It is impossible for me to think about All Saints Day this year without thinking about the past year. About this time last year I started to feel as if perhaps I should take up residence at one of the local hospitals. So many of our members were being persistently admitted and most were not coming back out. At least not in the way that we had all hoped that they might. It was a sad time for many in these congregations. The cases ranged from surprising and tragic to expected but sad.
At any rate All Saints day last year had me thinking about death even more than usual and those thoughts persisted until after Easter. And it does that doesn’t it? The thought of death persists for us some seasons.
Ecclesiastes, in a passage commonly used at funerals states that there is a time for everything under the sun, a time to be born and a time to die, for each of us and for the ones that we love. A time to live and a time to die but there is a lot more than that to life and certainly a lot more to death.
In the case of last fall through late springtime I saw a lot more than death in the hospital rooms that I frequented. As is so often the case with families gathered around sharing what is most dear and unique to them, the rooms sometimes, surprisingly ended up filled with life. One day in one particular room I met a funny and heartwarming scene. A very old man, who had been just heartbroken since his wife had died a month before was finally about to go home to her. He was in some pain and he had his almost as aged sister beside him each and every day, his kids gathered too when they could. But on this day they were all there and he met me with a great big grin as I entered the room.
The grin was because two things had happened since I’d seen him last. The first was that I had agreed to baptize him. He had been a Lutheran since marriage, attending church and communing every time it was offered but somehow it had slipped the knowledge of myself and several former pastors that he had never actaully been baptized and neither had his siblings. And he desperately wanted to be. So I came ready with water and candles, prepared to turn the hospital room into a baptismal chapel.
Now the other reason for the grin is more amusing and because I know he liked to laugh even up to the end, I think that I can tell you about it. You see he was in a condition and on some medications that made him very uncomfortable, everything that touched his skin was intensely irritating. The hospital gown with its rough fabric, ties, strings and snaps and tendency to bunch up under his fragile skin was especially offensive. The smooth hospital sheets were much more tolerable. So with a chuckle as I walked into the room and the sheets adjusted carefully his son explained to me as dad grinned along, I think a little pleased to make the pastor blush, that he had decided to leave the world just like he came into it, without a damned hospital gown on.
The result then of these two developments, and perhaps the reason for the grin was that then, after some giggling and fidgeting, rearranging and improvising, I got the amazing, breathtaking honor of baptizing a man the age of my great grandfather clad in a toga made of hospital bed sheets, along with his nearly just as aged sister. And in that clean white baptismal garment and the waters of baptism it was clear to all around that he had finally found relief for the deepest physical and spiritual discomfort of his life. And we knew that we were on holy ground, there with doctors, nurses and alarms and bright lights all around us.
It is good that we baptize babies as a sign that it is something that a person can never do for themselves, that God does for them. But babies squirm and cry, babies are sometimes afraid of the water or the sound, or the scratchy white baptismal garment that we make them wear. And their parents are stressed about the party to come and the diaper on the kid and so on. So it is rare that we get so clear a picture as the one in that hospital room of the intense promise and peace, the very relief to our souls that comes with being completely claimed by God. So completely that we die with Christ and are raised again. And it feels good, it is good!
All Saints Day is a time when we celebrate the lives of the saints of God, those we knew intimately and those we never met. And we don’t just celebrate them because we miss our loved ones but because scripture affirms and something in us knows that life itself is a gift from God. Our very breath is breathed into us by God. And knowing this we know that we remain precious to God long after the breath stops.
Frank and Esther, Helen, June, Jean, Mary and all of the others who were here last year and are gone now remain precious to God. And because of that God has taken the sting, the bite, the pain of death away. We know this primarily because we have already died with Christ. And it was anything but painful and hard. We die with Christ, the only death that matters in the waters of baptism. Not a hard death, not a painful one, not a lonely one but a death into new life. Just as God breathed breath into our lungs, new life is breathed into our very death. Christ does this first by his baptism, then by his death and finally by our baptism into him and his everlasting life.
We celebrate All Saints Day each year to remember our loved ones yes, but also to remember what life and death mean to Christian people.
We get the beatitudes as the gospel text for this day, a list from Jesus' lips of who all is blessed, when, why and how. A list of the blessings that we can hope to experience during our time on earth. One of the Blessings it mentions is this:
“Blessed are those who weep, for they will laugh."
When those we love die, when we weep and mourn a death, we are blessed not only because the pain will lessen as time goes on and our hearts will heal. And it will and they will.
But, we are blessed because in the memory of each saint we learn about the love and faithfulness of God and because on this day especially we are promised that with all the saints who have gone before, those we knew and loved and those multitudes we never knew we will at the last stand washed clean of all that holds us down and keeps us low in this life. And our new lives in Christ will be complete blessing.
