All Souls - October 31st & November 1st 2020

 

Loving God, I pray that through the lives of our dearly departed, all the saints in heaven, the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, these words may be to your praise and glory. Amen.

Traditionally, this time of year has always been a time of remembering and praying for the dead.

In Celtic times, November the 1^st was New Years Day, it marked the end of harvest and autumn and the start of winter, when life expectancy was much reduced.

The church adopted it to be All Saints Day, which they called all All Hallows Day, making October 31^st, All Hallows Eve, which we know as Halloween.

While it is now very commercialised, this is a day we set aside to remember our loved ones.

So, this is All Souls, and next week we have Remembrance Sunday. Combined with shorter daylight hours, the cold and the wet, and all the uncertainty around covid, these are very difficult times for many of us.

And then, losing loved ones has made the year even more difficult, and in our culture, even talking about death, is very difficult.

In Mexico, All Souls is the day of the dead, they have a slightly macabre carnival, and people visit the graves of loved ones to pour them a drink and say hello. In Nepal, everyone who has lost someone comes together for a procession and to support each other.

And that is what we are doing here, we can meet, whether online or in church, where many came earlier today, to remember and light a candle and we’ll read out the names of those we have been asked to pray for.

These rituals may seem simple, but they are important, they bring us together, they help us to remember and process all those feeling we often try to bury and ignore.

On top of all this, the last year has been very different for us all.

Yet, the world stills turns, for every sunset, there is a dawn. Every day, babies are born, and every day, people die. This is the way the world is, and the way it has always been, but knowing these things happen, doesn’t make them easier to bear.

The joy of a birth or the joy of a sunrise, and the hope of resurrection, these things too, don’t mean that our losses are any easier to understand.

This experience, of losing loved ones, is marked every year at All Souls, this is a safe space to be in God’s presence where we can freely remember those who are now hidden from us by the shadow of Death.

Remembering is okay, it’s good, it helps us to heal.

And as the Church we are not here to offer trite or easy answers to some of the most difficult questions we face as human beings.  Why do some seem to die far too soon, whilst others live so long that their bodies and desire to live just begin to fade? 

This kind of question we can ask only of God, trusting at least that, as Jesus came down to earth to share our human lives, he can also share in and understand our grief and our loss, as he wept at the death of his friend, Lazarus.

In our reading today, it’s three days since Jesus was crucified, so when Mary Magdalene approaches Jesus’ tomb, she is weeping, clearly she is grieving the loss of a friend, so cruelly killed, who had healed her once and saved her life.

Now though, his body is missing, and her last act as a friend, was going to be anoint his body for his funeral. And now, she has also lost that opportunity to do this one last thing for her teacher.

Loss comes in many forms, a job, a home, a loved one or a teacher, yet for Mary, who was yet to understand what was happening, the loss is deep and emotions are high, and then she is questioned first by two angels, and then Jesus, who she doesn’t recognise, about why she is weeping?

It’s clear they already know what has happened, but in that way which happens when a questioner knows more than the other person, they are a little patronising, surely it’s obvious that the messiah has risen and come back from the dead, after all, he did keep telling them this would happen?

Perhaps misjudging how someone feels is nothing new when someone dies.

And then, how can we comprehend that someone we love might come back, well, that is almost impossible, but not quite.

So while Jesus’ return in physical form is not permanent, because later he will ascend to heaven to be with God his father, but his presence here with Mary, is a sure sign, that death is not the end, that when Jesus died, he was a human man, forsaken even by God, on the cross, and now he was back.

I think it’s okay to doubt that this is even possible, the whole idea of resurrection requires faith, but that is what we can all have, as Christians, faith in a God, his son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, that there is something beyond this life.

But here we are, in a remarkable way, God has raised Jesus from the dead to bring the hope of eternal life to his followers, so that, both then and now, we can be sure that Death is not the end. 

We are told that Christ has gone ahead of us to prepare a place for each one of us in his Father’s house, as we place our trust in him.

The Scriptures also assure us that in faith, all souls who have died are safe and at peace in God’s loving presence. 

And why, why does God promise this amazing place with him in paradise?

Quite simply, love, God created and formed us, He has redeemed us, we are called by name, we are his children, whom he loves.

Yes, we have free will, so bad stuff does happen, but God loves us, loves you, he wants us to return home to him when the time comes.

To me, this is enormously comforting, hugely hopeful.

So despite the darkness, and all the pressures of these difficult times, there is hope, there is a light shining in the night.

And here, now, we choose to commemorate our loved ones by hearing their names read out in the presence of God and of God’s people, and by lighting candles together.

And these candles are the light of Christ, a beacon of hope to show us the way to eternal life.

Amen.

Livestreamed from St George to YouTube on October 31st. Preached at St Cyr on November 1st 2020. 4pm. All Souls Service.

Isaiah 43:1

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

John 20: 11-18

¹¹But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.

¹³They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 

¹⁴When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?

Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 

¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.

But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.