All Saints' Sunday
In the name of the God of birth, of life, and of life eternal. Amen.
One of the things that I often notice as a priest is how much the subject of death comes up in the context of conversations about spirituality and faith. Sometimes it’s surprising to me, because so much of what I know and teach about faith is that it’s meant to be a source of joy – it’s meant to be life-giving. And, while Jesus’ death on the cross is a central story in our faith, it’s really not the point – the point isn’t the suffering and dying, but the hope that comes from life triumphing over death in the end.
But still, we keep thinking about death. Maybe it’s just human nature.
In our Vestry meetings, for example, we begin each meeting with an inspirational moment – where each member in their turn throughout the year, will spend just a few minutes talking about some moment when they felt inspired. So many of the stories that are shared are about someone significant who died, or sometimes, even about the experience of being near someone’s death itself.
And I do understand it. Death is the one thing that really ties us all together. It is a universal experience that none of us know, first-hand. And death is a moment of treading the boundaries between the physical world and the spiritual world. It’s a threshold. So, it is inherently spiritual. And, when we set aside our fear and dare to marvel at it, it can be profoundly inspirational.
I know some of the holiest moments I’ve experienced as a priest are the times when I’ve been with people as they died. They are hard moments, but they are holy moments.
So, today, we hear in the story of Jesus the story of a hard, holy moment in his own ministry. A beloved friend has died. And not just died – he has died, been buried, and started to stink. It’s not like the story of Jairus’ daughter that we heard about a while back, when Jesus said, “She’s not dead, as you say, but she is asleep.” No – this time his friend, Lazarus, is dead. All the way. There was no denying it.
In fact, even Jesus knew he was dead. He grieved. He wept over his beloved friend who had died. But then, through the pain and sadness and grief, he used that horrible moment by turning it into an occasion for seeing and experiencing the glory of God.
Against their protests, he had the stone in front of the tomb moved away. He called out to God for help. And finally, he cried out, “Lazarus, come out!” And he did. He was bound in death, but Jesus called him out and he came. And he was unbound and released into life.
Several years ago, I saw one of the most incredible plays I’ve ever seen called The Testament of Mary. It stared Fiona Shaw as Mary, the mother of Jesus. It was a one-woman play where Mary shared her reflections from her perspective in the post-resurrection days. She’d gone a little bit crazy and was frankly jaded and bitter about the whole experience.
But one of the aspects of her storytelling that I’ll never forget was when she recounted the story of the raising of Lazarus, but from her perspective – at least, her perspective as the author imagined it. With hardly veiled contempt in her tone, she expressed doubt about the whole affair, but she did admit: you know what? He was never quite right after that. Perhaps he had been raised, but there was something off.
Part of the reason that play, and the book that inspired it, were so moving to me was because they dared to consider the humanity of Mary. We’re used to seeing her in icons with a knowing smile, cold eyes, and a halo around her head. But we’re wise to remember that God didn’t enlist the services of an angel or of some sub-god to bring Christ into the world – but God found a person. A young woman. Someone who, because of her own humanity, was subject to the same kinds of flaws and doubts and fears that any person would have.
And really, that’s a big part of the beauty of the story of Lazarus. It calls us to consider, and really to face the finality of death. That line about the stench is so powerful and evocative. We can’t hear that and sanitize it. It was an ugly and messy truth. That death was very human and very real.
But even through that ugliness God worked through Jesus to teach the people of their day a new lesson. They were taught to not count God out. They were taught to embrace a new willingness to question everything that they thought they knew. They were given this little window of preparation as they made their way into Jerusalem – a little window that might leave them open enough to consider their new reality once they finally come face to face with Resurrection.
For the past couple of weeks I have turned again and again to the story of James and John pulling Jesus aside on the roadside to have a private word with him about their desire to have a favored place in the reign of God that was coming. I’ve heard this story all my life, so I don’t really know why it keeps coming up for me again and again – but again, here on All Saints’ Sunday, the story seems relevant once more.
In that first sermon a few weeks ago, I said something like, this is an example of the saints of our faith not being lifted up as exemplary of ideal behavior, but of behavior we should avoid.
I think that’s one of the real gifts of All Saints’ Day as an observance. In religion we naturally spend so much of our time and attention thinking about God, divinity, and things holy. The gift of All Saints’ Day is that it serves as a reminder that most of the history of our faith has been made up of people like us. The physical incarnation of God in the person of Jesus only happened once. But the spiritual incarnation of Christ has been happening every day for thousands of years and through the imperfect lives of millions of people, just like us.
We lift up these saints, not ignoring their imperfections, but embracing them.
It’s helpful to remember that when we think of these icons of saints that we see from time to time – it’s helpful to remember that they weren’t walking around with the glow of the halos that have been painted onto their images. We put those halos there. In life, they were just people like us.
So, on All Saints’ Sunday, we remember those halos that have been placed around all the saints – the famous ones lifted up by the church, but also the ordinary ones that have lifted us up in our own lives. And it serves as a reminder to us today that we’re also not walking around with halos encircling our heads. We don’t have a beatific glow that sets us apart. But our charge is to live our lives in such a way that the people we leave behind will want to put those same halos on us, just as we’ve put them on our own friends and loved ones who have gone before.
Death is a holy and inspirational thing. It is sad and it is hard. We grieve, and like Jesus we are allowed to cry. We have permission to weep and mourn. But it is at once one of the most human experiences we have, connecting us to all of humanity that was and is and is to come. And it is the threshold into the holy, life-everlasting that is coming. It is the closest physical connection we have to God on this side of that line.
So give thanks for the saints. Give thanks for their holiness and for their humanity. And strive to live in their example – both in their flawed humanity and in their holy connection to God that we all share. Give thanks for all the saints, and for all the saints to come. Amen.
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