That is why I told you the story about my hospital baptism because it is a great illustration of how even in the midst of physical death, that room, that man, was filled with new life. And not just him but all of us and not just on the day of our death or the day of our baptism but over and over and over again God breaths new life into us until at last with live in joy with him. This good news. Thanks be to God for All of the Saints. Amen
At any rate All Saints day last year had me thinking about death even more than usual and those thoughts persisted until after Easter. And it does that doesn’t it? The thought of death persists for us some seasons.
Ecclesiastes, in a passage commonly used at funerals states that there is a time for everything under the sun, a time to be born and a time to die, for each of us and for the ones that we love. A time to live and a time to die but there is a lot more than that to life and certainly a lot more to death.
In the case of last fall through late springtime I saw a lot more than death in the hospital rooms that I frequented. As is so often the case with families gathered around sharing what is most dear and unique to them, the rooms sometimes, surprisingly ended up filled with life. One day in one particular room I met a funny and heartwarming scene. A very old man, who had been just heartbroken since his wife had died a month before was finally about to go home to her. He was in some pain and he had his almost as aged sister beside him each and every day, his kids gathered too when they could. But on this day they were all there and he met me with a great big grin as I entered the room.
The grin was because two things had happened since I’d seen him last. The first was that I had agreed to baptize him. He had been a Lutheran since marriage, attending church and communing every time it was offered but somehow it had slipped the knowledge of myself and several former pastors that he had never actaully been baptized and neither had his siblings. And he desperately wanted to be. So I came ready with water and candles, prepared to turn the hospital room into a baptismal chapel.
Now the other reason for the grin is more amusing and because I know he liked to laugh even up to the end, I think that I can tell you about it. You see he was in a condition and on some medications that made him very uncomfortable, everything that touched his skin was intensely irritating. The hospital gown with its rough fabric, ties, strings and snaps and tendency to bunch up under his fragile skin was especially offensive. The smooth hospital sheets were much more tolerable. So with a chuckle as I walked into the room and the sheets adjusted carefully his son explained to me as dad grinned along, I think a little pleased to make the pastor blush, that he had decided to leave the world just like he came into it, without a damned hospital gown on.
The result then of these two developments, and perhaps the reason for the grin was that then, after some giggling and fidgeting, rearranging and improvising, I got the amazing, breathtaking honor of baptizing a man the age of my great grandfather clad in a toga made of hospital bed sheets, along with his nearly just as aged sister. And in that clean white baptismal garment and the waters of baptism it was clear to all around that he had finally found relief for the deepest physical and spiritual discomfort of his life. And we knew that we were on holy ground, there with doctors, nurses and alarms and bright lights all around us.
It is good that we baptize babies as a sign that it is something that a person can never do for themselves, that God does for them. But babies squirm and cry, babies are sometimes afraid of the water or the sound, or the scratchy white baptismal garment that we make them wear. And their parents are stressed about the party to come and the diaper on the kid and so on. So it is rare that we get so clear a picture as the one in that hospital room of the intense promise and peace, the very relief to our souls that comes with being completely claimed by God. So completely that we die with Christ and are raised again. And it feels good, it is good!
All Saints Day is a time when we celebrate the lives of the saints of God, those we knew intimately and those we never met. And we don’t just celebrate them because we miss our loved ones but because scripture affirms and something in us knows that life itself is a gift from God. Our very breath is breathed into us by God. And knowing this we know that we remain precious to God long after the breath stops.
Frank and Esther, Helen, June, Jean, Mary and all of the others who were here last year and are gone now remain precious to God. And because of that God has taken the sting, the bite, the pain of death away. We know this primarily because we have already died with Christ. And it was anything but painful and hard. We die with Christ, the only death that matters in the waters of baptism. Not a hard death, not a painful one, not a lonely one but a death into new life. Just as God breathed breath into our lungs, new life is breathed into our very death. Christ does this first by his baptism, then by his death and finally by our baptism into him and his everlasting life.
We celebrate All Saints Day each year to remember our loved ones yes, but also to remember what life and death mean to Christian people.
We get the beatitudes as the gospel text for this day, a list from Jesus' lips of who all is blessed, when, why and how. A list of the blessings that we can hope to experience during our time on earth. One of the Blessings it mentions is this:
“Blessed are those who weep, for they will laugh."
When those we love die, when we weep and mourn a death, we are blessed not only because the pain will lessen as time goes on and our hearts will heal. And it will and they will.
But, we are blessed because in the memory of each saint we learn about the love and faithfulness of God and because on this day especially we are promised that with all the saints who have gone before, those we knew and loved and those multitudes we never knew we will at the last stand washed clean of all that holds us down and keeps us low in this life. And our new lives in Christ will be complete blessing.
That is why I told you the story about my hospital baptism because it is a great illustration of how even in the midst of physical death, that room, that man, was filled with new life. And not just him but all of us and not just on the day of our death or the day of our baptism but over and over and over again God breaths new life into us until at last with live in joy with him. This good news. Thanks be to God for All of the Saints. Amen
