is also a day to think about the saints that are right here among us – all of you! You likely noticed that when we began worship this morning, we named not only those who have died, but also those who have been baptized in the past year. That is because when we talk about saints, we are really talking about all the baptized, all who, as the book of Romans articulates, have been baptized and united with Christ in a death like his, so that we are also united with him in a resurrection like his.

            You see, we are all saints already. We all celebrate today the gift of eternal life. We all

All Saints Day, by John August Swanson

celebrate today the gift of this life that we are currently living. So the question becomes: how will do you that? How will you celebrate and live into your saintly identity already? Here’s how I am going to do it: by considering every role I have – as pastor, as wife, as friend, as mother, as colleague, as neighbor – every role as something that is sanctified, made holy by God. God gave me the capacity to do and be all those things. God called me into all those things. God promised me in my baptism that my life, my whole life, is holy. If I can consider each of my various roles as something holy, I think it might just affect how I see its importance. Going through the check-out line at Wegmans – how would a saint do this? How would a saint drive to work? How would a saint clean the house?

            This life is a gift, a sanctified, holy gift. To live it wholly, whole-heartedly, is to live it without fear of death, trusting instead in the life-giving power of Jesus Christ. And so let us give thanks together, with all the saints – both those who have gone before us into eternal glory and those who are gathered around us here this morning. Let us give thanks that God has sanctified us to live holy lives here and now, and that God has given us the assurance that we need not fear the grave, because Christ has shown us that the grave is merely a means to eternal life. Amen! Thanks be to God!

            In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.