All Saints’ Day A; 11.01.26; G. Miles Smith+

Revelation 7:9-17; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

I remember when my parents…and many others…mourned the death of…Elvis.

It was August 16, 1977. I was a senior in college. At the time, I don’t think I quite understood the visibility of their grief. I don’t remember hearing Elvis’ music at home. But my parents mourned him. Something I could not understand had wounded them.

Elvis definitely had not been on my playlist in the 70’s. And I’m not sure that I really had a grasp on mortality and death either. As of that point in time, I don’t believe I had attended a funeral. None of our relatives…none of my parents’ friends at church…had died yet. The death that I knew…was mostly on the nightly news…which was disturbing…and yet it was also distant, almost abstract.

But there was something about Elvis’ death that was not distant…to my parents. Many years later, in their retirement, they surprised me when they told me that they were…going to Graceland…Elvis’ home in Memphis. And go they did…and showed me their photos afterwards. It really meant something to them.

A lot has happened since those early days. My parents…are gone…many relatives…almost all my mentors and teachers in faith and ministry…and so many many church members…are gone.

Working through my church office files this past week before my retirement comes…I was shocked to realize…how many funerals I have officiated here at Grace in 13 years…it has been 96! I cannot quite wrap my mind around that.

Death…is very far from being the abstraction of my youth. Now I find myself putting the names of people who have died…in my digital calendar…so I can be reminded of them year after year. And they are not only people I have known personally. Just this past week I put the name of Patrick Stewart in my calendar…he was a Shakespearean actor…whom I admired for many years as Captain Picard on the TV series Star Trek: Next Generation and other sci-fi movies. In my calendar, in addition to my parents and friends, I have other actors…musicians…writers…poets…artists…photographers…

and theologians who have meant something to me. And I have even added various people from the news…people I did not know at all…except through their tragic deaths which left me feeling like they should be remembered too. I’ve been doing all this without really realizing until now how many there are in my calendar.

And then…in these recent months…there has been…Carol…Anne…Bill…David…Tony…Mary

Aston. And in the months before that…even more…as we shall hear all their names read in the Prayers of the People. Even if we may not be inclined to think about mortality and death unless we have to…we have certainly had many occasions to do so recently. |

I increasingly think—or maybe it is my age talking—that it is important that Christians find the language to speak intelligibly about death according to our faith. Our burial liturgies help us to do that. But I have become more aware…just how difficult it can in fact be…and how muddled our thinking about death as Christians can become…even without our quite realizing it.

I spoke to this some in my homily for Anne Young several weeks ago…when I said that a Christian experience of faith can both…intensify our grief…and…intensify our hope. Let me try to describe this more now…when we are not in a moment of great grief.

Apparently, we have all absorbed what could be called…a naturalistic perspective on death…that is actually quite modern…born of our scientific era…which views death simply as a necessary biological event…an event appropriate to nature…something that we will of course try to avoid as best we can…but which is nevertheless purely natural. We feel grief…but supposedly it is grief over a natural event…and then of course we just have to get on with the business of life. Death is sad…but it just is what it is. So we are told. Well, science is useful and often wonderful…but science is not theology.

It has become clearer to me in recent years that that really is not a biblical perspective on death at all. Death, from a biblical perspective, is not natural…even though it is familiar. Death is familiar, whether it be “three score and ten years”, later, or sooner. But, even in the Old Testament, where there is barely any concept of an afterlife, there is an uneasiness with the idea of death…whether it be a weariness of death (Ecclesiastes), death as an apparent exile from the beloved community of God (Psalms), or death coming as some kind of cosmic disruption of God’s good creation (Genesis). Death is familiar, but not natural…death just does not quite “sit right” with Israel’s experience of the faithfulness of God.

And that is even more so in the New Testament. When Jesus encountered those who had died--regardless of what we modern folk can make of this--there are five stories of Jesus responding to death as if it was a sickness to be cured…and he returned them from death. Death was not just “the way things are”—it was something that needed to not be. Jesus’ own death…was horrific and devastating. The apostle Paul even wrote explicitly that “the last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). And the Book of Revelation, which has many strange and difficult things to say, nevertheless says very plainly…that when God’s creation is finally finished…“there will be no more

death” (Revelation 21:4).

It is right…that Christian faith actually intensifies our grief…because it awakens us to the true offense of death…that it just is not right…it is something that should never happen…along with all our human frailties and the debilities that befall and destroy us. There is just something profoundly wrong here…that our modern minds may yet say is natural…but our hearts tell us otherwise. Christian faith should be able to give our grief full voice.

But not that we are hopeless. But because it is God who has taught us to love. And love does not really make peace with death. Love makes peace with hope. The disquietude about death that is latent in the Old Testament… finds its full voice in the condemnation of death in the New Testament…at the same time that the latent hope in the Old Testament…finds its full voice in the hope of the resurrection in the New Testament.

It is true to say that a Christian…cannot really know the grief of death…apart from…the hope of resurrection…the hope of God. We live on the other side of Jesus’ resurrection… through which we now see death in all its devastation…but also God’s love conquering death.

Death is not natural but familiar. In the sacred story that we have been given to tell, death has been given notice. Death is on the way out. Death has been invaded by Christ’s resurrection. Life greater than death is underway.

Otherwise, what is the point of remembering…all our dearly departed…if there is not more to our mortality…than mortality? If our dearly departed are not in fact…alive now in a different way than they were?

We remember our dearly departed…as an act of faith, hope, and love…but also as an act of rebellion against death. Jesus has taught us that.

So, Christian hope is that unusual. It is not how we are usually given to see this world.

It is also extraordinary. God holds the lives of everyone who has ever lived…every dearly departed one we remember.

And so, I will speak on behalf of my parents…whom I trust are also held safe…and say…we may indeed remember...Elvis.