All Saints Day

Mary and her sister Martha are broken down with grief. Their brother died 3 days ago. They called for Jesus but he hasn’t shown up and now it is too late. They are running through all the things they wish they could have prevented in their minds. It feels like the tears won’t end. Everything feels surreal. They are deep in grief.

Three days later… Jesus finally arrives. Both Mary and Martha greet his arrival with “if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Perhaps you have had times in your grieving where you have cycled through your own series of if only’s. But if only’s in the face of such loss leave little room for comfort.

This is All Saints’ Sunday followed by All Hallow’s Eve where we remember the lives of the saints. And while we celebrate the resurrection and the living dead, I don’t want us to skip over the reality of grief.

I imagine everyone in the room this morning knows what deep grief feels like. Some of you may still be in the midst of it and to that end I want to point out something about John 11. Notice the first 42 verses deal intimately with the death of Lazarus before we ever make it to his resurrection. 42 verses deal with his death and grief.

There is no timeline on grief and I just want to say that if you are grieving, it’s OK if you are still in that space of John 11 where everything aches or where you still can’t talk about it without crying.

Speaking of tears, today’s text gives us that beautiful moment in scripture where Jesus stands outside of Lazarus’s grave, surrounded by his sisters and other mourners weeping and begins to cry.Jesus responds to deep grief with deep compassion and cries.

There are numerous thoughts around the why of Jesus’s tears, but I am not here to discuss those this morning because I think sometimes we just need to sit with the fact that the God of all creation cried with. The Lord of all is the one who cries with. Let that sink in. What does it mean for us to cry with?

Kim Wagner on a recent episode of The Weight podcast talked about the power of holding space for each other during our grief. She shared how when she was a child, during the All Saints service banners would be brought in that had been made for each member who had died. The family would then gather around each banner. In seeing each family surrounding each banner, it had a way of placing grief front and center and then allowing the love of the body of Christ to surround them. Kim says “All Saints allows us to practice the capacity to hold with one another individual and collective grief. It helps us put our own grief and love in community with other’s grief and love.”

The Jewish practice of sitting shiva (sheeva) together is built upon this belief that we aren’t designed to grieve alone. It is about saying “We will hold this together.” Who are the people that God has surrounded you with that will sit shiva with you, that don’t shy away from your tears, and who hold space for your grief for as long as it takes?

Kim says as a community of faith, we have the opportunity to cry with. We have the opportunity to look around and notice the bereaved and ask “how do I welcome someone into the world’s army of the bereaved?”

William Sloan Coffin was a pastor who wrote one of the most poignant sermons about grief a week after his son died in a tragic car accident. He said that so often in the wake of loss people will say all sorts of Biblical truths, proving that we know our Bibles better than the human condition. But that’s not what we need in the wake of loss. We need some crying with. William quoted Hemingway in saying “The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places.” When we come together as a body of Christ and hold space for both our grief and our hope, we embody the love of God for one another. We become strong in the broken places.

William said “That’s why immediately after such a tragedy people must come to your rescue, people who only want to hold your hand, not to quote anybody or even say anything, people who simply bring food and flowers – the basics of beauty and life – people who sign letters simply, “Your broken-hearted sister.”

Our text today is so captivating because it holds closely death and resurrection, loss and hope. If the setting today makes you think of a cross between a funeral and Easter, that is because on All Saints we hold the space between our grief and our hope, between where we stand and the presence of the saints.

Think about how we refer to funerals now as a celebration of life. We not only celebrate their life here on earth but also their new life in Christ. We say “Help us to live as those who are prepared to die. And when our days here are accomplished, enable us to die as those who go forth to live, so that living or dying, our life may be in you.”

Luke 20:38 says “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” To him all are alive. What is your relationship with the saints who have gone before?

Not just saints like saint luke or Mother Theresa or St. Francis or other modern-day saints like Martin Luther King or Oscar Romero but the saints like your parents or grandparents or friends or mentors who are now part of the cloud of witnesses?

Do you talk to them? Do you find little coincidences that occur that make you think they are sending you a message? Do you have a keepsake of some kind that brings you comfort? Is there something that the lives of the saints have to teach us about living into the hope and joy of the resurrection? Are there moments when you swear you can feel the presence of your loved one?

When we gather together around this table at Communion, we celebrate the fellowship of the saints. Someone posted in a clergy group their altar for this Sunday and they had hung a sheer piece of fabric in front of the altar and planned to remove it prior to Communion as a reflection of how when we come together, we are in the presence of all the saints.

When I visited the Vatican while in Italy earlier this year, the very design of the church is built upon the premise of being embraced by the saints. The structure is two wide semicircles with saints all along the roof line. The idea is that as you enter, the saints are wrapping their arms around you and welcoming you. Inside the Vatican, there were numerous popes buried on the main floor and on levels underneath. Around 100 popes are buried in the Vatican at present. Similarly, in other churches in Italy, the presence of the saints and the relics are important to church life.

Theologian Peter Brown said that as early as the 6th century, the graves of saints became the center of church life because during this time, the saint in heaven was believed to be present somehow on earth. The inscription on the grave of St. Martin of Tours says “Here lies Martin the bishop,of holy memory, whose soul is in the hand of God; but he is fully here, present and made plain in miracles of every kind.”

A fifth century bishop of Cyrrhus described the connection people felt to saints as “intimate or invisible friends.” I have had people share how they could swear they see their loved one sitting in their favorite chair, or that they think they smell them or sense them in certain spaces or moments. I don’t pretend to try to explain these experiences, but I believe that in Christ the saints are more fully alive than we can perceive.

And that in these moments where we are welcome and sense their presence, we are able to receive what Christine Valters Paintner calls “the love of thousands.” That as you come forward today to light a candle, you can receive the love of Sherry, the love of Bobby, the love of Bette, the love of Jim, and the love of any saint you may be lighting a candle for. Henri Nouwen said “you have to trust that every friendship has no end,that a communion of saints exists among all those living and dead, who have truly loved God and one another. You know from experience how real this is. Those you love deeply and who have died live on in you, not just as memories but as real presences.”

As Christine shares in her blessing for the love of thousands:

“This blessing lifts the veil between worlds, and attunes you to the presence of the invisible, so you see the angels, saints, and ancestors showering their love freely to sustain and inspire you.

May you receive their love notes in dreams, synchronizations, and intuition, the knowing of the body and heart.

May they reveal the jewels hidden in the wounds when love opens our tender places.

May they help you remember you are never alone, but always breathing with a multitude, a throng of lovers.

Feel their primal force tethering you to a cord of love, running through generations

binding you in union to all there is, all there ever was, and all that is yet to come.

May you come today and receive the love of thousands.