Sermons

Nov 6 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Today we celebrate the great festival of All Saints. This feast is set in the middle of several related celebrations, and it has just about as rich a history as any other in the Christian calendar. It holds a place of affection in many of our hearts, for many different reasons.

The holiday of Halloween starts it off. Originally this was a Celtic holiday acknowledging the dead, and the medieval church in England baptized it and gave it a new name and a new focus: All Hallows’ Eve, or Halloween, which literally means The evening of all the holy ones, the saints. As children dress up in costumes and are given candy, they may not be thinking of the holy ones, but you can forget about this being some kind of satanic festival.

Nov. 1, All Saints’ Day follows, with its traditional remembrance of all the famous saints that have gone before. Christians call to mind Peter and Mary Magdalene and Francis and Clare and all the friends of God who have witnessed to the power and joy of Christ. The following day is All Souls’ Day, Nov. 2, when all the other unknown saints are remembered: our friends and relatives and all those known to God alone.

And in this part of the world, we can’t help but be affected by the great Mexican spin on all of this: Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. This, too, was a pre-Christian festival among the Aztecs and Mayans and others, honoring their dead. The Spanish did what the English had done before: they baptized this holiday and moved it to the festival of All Saints, and thus allowed the indigenous people to combine their tradition with the Catholic faith.

On Dia de los Muertos in certain parts of Mexico and the Philippines, people make altars in their homes and at the cemeteries just like the ones we have in our prayer chapel and here behind the main altar. Marigolds, Flores de Muerto, are said to smell like dry bones and incense. Favorite foods of our departed loved ones, their photographs, songs, stories about those who have died, and many, many candles accompany celebrations at the grave and elsewhere as they party with the dead. The tiendas and sidewalk stands are filled with sugar calaveras, or skulls, and playfully inventive models of skeleton bands, wedding parties, and dancing drunks.

Newspapers publish short literary calaveras, which are phony obituaries mocking famous people as if they had just died. One from this week’s Reforma in Mexico City made fun of their Finance Minister, Paco Gil, who has recently become very unpopular for planning to impose a value tax on food and medicine: In his office yesterday Paco Gil was turned into a cadaver. The spirit of a dead woman, venomous and vengeful, will not allow him to be buried until he has paid his value tax. The whole festival is a paradoxical mix of silliness and devotion.

I can’t think of anything in our country that takes this approach to death that is at the same time so lighthearted and so deeply respectful. Mostly we deny death. We’re a youth culture where everyone tries to look and act like a teenager. A teacher recently told me that he asked his high school class who among them thought they’d be young forever. Everyone raised their hands. Not me! I’m not getting old. I’m not dying! Our dead are removed from institutions by professionals and placed in titanium caskets that are guaranteed to protect the body from underground corruption for decades to come.

By contrast, when we lived in Mexico for several months many years ago, our next-door neighbor died. Her husband temporarily closed the sidewalk bar he owned, turned it into a funeral parlor, and put her body out for viewing for all the passers-by to see. They’d stop, cross themselves, say a few prayers, and then move on. When an Isleta Indian friend of my son was killed in an auto accident, they simply wrapped him in a blanket for the funeral, face exposed, and then lowered him by ropes into the ground. In most places of the world, death is a daily reality that everyone, including children, sees up close and understands as a natural part of life.

Dia de los Muertos makes friends with death. With its drinking and eating and story-telling and goofy skeleton scenes, it creates a homey fellowship between the living and the dead. It lightens up something that can be otherwise tragic or terrifying. All at once it honors the dead, it reminds us that before too long we’re all going to be calaveras, and it celebrates life.

Death can be awful. Losing someone we love deeply can crush our heart. I remember when most of a family, members of this parish, friends of mine, went down in a small plane in Alaska, all I could do was swear, shout No! and weep. Death is, at times, an enemy, not a friend.

And yet we must all eventually befriend this enemy. If we don’t, we will live in fear, and I suspect, we’ll never be fully alive. Dreading loss, we try to keep a tight control over life. But life is meant to be held lightly. When we know how fragile life is, how close we are at all times to our Sister Death, as St. Francis called it, it becomes so very precious. When we know that we’re like an ephemeral butterfly swiftly passing through this wondrous and stunningly beautiful plane of existence, we may be more likely to wake up today and live.

How do we make friends with death? By allowing it in, a little closer. By visiting those who are gravely ill and sitting quietly by their side, and perhaps reading them psalms. By going to those funerals of parishioners and friends; by touching the body at a viewing. By meditating on our own old age and death; by making a will and advance directives. By writing poems, painting a picture or listening to requiems. By reading through the Burial Rite or the Ash Wednesday liturgy: Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. By leafing through photographs of ancestors, by taking a moment each day to pray for those who have died, and once in awhile toasting them with a shot of tequila. And perhaps most importantly, we make friends with death by thinking about how we really want to live during the few years we have left in this precious world.

This is where our liturgy comes in today. The gospel sang out that transcendent hymn of faith, the Beatitudes. Impossible yet deeply true, they tell us how blessed we are when we have poverty and emptiness of spirit and hunger for God; how fortunate we are to be able to mourn, because we love deeply; how good it is to be faithful to the point of being excluded, reviled, and even hated for it. They also warn us of too much comfort, entertainment, and popularity. Remember, the Beatitudes say, what you are living for.

In a few moments we will [baptize and] renew our own covenant of baptism with God. We will promise, again, as we have done many times before, to live in a certain way. We will reaffirm our renunciation of evil, claim Jesus as our mentor and friend, promise to live in fellowship within the family of faith, serve others in love and mercy, and strive for justice and peace. Then we’ll come together around this altar and share in our eucharistic meal, our weekly Dia de los Muertos, sharing our family’s favorite food of bread and wine with Jesus and all of God’s friends, the saints.

How do you want to live during the few years you’ve got left? Do you want to be a saint, a friend of God? Do you want to be hungry for God? Today is your chance to start anew. Reclaim your baptismal identity in Christ. Become the saint you were created to be. Remember that you will soon join the santos as a calavera, and wake up to this beautiful and fleeting life.