SunNov62011
Scripture: I THESSALONIANS 4:13-18
I have no memory of anyone I loved dying until I was fifteen years old. Both my grandfathers died that year within several months of each other. And then it was many more years before there was anyone else. So I confess I never did a lot of thinking about, or reacting to, death when I was younger.
So when I became a pastor, I was pretty unseasoned about death. I can still remember my initial encounter with it in my first church. Marjorie Pervier, a dear and beloved older woman, died sometime in my first year as a pastor, and when I walked in to her house immediately after her death, I began to cry. And what I remember so vividly is her friends Helen Allen and Phyllis Duso coming to me and holding me while I wept. I was filled with sorrow, but they comforted me with their presence and their hugs.
There was something about that tableau that still seems so right to me. And it’s right both because of the grief and because of the comfort that was offered. As Christians, when it comes to death we’re in the business of balancing two apparent opposites. On one side of the coin, we have the grief that sometimes overwhelms us. You who have lost a child, or spouse or partner, or parent, or sibling, or best friend, maybe before their time, know something of the searing pain, the unquenchable anguish that can virtually undo you. You don’t know how you can possibly go on. You don’t really want to go on. It can seem like too much to bear. And as Christians, it is vital that we allow room for that grief to emerge and be expressed.
Sometimes well-meaning people minimize the grief. They say, “She’s gone to a better place.” They may somehow imply that, because we’re resurrection people, we shouldn’t really feel that sad. “God’s got her, so we don’t really have to worry about it.” To which we can only say that’s a terrible violation of the reality of death. Death robs us one we love, one we’ll never see again. Being Christian doesn’t mean we aren’t sad. It doesn’t mean we don’t grieve. We may well grieve with every pore of our body. And it’s important to affirm that this is part of an honest, faithful reaction to the reality of death.
Those words the apostle Paul writes to some early Christians get it exactly right. He writes to the Thessalonians that they are not to “grieve as others do who have no hope” (I Thess. 4:13). He doesn’t say, “Don’t grieve.” He says, “Don’t grieve the way people who have no hope grieve.” Paul knows the importance of grieving. In another letter he calls death an “enemy” (I Cor. 15:26) because he knows what a terror, what a destroyer it is. When one we love is snatched from our grasp, of course we grieve. It’s unavoidable. And not to grieve may be the worst thing we can do. In my last church, a woman who had developed cancer after her husband died says she thinks her own resistance to grieving may have been at least part of the cause of the cancer. She couldn’t back it up medically. What she knew, though, is that friends had told her to buck up and get on with her life. And she did. And she got cancer. Who knows whether there was a direct connection? What she did know, though, was that she had stuffed her grief and she didn’t feel whole. Grieve we must. It’s as much a part of the human terrain as sleeping and eating.
At the same time, though, as Paul says—and here’s the other side of the coin—we don’t grieve the same way people do when they have no hope, “like people who have nothing to look forward to,” as The Message puts it, “as if the grave were the last word.” The grief of Christians has a different tint to it, a different feeling about it. If you think this life is all there is, then, yes, there’s a terrible finality about death. If you can see to a different horizon, though, and can envision a power and love too great to be thwarted by any boundary, then maybe you can conclude that there is “yet more light and truth to break forth from [God’s] holy word” (Pilgrim John Robinson)—even after death.
We are people who live by a promise. We are people who live by hope. We trust that there is something yet to come. We live by faith that, in Paul’s words, “we will be with Christ forever” (4:17). And this is why, even in the midst of terrible death, we can say, on this All Saints Sunday, that we live with gratitude. We’re grateful, above all, for the power of God to “make all things new” (Rev. 21:5), to take even the worst enemy, death, and put it in its place.
And we know this grace, this awesome power, because of the ways it makes itself known even now, even in the midst of our everyday lives. All around us, we see signs of God’s healing, reconciling love breaking in on us. On this Gratitude Sunday, as we give thanks, we’re giving thanks not for our luck or our own accomplishments, but for a radiant affection that never lets us go. We’re giving thanks for baklava and birdies and Browns and Buckeyes and Bach and Bono and babies and bells and beauty and blessing. This coming week, we’re all invited to take stock of life lived in the hands of God—to remember that, by some incomprehensible miracle, we were born into this world; that, through channels other than our own, we have come upon people who have loved us and whom we’ve loved; that, by some mysterious Spirit, we have found direction and fulfillment; and that, by the strangest of gifts, we have been assured of some sort of life beyond the one we know now. And as we remember and give thanks, we’re invited, next Sunday, to give imprudently, generously, and hopefully, not just to allow the ministries of Federated Church to flourish—as important as that is—but first and foremost to thank God for miracles that grace us every day. We have life and love and passion and hope because God has given them to us.
And who knows where those gifts will pop up next! Tony Robinson’s father died not too long ago of Alzheimer’s disease. Tony and his father had never really been that close. But as the older man gradually moved into the fog that stole his personality, Tony would loyally visit him. “In the final two years of his illness my father was in a care facility. On one of our last visits my wife and I walked arm-in-arm with my father to an enclosed, outside garden. By this time it was difficult to make out anything he said. But on that day, as we moved slowly toward the garden, he stopped. Looking up at me, he said clearly, ‘You are a good man.’
“‘Did you hear that?’ asked my wife. ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘No,’ she persisted, ‘did you really hear? That’s what you’ve been waiting so long to hear, isn’t it? Your father just gave you his blessing.’ She was right. Several weeks later he died. I was blessed by his words to me that day—and by the many times during those last years when we sat together quietly on a bench in that garden. Such moments of companionship had eluded us during other times of our lives, but in those last years they were a gift of his illness” (Christian Century, October 4, 2011, p. 29).
As we celebrate communion in a few moments, we commune with others here in this sanctuary today. But we commune, as well, with others scattered around the globe. And we commune even with those who have gone before us. This meal is a sign of a God who blesses us in this life and in the life to come. So may we be a grateful people. If we grieve, let us grieve with hope. And as we give, let us give with abandon to the work of God in this special and grace-filled place.