One of my friends was in a pub on Thursday evening for a meal with her family. Of course, Thursday was Halloween. As soon as the last guests had finished eating, the landlord started to take all the Halloween decorations down and then he started to put Christmas decorations up. Please let’s let Christmas come when it should – about December 24 if I had my way!
Before Advent begins on December 1, we have some special Sundays in November. The lectionary in a few weeks will remind us of the end of the Christian story, the reign of Christ as King in glory. Next Sunday we will gather to remember the fallen of two world wars and conflicts since, and here today we are marking two Christian festivals Methodist people often don’t do – All Saints and All Souls. I know some people have stayed away from this service because it’s too hard for them but I want this to be a service of hope – we will talk of death and loss but we won’t stay there because our faith doesn’t stay there. We are an Easter people and alleluia is our song, but after four and a bit years of having me as a preacher, you know it is my conviction we have to do Good Friday and pain before Easter, we have to die in order to live.
First then, we need to remember. Canon Michael in the cathedral notice sheet for today shared a song from Iona he turns to at this time. The words encourage us to remember those who helped us come to faith, by singing songs and telling stories, by inviting us when we felt distant, by praying for us without being asked. We need time, intentional time, to pause and thank God for those who have shown us Jesus, those who have helped us come to faith, those who have sung songs and told stories, those who have invited us into Jesus presence when we’ve felt distant and those who have prayed for us without being asked. All of you come here with those people without who you wouldn’t be the people you are today: the ones who have shown you Jesus in word and in action. Parents, grandparents, husbands, wives, children, friends, Sunday school teachers, maybe even the odd minister. In a sad and horrible dark world, these people brought you light.
I am doing a school assembly in the morning in Grewelthorpe. We will talk about three famous saints – St Alban, the first Christian martyr in this country, St Wilfrid, our local saint, Mother Theresa who helped the poor in Calcutta made a saint fairly recently and then I will ask a child to look in a mirror because we all have the potential to be saints. I was at the welcome service for the new Anglican bishop of Whitby the other week.
At the end of the service, he thanked the saints “here in Northallerton.” He meant those who had made the coffee and baked cakes and made us welcome. The letters in the New Testament begin “to the saints” – we are to be distinctive, and those we remember, we remember good qualities and faith that stay with us forever.
I find taking funerals a huge privilege because you hear stories of people who did things you never thought they would do because you only met them in later life. We heard of Moses last days earlier. I feel a bit sorry for Moses as after years of journeying and people moaning and being horrible to him and giving up on God, he never saw the Promised Land but his life’s work was well done and his story is still told today. We remember those who have gone before us with gratitude.
Then we need to talk of death this morning. However hard that is! Here’s my second piece of writing by the late American writer, Mary Oliver. “To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones that your whole life depends on it, and when the time comes to let it go, let it go.” But that’s hard isn’t it. We don’t want to think about death and partings. That poem Death is nothing at all is often read at funerals, it ends in triumph but death isn’t nothing at all! But it is but a journey to something better and we will get to that. But most people don’t want to talk about it. Thomas in the Gospel didn’t get it. “We don’t know where you are going! How can we know the way?” Despite Jesus’ promises, the disciples couldn’t face death and a cross and it was all about a defeat and an end.
I meet regularly with Rob, the Methodist army chaplain at Dishforth. He told me this week over coffee that part of his role is to talk about death with the soldiers. He talks with them on operations, a bunker in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Imagine that.
Jesus goes to prepare a place for us. That’s amazing good news! And for some there is a peace that calms those awaiting the end of earthly pilgrimage. Last Sunday, the radio DJ Johnnie Walker presented his last programme after 58 years. He’s got idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis which makes breathing very difficult. I found a tear jerker of a programme on BBC Sounds where he talks about the future with his wife Tiggy. He only has a couple of months to live and in the programme they talk about his funeral and then how his spirit will be living on and being there for her. The programme is called Walker and Walker and I really recommend you find an hour to listen to it – with plenty of tissues!
Jesus does not save us from the reality and the sorrow of death. Even Jesus, confronted by the death of his dear friend Lazarus and the immense grief of his sisters, broke down and wept.
Today, as we remember those we have loved and lost and all the saints, we are allowed to weep and to be sad.
This kind of grief is a sign that we are human and that human connections matter. They mattered greatly to Jesus of Nazareth.
But we are also urged toward hope and not despair. “Did I not tell you,” Jesus reminds the grieving Martha in the Lazarus story, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” Death is real but it is not the end.
Finally here’s my third piece of writing. The theologian and author Jan Richardson writes this:
God of the generations, when we set our hands to labour, thinking we work alone, remind us that we carry on our lips the words of prophets, in our veins the blood of martyrs, in our eyes the mystics’ visions, in our hands the strength of thousands.
From all we read in the New Testament, the grave is not the absolute finale of the great act of life. “The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.” But we are not given any details as to what happens after death. Lazarus is nowhere quoted, even though his sisters and friends must have asked him what it was that he saw. But we believe heaven, eternity is a party of eternal delight with God, free from pain and suffering and yes our loved ones, your loved ones, look down on you cheering you on, a great crowd of witnesses. Peace I leave with you says Jesus.
So today, we give thanks, we remember the journey from death to life and we anticipate the joy of heaven. And as we remember stories and our faith and a faithful God, we work to make our world better like our forebears and Jesus did.
Adrian Roberts is one of the lay readers in the Fountains Benefice and he’s written a weighty tome on the hope for an afterlife. He quotes C S Lewis:
“There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven, but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else.”
And Adrian reflects helpfully: “All our yearnings for something more than life can offer may be an indication that it was never intended that our existence and significance should be confined to this life alone. It may well be we were always meant to end up in a realm of ever increasing joys and wonders, a realm of the new where we and all those we have loved will be transformed in ways we can barely imagine but which will also be a realm in which we realise that we have finally come home to that distant shore.”
I know this isn’t the easiest service to come to, and I know this hasn’t been the easiest sermon to write but I hope remembering and revisiting the heart of what faith is about, you can take away some hope today. For our loved ones are safe and the triumph of heaven is mighty and onr day we will be there too. Until then, may we keep praising God who in a Jesus has said death cannot hurt us and eternity is our gift.
Following God’s saints in the ways of holiness and truth, we keep going in the peace of Christ.
Thanks be to God.
