All Saints Sunday

“Concerning Those Who’ve Died…”

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

The little girl who lived in the house next door to the cemetery was fascinated by the long lines of cars and large groups of mourners that gathered there every day. She was especially drawn to the colorfully-robed priests and ministers who conducted the services, and was inspired to mimic them. So one day, the little girl dug a hole in the backyard, then ran into the house and upstairs where she got her Teddy Bear. She tenderly wrapped him in a towel, and walked back outside to the shallow grave. And there, with a thundering voice befitting a true cleric, the little girl declared, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son…and IN THE HOLE YA GOES!”

Here in Tennessee, it is a custom for automobiles traveling in the opposite direction of a funeral procession to brake to a stop until the procession has passed by, out of respect for the dead.

Here in our own sanctuary, when we lift up the names of those who have died, a quiet hush falls upon us, and we find ourselves face-to-face again with life’s greatest mystery.

Death.

The mere word stirs up all kinds of thoughts and feelings and human response within us – awe, fear, hurt, memory, anger, and even humor…Ín the name of the Father, and of the Son, and in the hole ya goes!

Death.

Do you sense the heavy spirit that has come upon us just by the mere mentioning of the word?

Sigmund Freud said that what separates human beings from all the other creatures is that we humans have a self-conscious that is aware of death. In a sense, it’s a lot easier being a dog than it is being a man, woman, or child. You see, animals are born with a set of instinctive responses that enable them to deal with the various moments of life. They live, grow, eat, reproduce, struggle against the elements, and eventually die with no conscious awareness of a beginning and an end.

But we do.

Do you know that only we human beings make promises to the dead? Only we human beings give thought to providing for those we leave behind. And only we human beings hold sacred the anniversaries and sacred holidays of those who’ve died.

And so we come to All Saints Sunday.

In my mind, All Saints Sunday is one of the most important days in the life of the Church. It is one of the few occasions when we Christians are required to be honest, and face life as it really is. At Christmastime we celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus, but we hold at arms length the companion story of the children who were murdered by King Herod as he sought the Christ Child. It would ruin Christmas to think about death. And at Easter, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus with the largest crowds of the year. But the least attended services in Lent are those held on Good Friday when the subject is Jesus’ death. Sometimes we Christians use Christmas and Easter to try to hide from death.

But we can’t do that today, on All Saints Sunday. This day requires us to look death straight in the eye. And as we do, All Saints offers us some amazing gifts for dealing with death and loss in ways that are healthy and hopeful. Several of these gifts are outlined in Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians in a section that begins with the words, “Now concerning those who’ve died…”

The first gift is what I would describe as the gift of reunion with our loved ones.

Like you and me, the Christians in Thessalonica had experienced the loss of people they loved. And they were worried about whether they would ever see them again, and enjoy the life of the Kingdom of God with them. So they asked Paul about it. And Paul answered by painting a beautiful word picture of the second coming of Christ. He said the dead would be raised first. And then those who are alive at the time. And we will all meet in the presence of Jesus as he descends in the clouds!

Simple message? Among the wonderful purposes of God for the world, is God’s plan for reuniting you and me with those we love when Christ returns.

And on All Saints Sunday we anticipate that reunion by inviting our loved ones to church!

One of the saddest developments in contemporary Christianity – in my humble opinion – is the church sanctuary that is designed as an auditorium. Now, I will grant you that for purposes of presentation, the auditorium concept works quite well, with amazing audio and visual technology made possible. If worship is about show business, that concept is the best!

But there is hardly room for the saints.

Have you ever sat quietly by yourself in a true sanctuary and looked around to see who else is there? Perhaps another person in prayer. Maybe a minister or priest. But even more importantly, there are the saints – often pictured in the stained glass windows, and sometimes in the statues, and sometimes in name plates fastened to the side of the pews, and sometimes in the first page of the hymnal, or inscribed on the pew Bible, and sometimes in the nameplates on the nearby columbarium or church graveyard. Abraham. Sara. Moses. Miriam. Ruth. David. Mary. Joseph. Peter. Paul. Matthew. Mark. Luke. John.

And not just the saints of old. Your loved ones and my loved ones are there too.

Auditoriums are nice. But they are not sanctuaries where God’s people meet with the saints.

And yet reunion with our loved ones – even now in the present - is a gift God wants us to have. Why? I think so we will know how much God loves us and understands the desire of our hearts. God wants us to have our families returned to us, and our lives made right and whole again.

And there is much to be learned from the saints. They have blazed the trail before us. They inform us of human weakness and error, and give us a chance to learn from their mistakes. And they show us things of value and importance – things that we need to build our lives on, too.

So here they are, among us today – like a great cloud of witnesses as the book of Hebrews describes them. Do you see your loved ones among them? Can you welcome them today with open arms?

Then a second gift that Paul offers us in this letter “concerning those who’ve died” is the gift of grief.

Sometimes Christians try to ignore their downside emotions, as if feeling bad about tragedy is not permitted for people of faith. I’m amazed at all the ways we Christians cover up our pain when it comes to loss. “God must’ve needed him more than we did.” You know all the things people say.

But these are just words intended to gloss over the hurt we feel. So Paul gives us a great gift today when he says, in effect, “Don’t do that.” It is important to grieve our losses. It is important to mourn.

Last Tuesday was the 32^nd anniversary of my father’s death. I’m amazed that so many years have gone by. And I find myself almost unable to fathom the fact that I am now older than my father was when he died, and yet I still think of him as “the old man.” And it boggles my mind to realize that I have now lived more years without my father than I lived with my father. And it makes me sad to think my mother has been a widow longer than she was married to my dad.

But perhaps even more amazing than that is the fact that even after 32 years, I can go through 364 days of the year as my normal joyful self, but when that one day - November 2^nd – comes around, the pain of my father’s death returns with full force, and I am solidly gripped once again by grief.

You understand what I’m saying, don’t you.

Christian Faith understands that grief never goes away entirely. And grief is what holds into our lives the utter value of life, and the deepest meaning of those with whom we’ve shared it.

So the Bible teaches, “Let grief come. Don’t fear it. Receive it as a gift from God.”

The gift of reunion. The gift of grief. And one more gift drawn from the letter “concerning those who’ve died.”

The gift of hope.

Although we Christians mourn the loss of our loved ones, “We do not mourn,” Paul writes, “as those who have no hope.”

For the early Christians, the HOPE was for a new world called the Kingdom of God. It will be a new order in which God reigns and is present among us and where God’s ways become our ways. It will be a world of love, a world of justice, and world of peace, a world of joy. It will be the world as you dream the world to be for yourself and your children and grandchildren. In the Kingdom of God, all tears will be wiped away, and life will be lived so fully that people can’t help but sing for joy!

This is the Hope. So Paul writes, “We do not mourn as those who have no hope.”

It is a promise from God that a world is being prepared for God’s people of every generation. And we, together with those we love, will live in that world in all the ways that are good and whole and just and that make for life.

And so, even as we mourn, we are called to live in response to our mourning in this special way: by living out that Kingdom now, until it comes. We Christians face our grief by loving, by extending mercy, by working for justice, by making peace, by proclaiming the Gospel…by living out the HOPE even before it arrives!

Why? Because we believe in Jesus, the living proof that the HOPE is real!

As you come to the Table today on All Saints Sunday, look around! Can you sense their presence? As you take the bread and the cup this morning, come into the true meaning of Communion – with God and with all the saints!