Sermons

For All the Saints 

Happy Allhallowtide to you. I hope the last three days have been full of costumes, candy, and revelry. This is a time of year when we can be together in a different way, letting our creative, spooky, or goth selves shine. One of my favorite writers, Ann Friedman, wrote in her newsletter this week, “We can confront the horrors of this world while also celebrating the fact that, at least for now, we are alive and able to put on a wig, some antennae, and spill forth into the night.” As for me, I’ve always been a little mixed on Halloween. I think I may have peaked when my mom made me a Little Bo Peep costume when I was two. 

But Allhalowtide isn’t just our cultural celebration of Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, it also includes All Saints Day or All Hallows and All Souls Day or the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed. These three days are sometimes also called the Fall Triduum, when we remember those we have lost and consider our own mortality —the counterpart to the Spring Triduum, when we commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

One of my favorite experiences celebrating this time of year came when I was at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. The tradition there is that Hispanic students and those studying to work in Spanish-speaking contexts host a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) service. In those commemorations, when the names of the departed are read, the whole congregation responds “presente!” or “present” to speak aloud a fact that we know to be true, that we stand in a cloud of witnesses. It’s an extremely moving experience. 

And in the front of the chapel for Dia de los Muertos, we covered our central altar with beautiful Mexican fabrics and created an ofrenda, a special altar that includes photos and items of those whom we have lost. I placed on ours my father’s tape measure, my mother’s sewing tin, and my grandmother’s baking pan. Perhaps you can imagine items in your own home that evoke memories of beloved ones you have lost. 

As we were preparing for the Day of the Dead celebration, my first year, I was in a Spanish lesson with a teacher and one other pupil, and (in Spanish), the teacher asked us who we wanted to remember on the ofrenda. I started thinking about all the people I’d lost over the years —mentors, family members, friends. My fellow pupil (who, yes, was much younger than I) sat there, and he thought and thought and could not come up with a single person he loved who had died. He said he had never been to a funeral. And I just thought, wow, we are having vastly different experiences of life.

Because there is something about death, especially the significant losses, that reorders your life. You might wake up and wonder how the sun could dare rise without this person in the world. Or you look out at a crowd of people going through daily motions and wonder how they’re able to go through their days when death is so close. I remember looking at a fridge full of food after my dad died and not being able to eat any of it because it was from “before.” 

“… I know that my laughter rings out clearer after I’ve cried.”

As trite as it may sound, those periods of intense grief are precious because they show us what a gift life is, just to have a family to spend the holidays with, or another year with a beloved spouse. We don’t know when an accident or a diagnosis can change everything. But I know that my laughter rings out clearer after I’ve cried. That’s what I think about when I hear Jesus say in Luke, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” Or, as it’s put in the psalms, “Those who sewed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” 

And in the in-between times, we find ways to remember death, to hold it close, to not deny that one day each of us will be gone. I have my own memento mori, a token, a reminder of death that I wear, a ring with 14 skulls around the circumference. Don’t ask about the time I put it on my middle finger and had to Windex it off. On that day, I really wished it didn’t have the skulls. Those little jawbones are sharp! I wear it more at this time of year, but also on significant anniversaries of those I’ve lost. And in the church year, we also have Ash Wednesday and Good Friday as reminders of our mortality. 

A couple of weeks ago, we blessed new green paraments to adorn our space, but today we’ve moved from green to white. That’s because All Saints Day is a little Easter, a day when we not only remember those we’ve lost, but we celebrate the hope of the resurrection. 

Rebekah will read the names of the necrology during Communion, as a recognition that, as one of our Eucharistic prayers puts it, we join with “Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven.” All these saints of the church join us in the circle. 

The months after my father died were by far the hardest in my life. I had lost both my parents, my home, and a big part of my identity, and I did it all while in seminary, which was already a transitional time of deep formation. But still, that fall I observed one of my favorite holiday traditions: rewatching The Lord of the Rings over Thanksgiving break. 

I’m guessing many of you have seen the movies, which were formative for me. I saw each of them in the theater at least 4 times. In the third film, The Return of the King, the princess Eowyn is speaking to her uncle, Theoden, about what she should do after he rides off to battle the forces of evil. She asks, “What duty would you have me do?” As her uncle replies, I heard (I mean literally heard with my ears) my father’s voice speaking to me in the room, over the movie. He replied, “Duty? No. I would have you smile again, not grieve for those whose time has come.” 

That day I decided to cultivate hope for my future, hope that although I had lost so much, there could be more, something on the other side, the hope we find in resurrection. And in case I forgot, I got a small phoenix —a symbol of resurrection —tattooed above my ankle. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 

And so today we smile. And today we grieve. And today we meet those we love and have loved in the circle.