Proper 26, All Souls

Today, we’re celebrating the feast of All Souls where we remember all of the faithful departed, not just those who in this life grew to the full stature of sainthood. Perhaps we will be remembering those who, like many of us, are in the relatively early stages of the eternal journey into the fullness of sainthood! We remember the faithful departed in the faith that our remembering and our prayers for them is helping them on this journey, just as we might pray for anyone in this life in the same way.

Coming from an Evangelical background, this is the first All Souls service I’ve attended and so it feels a little odd to be preaching at it but I’ll have a go at trying to explain what it is I think we’re doing at All Souls from my initial reflections on catholic worship.

On the 5th of November one year, three old men were discussing their failing memories. The first old man said, “Today I was at the top of the stairs, and I couldn't remember if I had just gone up or was about to go down.” The second old man said, “I was sitting at the edge of my bed and I couldn't remember if I was about to sleep or just woke up.” The third man scoffs and said, “My memory is as good as ever, knock on wood.” With this he hits the table twice with his knuckle, looks up in surprise and yells “Who’s there?”

Speaking of remembering, our bed at home keeps on bringing up things from my past. That’s right, I’ll be lying there, trying to get to sleep and it will say things like, “Remember when you spilt your coffee last week, Ali;” “Remember when you fell over in the high street, Ali;” “Remember when you wet yourself in infant school, Ali, you remember don’t you?!” I can’t get to sleep, it’s like I’m having to relive all these moments! It goes without saying, I’m really regretting buying a memory foam mattress!

Of course, in Old Testament, Jewish worship, especially the passover meal, and in the traditional, liturgical worship of the Church, the idea that remembering the past in some way changes the present is an important aspect of what worship is about. This is the same for present-day worship, especially in the sacrament of the Mass where remembering the sacrifice of Jesus involves more than abstract thoughts, it is a making present again the Word of God, the Word of the Cross as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians.

Perhaps this is not to dissimilar to how we think of trauma. One of the definitions of trauma is that, for the traumatised person, all the experiences of the traumatic memory which was once present but is now past, all the experienes of that moment, including physical and emotional responses, continue to haunt and shape the present moment. The same of course goes for tender memories which really can, if brought into the present, change how we think, feel, and act in the world.

God “remembering” his covenant people is a recurring theme in the Old Testament. If remembering the past changes us, then what might it mean for God to remember something or someone? Might it change God? Or, if God cannot change, with all things being relative, might it change us? If God is infinite, might it change history?

To worship in the catholic tradition is to believe in the God of the living. That all things, space, time, history, all life has its being in God, and that nothing is lost. All things are present to God, even the lives of those who to us are dead. It is to believe that, just as the remembering of past events can change us, our sacramental prayer of the Mass, the remembering of the sacrifice of Jesus, can change things no longer accessible to our finite experience of the present state of history. As David reminded us last week, it is the Lamb in front of the throne in the Apocalypse of John, at the end of the Church’s scriptures, it is in this Cosmic Mass that all creation lives for God. In the exceedingly good words from the poem David recited, the glory of God’s Garden shall never pass away. God remembers and God is faithful.

I’m reminded of Dorethee L. Sayer’s radio play, “The Man born to be King” which was broadcast during the Second World War. In the play, Pontius Pilate’s wife explains the content of the dream she has. This is the dream which, in Matthew’s Gospel, she has before Pilate hands Jesus over. A dream which makes her tell her husband to have nothing to do with this man. In the play, Pilate’s wife explains the content of the dream to Pilate while Jesus is hanging dead on the Cross, at about the ninth hour. She tells him that she was on a ship and that she heard a cry; the skies became dark and the Aegean sea rough. The captain of the ship tells her that “Great Pan is dead.” She asks the captain, “How can God die?” he replies, “Don’t you remember? They crucified him. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” Then she hears a chorus of voices in different languages all repeating the words of the Creed: “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried;” “il été crucifié sous Ponce Pilate; il été souffert; il été morte; ill été enseveli;” “Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato; passus et sepultus est,” and so on.

Just as John sees an unveiling, for that is what the word apocalypse means, just as John sees an unveiling of what lies behind all of creation, the sacrifice of the lamb, slain before the foundation of the world, so Pilate’s wife in her dream sees before her unveiled the millions of Christians of different tribes and tongues, all reciting the creed, the symbol of our faith. She sees the true reality which all things will be gathered up in.

To be a Christian in the catholic tradition is to believe that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus really is making a difference to history and that, by remembering this in the emodied prayer of the Mass, we are making a difference to history. Are our voices saying the Creed today, a part of the cacophony that Pilate’s wife hears?

That the sacrifice of the Mass should be offered for others and for the dead, is simply to believe that the Christian God really is the God of the living. I don’t know whether you think of praying for the dead as praying for disembodied souls, who are awaiting the resurrection of their bodies, or whether you think of it as praying for people of the past, in the context in which they lived. Either way, we have the faith that the sacrifice of Jesus, remembered again and again in the living faith of the Church, really is making a difference to those we pray for, who are alive in God.

As Augustine explains in a sermon on Romans 8, the names of the dead are read out at the sacrifice of the Mass for the continued justification of those named. What he means by this is that no one in this life, or very few at most, have learnt what it truly means to completely love others above oneself but that the sacrifice of Jesus really is doing something to circumcise the hearts of all souls, living and dead.

What will it mean then for you to remember your loved ones who are no longer with us today? To bring them before God in the Mass, offering this sacrifice on their behalf? What will it do to us to remember them? What difference will it make for God to remember them?

In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.