The Sunday after All Saints' Day-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

 Sunday after All Saints Year C

November 6, 2022

 

        Most of us don’t want to think about death.  Not our own death.  Not the deaths of those we love.  Rather than even mentioning the word “death,” we have created these phrases that we all know mean death but don’t make us say it.  There’s the most popular “passed away” (as in “he/she passed away”) or the expression of someone being lost-- (we lost him/her or I’m so sorry for your loss).  There’s the wonderfully Shakespearean “shuffled off this mortal coil” or the more prosaic: “kicked the bucket,” “bought the farm,” or even “bit the dust.”  The references may be even more oblique; one of our Wednesday service congregation reported indignantly that her doctor had said to her this week, “you know as we age, these things are going to happen”.  Most of us just don’t like to talk about it or even think about it.  And when we do think about death, it may make us afraid or uncomfortable.

        That’s why I’m so thankful for our liturgical tradition—which encourages us to spend some time with death this time every year.  Every year, we walk through three days of death—All Hallow’s Eve, All Saint’s Day, and the day after when we remember All the Faithful Departed.  In fact, it’s so important to us that we face this reality at least once a year that we can move the observance of All Saints’ Day to the Sunday after, which we are doing today, so just in case people tried to duck spending three days with death earlier in the week, we’re going to get you with it on Sunday! 

I’m also thankful for this place, where we bury our loved ones right outside the doors of the church, so that they are not far away from us in their “eternal rest.”  There’s no fake grass here to try to cover up the gaping hole of the grave, and we even take turns passing around the shovel during the burial service to help fill in their grave. 

So what are the gifts that we receive from marking this day—this Sunday after All Saints’ year after year, from being willing to look at death head on from time to time rather than trying to ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist? 

First, it gives us an opportunity to acknowledge our discomfort around death, and it invites us to sit with death for a bit, maybe even start to make friends with it.  Second, All Saints’ helps us remember that even though each of us must ultimately face death on our own, there is a whole great communion of those who we love and who love us, who have gone before us into death and who wait to welcome us when we get there.  Third, this day serves as a reminder for us that no one who is ever loved is truly lost.  During this season, as we write names on bags and place them on the graves, as we read off names from a list during our Eucharistic prayer, we creep a little bit closer to the reality that there is no real division between death and life, between this life and the next.  It’s what Jesus is talking about in the gospel reading for today: we make our own eternity even now in the choices we make and how we engage others and the world around us.  Or as our burial liturgy puts it:  “death is not the end, but a change.”

One of my favorite musicians—the Quaker poet and musician Carrie Newcomer—has a song titled All Saints’ Day that I’ve been listening to these last couple of weeks.  She captures in poetry and in song the grace and mystery that this day offers us, the comfort and consolation that can be found in remembering all those who have loved us and have gone before us into death and the ways that they continue to support and surround us, in our life and in our death.  In the chorus, Newcomer talks about how the next life hovers close to us all throughout this one, as if on the other side of a veil, and it is only at times that we notice.   

Can't you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil

 

Now is just a moving image
Not a ribbon a start and end
There is a bird a hidden singer
That calls and listens and calls again

 

Can't you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil

 

Centered down and moving outward
Sometimes almost too sweet to bare
There are endless ways to reach home
Just keep walking and I'll meet you there

 

Can't you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil

 

There's a blurring of the borders
And I swear that I heard voices
But every act of simple kindness
Calls the kingdom down and all around us

 

Can't you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil
Standing closer to the veil

Songwriters: Carrie Newcomer, Carrie Ann Newcomer. For non-commercial use only.