You Are Surrounded: A Sermon for All Saints Day

When I was a little girl, about 4 years old, my parents left my brother and sister and me in the care of some friends of the family, and flew to the Bahamas for a “business convention.” I was so thrilled at the idea of flying through the clouds, I didn’t waste any time being mad at them for leaving. Until after they were gone. I was really excited to have them come home and tell me what heaven looked like. Because I knew that it was up there in the clouds, where baby angels bounced on cloud beds and never got yelled at for it, where older angels played harps and sang, and where everyone was happy in the company of God.
I don’t know where exactly I got that idea of heaven… books or movies or television or Sunday school. It was a firm image, developmentally appropriate for a four-year-old, but too fixed to last.
Some people seem to think that because I am a religious professional, I should know just exactly what happens after death. As if some secret knowledge were conferred on me at my ordination. But I don’t know. Nobody knows for sure. Yes, I have studied scripture front to back and sideways, but I still don’t know, not with the certitude of a four-year-old. And that too is developmentally appropriate. Because as we grow older and (ideally) wiser, we realize that the universe is infinite mystery. The more we know, the more we know we don’t know nothing!
But I can tell you, that I don’t worry about not knowing. Because the witness of scripture is that whatever happens next, it is good. It is rest from our labors. It is reunion with God and with all that we have lost. It is peace.
And I certainly don’t worry about hell. Because I don’t believe in it. I believe that in every person is the capacity to love, and that love is eternal. Love is the main thing, love is the kernel of the wheat, and the rest is like the chaff that the wind drives away. I think the apostle Paul put it best in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians: everything will pass away, except love.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
…For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Love is eternal. The songwriting team of Lennon & McCartney summed it up perfectly when they wrote: “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love (pause) you make.”
The early church had the expression “the communion of saints,” which became a part of one of the earliest creeds. The communion of saints describes the experience of the living “sensing” the presence of the dead. They sensed this presence most distinctly--it is described in the book of Hebrews as a great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us and cheers us on. It is a sense that the difference between the living and the dead is an illusory difference, that if we could see with the eyes of God, we would see that we are all, in life and in death, God’s children, fiercely loved.
And the church spoke of that presence in the great thanksgiving, the prayer that preceded the meal which they shared whenever they came together, the meal that we call Holy Communion. “Communion” is not descriptive of the bread and the wine, communion is not descriptive of the meal itself, but of the spiritual experience of being around this table with the living and the dead, with Christ, and with God. We commune, we live together. “And so we join, with all the saints, in giving praise to you.”
This experience became profoundly real to me after my parents and my sister died. As I was sitting during communion one Sunday, while others were distributing the trays of bread and the little cups, suddenly, I heard my sister giggle, and my mother shush her, and my father, I just felt him beside me. It was a memory, but it was more than that. It comforted me. That is my experience of the communion of saints.
As we share this meal today, we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, who are with us in these photographs and mementos. With the help of these concrete reminders, I hope we will all be able to sense that presence, to hear those cheers, and to receive comfort in the assurance that we all live together, in the presence of God, whether alive or dead, we abide in God’s presence.
As we meditate upon these words, I invite you to write the name of someone you love, whom you wish to remember today, on that scrap of paper in your bulletin. I will ask the ushers to collect them up, and I will read the names aloud as we pray, as we commune with them today.