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With the arrival of every November, my heart and mind fly back to the year 1973 when our family suffered a string of significant losses. At the beginning of the month that year – November 2nd in fact –  my dad suddenly passed away. Before a year had passed, we had lost both my wife’s mom and her dad as well. This was all happening as we were in the midst of a move to a new pastorate, and while we were expecting the birth of our first child. It was a very difficult time for us.

Suddenly, three quarters of the parental influence and guidance we had come to rely upon was gone. Gone too, was the powerful presence of those who had made possible our lives, along with their voices and laughter and touches we so deeply treasured. When you lose parents, I think you lose something of your own history. How well we remember driving to our new church home, bouncing down Interstate 495 in a UHaul truck containing all our life’s belongings. The thought occurred to me that we were like those Pilgrim people on the Mayflower, our lives uprooted and tossed about on a dangerous and uncharted sea.

As I look out over November and the soon-to-be-beginning of the holiday season, I become keenly aware of empty places around our Thanksgiving table, around the Christmas tree, even around me in the pews at church.

How about you? Are there empty places in your life, too?

As we draw near to the Communion table on this Sunday after All Saints Day, God offers us what I believe is a truly healing gift. You see, whenever this eucharistic celebration takes place, the whole church is present around the table. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews describes it this way: we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.

I wonder if you saw the movie “Places In The Heart.” There is a wonderful moment at the end of the film that illustrates this beautiful truth. The scene is set in a little country church. Its a Sunday morning, just like today. But as the elements of Communion are being served, we suddenly see that all the characters of the movie, both the living and the dead, are present to receive the Sacrament. Everyone is present at the table.

God offers us the healing gift of comm-union. It is one of the ways the Lord ministers to the great losses of our lives. He invites us at this table to join hands not only with Himself, and with each other, and with Christians all around the world, but also with our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, grandparents and friends who are no longer physically present with us.

It is God’s way of showing us that no one is lost to His love, and that one day comm-union will be transformed into re-union.

Who are some of the people you see gathered about the table today? What are their names? How did they touch your life? Do you remember their smile? And their distinctive human nature – both for the better and for the worse? Can you still hear their voice? Can you recall their love?

Today around the table, God’s gift to you and me is to surround us with a great cloud of mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and children and grandparents and friends. And I think God has divine purposes in that.

First, to give us the assurance – whenever we come to this table – that our loved ones have been safely led through the valley of the shadow of death to the Kingdom of God’s love and light.

How well I remember a young mother whose child had died shortly after birth. There in the hospital, she cradled its tiny, lifeless body in her arms and wept, “I don’t want to let him go…he needs someone’s arms to hold him.”

And how true that is of all of us who lose loved ones. We wish we could believe that there are outstretched arms waiting to enfold them when we no longer can.

Communion tells us there are such arms!

For me, one of the most powerful declarations of the Gospel is the word Paul brought to the Thessalonians when he said of their experience of loss and grief, “We mourn, but not as those who have no hope.” You see, death is experienced by Christians as well as by non-Christians. It hurts just as deeply, scars us just as fully. Like all people, we people of faith mourn the passing of those we love.

But we are offered a wondrous hope! And this hope is built around the fact that we believe in a God who, more than anything else, delights in restoring lost things! In fact, a whole chapter of the Gospel of Luke is devoted to telling stories about reunion. A lost sheep is found! A lost coin is discovered! And a brokenhearted father one day opens the door to see his lost son come walking down the pathway home!

To believe in God is to believe in reunion!

So here at the table we are dared to believe that God has kept his promise. Communion – like the rainbow of Genesis – is the sign.

And second, this cloud of witnesses reminds us that there is yet work to be done in bringing to fulfillment the re-union of all things in Christ. The writer to the Hebrews goes on to say, “Therefore let US ALSO lay aside every weight and every sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us!”

The story is told of a man who lost his son in the Gulf War. One day, traveling through the Rockies of Colorado, the man was overwhelmed by the brilliant beauty of the purple hue of the mountains against the glow of an orange sunset. He stopped his car, and got out by the side of the road. The breeze was fresh, and overhead, an eagle soared. He began to weep for his son. “You will never again get to see the beauty of these mountains, the sunset, the vast magnificence of it all,” he sobbed.

And then, in the silence of the moment, the son’s voice seemed to reach across eternity to his father’s broken heart, saying, “Dad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

Dear friends, can you see what that cloud of witnesses sees?

Can you lift your eyes high enough to envision a world in which death is no more, and no one goes hungry, and where peace prevails? Can you catch a glimpse of God’s dream for a day when all people are free, and no one suffers under injustice, and the tears are wiped away from every eye? Can you imagine a time when those who have always been last will become first, and the poor will inherit God’s riches, and people 100 years old will be young and filled with vitality? Can you believe in a time when your deepest hurts will be healed, your greatest sins forgiven, your largest mistakes put behind you, and when you will drink from a spring of love that will quench your deepest thirsts? Can you look ahead to the moment when your family, and God’s family, will be reunited again?

Can you see what the cloud of witnesses sees? And are you willing to devote your life to bringing it to fulfillment?

As you come to the table this morning, I want to invite you to dedicate or rededicate your life to Jesus Christ. He came into the world, lived among us, and gave his life on the Cross to make possible what is promised at this table today. In comm-union, is the promise of re-union of all people and all things in Christ.

Look around the table today. Are there familiar faces here? In Christ, even empty places of the heart are filled with hope, and joy, and grace!

Come, God’s people, to the table!