I was standing outside the church on a beautiful day this summer after the memorial service for a dear friend, Dr. Marcia Dean, when a man approached me to thank me for my words. He began to tell me his memories of Marcia. She was his audiologist. He told me how she took time with him to really listen, to really try to understand his very complicated hearing loss and how it had impacted his life. He told me she did not just test him and send him away with amplification, but followed up and visited with his family to let them know of ways to help him participate more fully in their daily routines. He talked about how she seemed to understand that hearing loss is not just a nuisance but it can be isolating and energy draining for the person who experiences the loss as well as for those who try to engage with them. “She took time”, he said. “She really cared about me. She was a true saint.” This man’s life had been changed by my friend’s care.
Today is All Saints’ Day, a day in the church when we come together to remember and to celebrate saints in our lives. We celebrate the saints of the church who are known by many for their courage and faith, and we celebrate those saints who may be known to a smaller group of people but who personally touched our lives, giving us a glimpse of God’s kingdom and God’s hope for us through their love and their presence, bringing goodness into our lives and into the world. Leonard Cohen, one of my favorite theologians, says that a saint is “someone who has achieved a remote human possibility that has something to do with the energy of love.” [1]
Many of us have learned a lot about love through the saints in our lives. It may have been a tender love that helped us see our innate worthiness or a challenging love that called us to step outside our comfort and reach for something beyond what we had imagined.
It may have been a long lasting love that showed us how to live a life of faithfulness and evolving promise, or it may have been brief, full of wonder, and passionate. This love may have introduced us to new stories and new ways of seeing or helped us discover something “more” that we had not noticed in the place we had been standing for years. Saints are those people who open their hearts to the possibilities of life abundant. And through their life and love we too are able to see the opening of a new heaven and a new earth. On All Saints’ Day, the church remembers and celebrates the saints in our lives, men and women whose lives bear witness to a hope found in the gospel that proclaims that God always points us to life.
Saints sometimes come into our lives when we least expect them and yet when we are most ripe for their appearing. They may be a friend who finds us when we are most in need. A teacher who believes in us when we do not believe in ourselves. A loved one who surprises us by joy. A mentor who helps us see something beyond. And in these people we feel stones being moved and life opening up so that we can see more clearly God at home amongst us mortals. Saints are people who seem to connect us to God’s love and they also show us how to live in the belief that nothing in life will separate us from this love. In this way they seem to live without fear for the sake of this one true thing.
Some of our saints still live among us. We can see them and give them thanks for their presence in our lives. But some of our saints have passed from this life and we mourn their absence. Like Mary and Martha, although we follow Jesus who promises us eternal life, in this world true life and resurrection cannot deny the reality of death. Sorrow is a part of human existence. Because we love, we grieve.
Jesus enters into our sorrow. When Jesus arrives near Bethany, he is met by Mary the sister of Lazarus. Mary falls at Jesus’ feet and says through her tears, “If you had been here my brother would not have died.” We then read that Jesus, seeing his beloved friend, and those who had gathered to mourn, weeping, he is “greatly disturbed in spirit” and weeps with those around him.
He enters into the suffering of those he loves. Even though he knows that soon his friend, Lazarus will be called from the tomb, he is not removed from the reality of death. Even in the truth of resurrection, sorrow is a part of our human existence. And Jesus, out of love and compassion shares fully in the suffering of our lives.
On All Saints’ Day while we celebrate the love, the kindness, and the generosity of those saints we hold dear, we also grieve their passing. We acknowledge how much we miss them and long to hear their voice and see their face again. And so on this day we are charged with holding in tension, the joy of having had these people in our lives and the sorrow of seeing them no more—the joy of believing that death is not the end, that life and love are what are eternal, and mourning the loss of those who were very important to us– filling our lives with joy
But through our hope in the resurrection we will not be left in the tomb. From a prayer in the Burial Office we hear:
We seem to give her back to you dear God, who gave her to us. Yet as you did not lose her in giving, so we have not lost her by her return. Not as the world gives, do you give, O Lover of souls! What you give, you do not take away. For what is yours is ours always, if we are yours. And life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.[2]
Jesus asks to be taken to where Lazarus has been laid in death and orders the stone to be removed. Martha protests, but Jesus reminds her that if she will just believe she will see God’s glory.
See the glory of God, he says. See in death defeated, eternal life. See—here and now before you too face death—the resurrection and the life that is in him. See in him God who is present and victorious over death.
Praying to God, Jesus gives thanks and then in a loud voice, cries “Lazarus come out!” Lazarus emerges from the tomb wearing his burial cloths. Jesus calls on others to remove the death that holds him captive. “Unbind him and let him go.” It is in this stunning moment that we can see that, like Lazarus, when Jesus calls us to come out and be unbound, we too can claim our entrance into eternal life.
On All Saints’ Day we remember and give thanks for those who have shown us the way of love, of hope, and of life-giving presence. It is also a day that while we grieve their absence in our lives, we do not grieve as ones without hope. Instead we can in boldness grieve as ones who expect to see the glory of God.
With hope we can believe, alongside those before us, that death and pain aren’t ultimate. That God will not only prepare a place for us with feasting, but will remove the shroud of death that covers us, wiping away every tear from our eyes.
Faith in Jesus does not in this life protect us from death and suffering, but we are promised that death will not have the final word. Jesus, who loves us, who enters into our suffering; will bring us from death to life, from bondage to freedom, from the darkness into the light.
On this All Saints’ Day, along with a great cloud of witnesses, let us live as though death has no power over our days. Let us live as though eternal life is now because God is. And let us live without fear because in life and in death, we belong to God.
Lift us up, O God, that we may see further; cleanse our eyes that we may see more clearly; draw us closer to you, that we may know ourselves nearer to our beloved who are with you. And while your Son has prepared a place for us, prepare us for that happy place, that, where they are and you are, we too may someday be; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
[1] Leonard Cohen. Beautiful losers. Ontario, Canada: McClelland and Stewart, 1966.
[2] Joseph Buchanan Bernardin. Burial Services. Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 1980, 101.