Sermon for Halloween Youth Event

Preached at St. John Lutheran Church, New Freedom on October 20, 2013
Scripture text: John 1:1-5

There is something wondrous about what we are doing tonight. Something unexpected. Something out of the ordinary. Tonight, we are being honest.

One does not typically think of the church as a place to celebrate Halloween. Many would argue that this is not the place to discuss such grim topics. But a church that only talks about things as sweetness and light is also a church that runs the risk of being dangerously out of touch. We live in a world of darkness, a world full of monsters. Perhaps we should start acting like it.

Oh, when I say “monsters,” I don’t mean zombies or vampires or Freddie or any of those other creations of human imagination and folklore. I mean real monsters. Monsters like hunger and poverty. Monsters like tyranny and injustice. Monsters like cancer and disease, like war and heartbreak. Monsters like sin and death.

Those monsters are real and they’re all around us. They’re in our lives and in the lives of the people in our communities. Their threat is ever present, a constant shadow hanging over us.

So when I say that tonight we as a church are being honest, what I mean is that we are not hiding from these unpleasant truths. We’re openly admitting that these things are real and that they have an impact on our lives and the lives of others. We are talking about darkness because that’s the world we live in. A world of death.

So tonight is Ash Wednesday redux. “Dust you are and to dust you shall return...” Tonight is Good Friday. “And when he had said this, he breathed his last.” And also All-Saints Day, from which Halloween comes, we remember those who have died before us. Tonight is all about the monster of death, but not merely him alone. It is also about something else, another truth; the truth that there is something greater than death.

In many ways, the ghost and goblins of Halloween are fanciful metaphors of death. What makes them terrifying to us is their power to kill and to destroy. But while we acknowledge death’s power to destroy, we must also acknowledge that we are followers of a God who has overcome death and the grave. Christ Jesus who has died and risen again, who has made death his footstool.

There is an old literary saying. We tell fairy tales and ghost stories and the like not to tell us that monsters are real. We already know that. We tell those stories to remind us that monsters can be beaten. Tonight, we are telling the story of Christ for precisely that reason. The monster of death can be beaten. He has been beaten. The light of Christ shines out in the darkness and death did not overcome it.

This is our hope, my friends. This is the hope of the world around us. Light in the midst of darkness. Light in the midst of light is nothing. It’s washed out, unnoticeable. But a flame in the darkness can be seen by all. That is Jesus, shining out for the whole world to see and telling us that so long as he is with us, the monsters cannot harm us. Amen.