SunApr172011
FAURE REQUIEM THE FEDERATED CHURCH, UCC
A number of years ago, a young man in the church I served died in an accident while he was away at college. It was an unimaginably huge loss to his family and friends. Their house, after his death, was one of the grimmest places I’ve been in my whole life. And who of us wouldn’t be the same?
Several days later, I stood in the church before the young man’s funeral service, watching the family walk toward the building where they would be putting their son and brother to rest. Their bodies were slumped, their faces pale and empty. They clearly dreaded what was to come.
What I remember after the service, though, was something I would not have thought possible even a few hours earlier. Having celebrated his life and worshiped God, at the reception, the family had about them a kind of radiance, a vitality, and dare we say it, a joy that had transformed them.
It’s not that they weren’t still unbelievably sad. And it’s not that there weren’t to be awful days ahead. It’s simply that, in the midst of their nearly paralyzing loss, they had heard again the unutterably grand promise of God—the promise that, in life and in death, this young man was held by God. It was a transfixing sight, one I shall never forget.
That’s what a funeral can do. It doesn’t undo the loss. It doesn’t excise the pain. It simply reframes it. It allows us to look at the unbearable ache with new lenses. It says, “Your pain is not all there is. Something else is going on. Listen.”
The church, over the eons, has tried, in many and various ways, to convey the hope that lies hidden even in death. And one of those ways is the “Requiem,” or, as Roman Catholics might call it, a “Requiem Mass.” “Requiem” means “rest.” Its core conviction is that, in death, the departed are given rest by God.
Several great composers have written requiems, among them Verdi, Brahms, Mozart, and John Rutter. All of them are known because they have been performed in concert halls all over the world. The Requiem of Gabriel Faure’s was written, first, to be sung in a sanctuary. It is, at its root, a work of worship. It was written around the time both his parents died, and is intended to help the faithful deal with death.
And that’s the way we’ll sing it this morning—not primarily as a concert piece, but as an extended hymn celebrating the grace of God—in the deaths of those we’ve loved, in our own anticipated deaths, and, as we begin this Holy Week, in the suffering and death of Jesus. The hope, as Amanda so artfully puts it, is that you will listen not just with aesthetic ears—ears tuned to beauty—but with spiritual ears—ears tuned to a Word from God.
It may help you take it in if we spend just a moment tracing some of its themes. First of all, as does all true worship, it begins and ends in grace. “Requiem”—“rest”—is both its first word and its last word. “Rest” and “light” are its dominant images. “Grant them eternal rest, Lord our God, we pray to you, and perpetual light forever,” is the way the Requiem begins. “Shine on them forever.” The majesty of God is paramount. It undergirds the hope of which the Requiem sings. Without God, that rest and light would not be possible.
A very different theme eventually arises is the text, though, and becomes for many contemporary listeners a huge monkey wrench. In the second movement, the “Offertory,” we pray that the souls of the departed will be freed from “eternal torment.” And in the sixth movement, the “Libera Me,” there is an extended plea that we be delivered from “death’s eternal fire on that great Day of Judgment.”
The great difficulty for many of us, of course, is that this is not the way we picture God, as one consumed by “anger” and “vengeance.” For most of us, that is an outmoded and distasteful image of the One whose very heart and center is grace and forgiveness.
As we hear these forbidding images, let me say a word about how I deal with them. I imagine that, for many of us, there is at least a sliver of doubt, and for some even a tsunami of doubt, about what happens to us at death. As convinced as we may be of some sort of eternal peace, an honest faith, it seems to me, has to confess that we don’t know for sure. And no matter how small our doubt, perhaps that’s the entrée to the frightful passages of the Requiem. What if death brings nothing but utter darkness?
What if eternal emptiness is all that lies ahead? I have a sense that the pray-er in this piece is bringing that sliver of doubt to the fore, and saying, “What if . . .?” This is the mass’s way of saying, “Please, God, spare us the agony of sheer nothingness. Usher us into your sitting room. Give us a lasting and embracing home.” My sense is that, whatever part of us doubts and questions and wonders can connect perhaps there with the admittedly fearful and disturbing images of the Requiem.
But not to get lost there. Because those are never the dominant convictions of the church of Jesus Christ. The heart of Holy Week, the center of our faith, is that even in the grimmest of all circumstances, we have the love of God in which to rest. After the terror of the “Libera Me,” we end, in the “In Paradisum,” with some of the most sublime music ever written. As I hear these words, I remember my father, who died two years ago, as well as my grandparents, and a number of dear friends who have died over the years. As you listen, I invite you to bring before you images of those you’ve loved and lost. Even as we still miss these people, may we, with the Requiem, commit them into the hands of God: “May God’s holy angels lead you to paradise. May saints in their glory receive you at your journey’s end. . . . Choirs of angels sing you to your rest. And with Lazarus raised to eternal life, may you forevermore rest in peace.” That’s the deepest conviction of Christian faith—that, in the presence of God, we always rest in peace. It is the truth above all truths. And so, as we enter into a time of prayer, may we be filled full by the grace that never lets us go. For “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers nor height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).