Sermons

Nov 4 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor - All Saints Sunday

Listen to audio version of this sermon.

Today, on this All Saints Sunday, we honor all of those who, by the way they live their lives, have borne witness to God. We remember famous saints, and unknown ones, too. One month ago Fr. Christopher spoke about those in our lives – some living, some now dead - who shape our faith. Some of them are represented behind our altar today, at our ofrenda, our altar for this Dia de los Muertos.

Yesterday as some of us were clearing the land on our new property next door, bashing around in huge dumpsters with railroad ties and old fencing and tree limbs, I wandered in here to see how the decorations were going. I had suddenly entered another world. In this space was a kind of hush, a holy space and time that had opened up in the act of acknowledging death. Seeing all these photographs so lovingly placed among the marigolds, seeing how reverently our Aesthetics Guild members prepared the altar, I was reminded what a precious gift death is to the living.

But let me say first that death is not always a gift; sometimes it is awful, and it can
destroy the lives of the living. None of us feels any gift in war, violence, painful disease, or accident. The death of a young person or of a much-needed parent or spouse is tragic. The waste of human life in Iraq right now is horrific. We do everything we can to fight this kind of death, to cling to life. We hope that such fortunes will not come to us or to those we love. As we pray during Lent in our Great Litany: “From all oppression, conspiracy, and rebellion; from violence, battle, and murder; and from dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord, deliver us.”

But there are many other kinds of death, some that are gentle and good. There are also times when even the tragic kinds can evolve, over time, into some kind of gift. That’s why we feel such affection for Dia de los Muertos, for any reverent remembrance of the dead. With its solemn hush, it is a holy space that opens us, stops our busy preoccupation, and opens our heart.

Death is a gift to the living because when we get close to it, it makes everything very real. Sometimes people say to me “I don’t know how you do what you do,” because they believe it would be really hard to be around suffering and death as much as clergy are. Now there are a few things about ordained ministry that are unpleasant, but that’s not one of them. In fact, when I am driving home from the hospital in the middle of the night after doing last rites, when I am holding the hand of an elderly member as she exhales her last breath I feel quiet joy, fully alive, and honored to be there.

For in death, all the nonsense of life just doesn’t matter, does it? It’s a kind of relief. Whatever worries we carry - about our weight or loss of hair, or whether someone got a little upset with us yesterday, or whether the presentation we’ve worked out for tomorrow’s meeting is really up to snuff – these things just drop away.

What is left is the stillness of life itself, the moon over the Sandias, the breeze in the air, the smile on our companion’s face as we share in the moment. Death highlights life, real life. Death makes us grateful just to breathe, to visit with others over coffee, to go home and feed our cat.

I think that if we weren’t so phobic about death in our culture, if it were a little closer at hand, if more of the dying were in their homes surrounded by loved ones, if we had more open caskets prayer vigils and and wakes, then we might be more alive to the little things that really matter, and less caught up in nonsense. Death makes us real.

Death is also a gift to the living because it helps us feel affection for one another. All these saints behind the altar today - they weren’t perfect; in fact, they were probably pretty annoying at times, just like you and me. But in death, we accept them; we see their humanity, their goodness and their faults, and we love them. I don’t even know most of these people in our ofrenda here, but I feel affection for them.

What if you knew that tomorrow your next-door neighbor was going to die? What if you knew that for the person in the pew next to you, this were to be their last day on earth? How would you see them? How would you feel about them?

Some of you might remember Sister Juniper, a Franciscan who worked out of our office many years ago. She was part of an effort that we supported for awhile to start a new residential hospice; it was called Hospice of the Rio Grande. After that effort didn’t pan out, Sister Juniper and I saw each other infrequently. One day I got a call that she was dying of cancer, and she would soon be transported home to her out of state, to her mother house.

So I went to the hospital to say goodbye. She was bright-eyed, as always. We visited for awhile and as I got up to leave, our eyes met. I knew that I would never see her again. It was the strangest sensation. She looked healthy, and strong, really, but to me she was one short step away from death. Suddenly I saw her beautiful spirit; perhaps I saw her then as God always saw her. The usual distractions of my busy little life, usually clouding my vision like a fog between me and other people, just blew away. There we were, and I felt such affection, such acceptance: not because she was such a saint, but because she was human like me, alive, a gift of God.

We walk around in this life with a fog between others and ourselves. We look at one another and see the things that are superficial – our looks, our personality, the things we like or dislike, all the things that we normally associate with “personhood.” Death sometimes blows away this fog of limited vision, and we are left facing one another, accepting all the foibles, seeing only what God sees, and feeling great affection for one another.

Finally, death is a gift to the living because it reminds us how to live. All the saints whom we remember today, both famous and obscure, show us what is really possible.
· I remember St. Francis, friend to lepers and animals, who saw Christ in the least of his brethren.
· I remember John Hunt, his firm but gentle hands of massage bringing comfort to aching bodies, as opera music played on his stereo.
· I remember John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, who tramped around the great mountains of the West at the turn of the last century, who opened the eyes of a nation to its greatest treasure: its God-given natural grandeur.
· I remember Meme Henry, long-time altar guild director of St. Michael’s, a most faithful and selfless servant of the liturgy of the church.
· I remember Mary, the mother of Jesus, a young woman from nowhere, who said “yes” to something incomprehensible, who understood that God lifts up the lowly and casts down the mighty from their thrones.
· I remember fiery prophets, Jeremiah, Micah, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Cesar Chavez, angry when they saw God’s people being abused, demanding justice.
· I remember Steve Wilkes, riding around a stage with the Watermelon Mountain Jug Band, on a unicycle with a top hat on; or consulting with our Vestry on retreat, teasing out our honesty, wisdom, and consensus.
· I remember Columba the Celtic abbot of Iona, and all those in the wild places of the earth, searching for God in the wind and the waves.
· I remember Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian, and the other Freedom Riders in the South who lost their lives so others could have a voice in our democracy.
· I remember Susan Sager, a priest to the homeless in this city, who remained faithful to them even when she was senselessly barred from celebrating the sacraments.
· I remember Thomas Merton, whose passion for ideas and conversation catapulted him over the monastic enclosure and silence in which he lived, into the midst of the world.

The deaths of these saints remind me how to live. They remind me to exercise compassion, mercy, and kindness, as best I can. They remind me that I don’t have to be perfect, only authentic. They remind me that this world is a glorious and vibrant place. They remind me that God is more visible in the humble things of the earth than the grand. They remind me to be passionate, advocating for the marginalized, for peace, truth, and reconciliation. They remind me to be goofy, to laugh and to sing. Their deaths remind me how to live.

Whom do you remember this day? Can you receive the gifts that their death offers to you? If you can, you will find yourself more real, more affectionate, and more alive. And once again, death will be the seed of new life.