Days Of The Dead
(With thanks and apologies to Sam Portaro+)
I remember sitting in my
office one Sunday after church with a man who had a question. “Why do we pray
for the dead?” he asked. “The Bible doesn’t tell us to pray for the dead, so
why do we do it? It makes no sense.”
It was one of those timeless
moments. The air is still, time stands still, you almost stop breathing. If you
are a priest and pastor you are expected to have the answer. You want to have
the answer. You feel as if you should have the answers to all such questions.
And then you freeze. A kind of fear sets in. A fear of not saying the right
thing that will move the person in front of you to a deeper more hopeful faith.
I have no recollection what I
said to my inquisitor. No doubt I mumbled a few things about God in Christ
being the God of the living and the dead, or some things about eternity and
what we call the community of saints in heaven. I just don’t remember. Because
those who are dead and have gone before us are praying for us is what I should
have said.
All Hallows Eve, All Saints,
and All Souls – October 31, November 1 and November 2 every year - three days
in our calendar of Christian days which call us to look death in the face. On
All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, we laugh at death. We mock death. We make merry
in a world that looks less and less funny every day. But we put on our
costumes, paint up our faces, put on our masks and look at death and all the
troubles of this world and we laugh.
It is a crazy kind of
laughter that comes of both surprise and fear. We would rather not talk about
this fear, but it is just this fear that we commemorate this last day of
October and the first two days of November. The chilly winds of winter begin to
chill our weary bones, the trees and all of nature echo themes of death and
dying. Little ghosts, skeletons, hobgoblins and vampires move us to laugh, for
such laughter is our way of averting fear.
So on Halloween we snicker at
death, race through graveyards, dress up in hopes of fooling the grim reaper so
as to be protected for yet another year. We need not run from our fear, but so
often we do.
We want to believe that human
flesh and human being is blessed, but we are not so sure of incarnation, so
Christmas becomes a thing of material gifts and nostalgic ephemera. We want to
believe that the power of life and love will triumph over the power of death,
but we are not so sure of resurrection, so Easter becomes a thing of fuzzy
bunnies, candy and spring fashion. We want to believe life is eternal, but we
are not so sure of eternity, so this autumn season of spooks and saints and
souls has become a thing of leering pumpkins and sugar candies.
But it is not incarnation, nor
resurrection, nor eternity that we fear – it is disappointment. We do not want
to hope in vain. This is why these three days are so precious. Christians have
no unique perspective on love – there are many gospels of love, and most world
religions teach love at least as well as we do, if not better. We have no
unique take on faith, since all world religions, governments and economies
depend on faith – for no God can inspire, no government can rule, no commerce
can work without genuine faith. But where else is hope?
We Christians dare to hope
beyond the constraints of mortality. We are those people who have the example
of Martha and Mary. Their brother Lazarus lies dead in a tomb for several days.
“Lord, there is a stench,” says Martha. Yet, rather than be paralyzed by their
sadness and fear, with their brother dead and buried, they still come to Jesus,
go to Jesus, run to the edge of town to greet Jesus with a curious mixture of
anger at his delay in coming, but also a deep hope that he can and will bring
their brother back from the dead.
For others such hope is
hedged. Hope is where many others draw short. Some constrain life to this
earthly existence depending on the flesh bound, time-bound existence of
reincarnations. Others hope in a painless consignment of the soul to
everlasting nothingness.
But we Christians hope beyond
mortality, our hope embodied in saints and souls who have gone before, a vast
company and communion dwelling beyond time and forever. Our hope is that life
is changed, not ended, and that when our mortal body lies in death, there is
prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.
Our hope is grounded in a
faith that claims our God is creator of all that is, seen and unseen. It is a
hope that proclaims that we come from love, we return to love and love is all
around. It is a hope grounded in our Baptism incorporating us into the Body of
Christ, a bond which is indissoluble. It
is a hope that says we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
watching us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto
Jesus the author and perfecter of our hope, who for the joy that was set before
him endured the cross.
Faith is the quality of mind
that sees things before they are realities, and which feels the distant city of
God, of Love,
to be more dear, more substantial and more attractive than the edible and
profitable present.
It’s an embarrassment, to be
sure. We have no evidence to produce beyond our stories, like the ones we
gather to hear week in and week out, year in and year out. In a realm that bows
to tangible security as once it bowed to wood and stone idols, we are the
gamblers who stake all that we have on unproven supposition. In a culture that
seeks its own gratification at any cost, that spends its produce and its people
as if there is no tomorrow, we alone dare to live as if there is a tomorrow and
more.
This is why we need these
precious days of Halloween, All Saints and All Souls. For we know how hard it
is to look death in the face and say to death, “I know I shall see you again.”
But it is harder still to scan the flickering light of life’s vitality in the
face of a dying friend and say, “I know I shall see you again.”
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