I spent weeks confident in how I was going to preach last Sunday’s Reformation sermon. I knew precisely what approach I was taking, what I was going to say, what my point was. This week, for All Saints, not so much…
It took me a while to figure out how to approach what we’ve been facing over these past two years. We have buried, in our little intimate church community, nine souls in those 24 months. Of course, the number doesn’t even remotely tell the whole story, because these people were our friends, our parents, our spouses, our children. People that we loved dearly and still do.
In some ways, for me, this journey through the valley of death began even earlier. It was three All Saints Days ago that I stood up in this pulpit and talked about my friend Dan Taraschke, who died very suddenly and unexpectedly at age 43 in his sleep just a few days before I was to preach. Dan was such a larger-than-life character, so full of joy and passion at life. He brightened every room he walked into, filling it with his gregarious and friendly personality. I talked about all that and when I was done, I sat down in this throne here behind me and broke down.
Still miss him. Dan on the left here.
I remember very clearly what happened next. What a wonderful moment of grace, one that many of you here witnessed. Amy came up and gave me a tissue. Mike came up and put his hand on my shoulder. Simple gestures, but they meant the world.
There is a certain ironic juxtaposition in knowing that one of those who comforted me that day is also our most recent death in his community. But thinking about that got me wondering. Why do we mourn? Why do we grieve? Why does this hurt so damn much?
Maybe those are silly questions. We never ask them, perhaps because we know the answers so innately that we needn’t bother. But I think, for our purposes today, it may help to tease out those answers. To say openly that truth behind the tears.
We grieve because we’ve lost something. Something amazing. Something unique. Something special. And while we Christians hold to a truth that this loss is only temporary, we still have lost. We have lost the gift of who they were. We have lost the gift of their life.
You know, when we talk about the “gift of life,” we usually talk about it in terms of self. I am alive today and that is a gift. And it is. But that’s not the only way to think about it, because our lives are also gifts to each other. You being here and being in my life is a gift to me. My being here and in your life is a gift to you. And that gift has an impact.
Would I be as joyful if I hadn’t received the occasional wink from Suzie or that beautiful beaming smile of Vale’s? Would I be as courageous if I hadn’t seen how Freddie faced his work and his illness? Would my love of working with children and youth be as strong if I hadn’t known Amy? Would I be as compassionate towards others if I hadn’t known Mike? No, I wouldn’t. These and so many others made a difference, in both great and small ways, in who I am today. They were a gift.
And if I were to ask any one of you here today to stand up and tell us what those people meant to you, you’d say much the same. Or to ask who mattered in the course of your life, you’d offer a long list of parents, grandparents, teachers, friends, siblings, spouses, children, co-workers, and other souls who’ve crossed your path and, in some way, perhaps great or small, made a difference in who you are today.
When I left my call in Davis, I wrote little personal good-byes to each of the members there. And I remember writing to the now-late Dick Wolfe, who I admire beyond words, “I want to be you when I grow up.” That’s kind of how this is. We learn from each other. We remake ourselves in the likeness of those who’ve mattered to us. I said a few weeks ago how we come here to this church, in part, to learn how to be better people. We don’t just learn that from what I say in these sermons, but from one another and the way we witness how we carry out our lives. We matter. We influence. We love and care for one another.
That is the gift of life and when we lose it, it hurts. And there’s just no way around that.
But there is hope.
I want to conclude today with two thoughts, thoughts I hope will encourage and inspire you in the midst of the darkness in which we’ve unavoidably dwelt today. The first is to remember what a gift you are. God put you here for a reason and while you may not always realize it or be aware of it, you matter to countless others. You are precious to them. They love you and they will miss you when you are gone. You have had an immense impact already on so many lives. People are who they are today because of you.
So many of us never realize our importance. But our lives are so much richer for having known one another. I thank you and I thank God that you are here, for me and for each other and for all those others throughout our lives for whom we’ve made a difference.
The second thought is to remember again what we’ve been promised. Last week, we tried to show the Luther movie and technical difficulties snared us up. We’re going to try again this week (it works. I’ve tested it.) But I want to illustrate this thought with a scene we’ll see in that movie, my favorite scene in the film, in fact.
A young boy in Luther’s village commits suicide. The Church being what it was back then claimed such a death was damning, that the boy could not be saved. Luther will have none of it. He defies the Church, digs the grave himself in holy ground, and argues openly how wrong the Church is because that boy belonged to Christ. He was HIS and always would be.
My friends, those that we love belong to Christ. They are HIS. They were his in life and they are his in death. And you and I are his and always will be, in life and in death. And because this is true, because we have been adopted by God through the cross and empty tomb, a truth testified to by the waters of baptism and the bread and wine of Eucharist, a truth testified to by the Word of God from the Scriptures and from countless sermons, we will one day be reunited with those that mattered to us in life. Those that we’ve loved and lost. This is Christ’s promise to all of us. Revelation shows us a vision of that multitude, unable to be accounted there are so many: You and I among them.
That’s God’s dream, his plan, and you and yours are a part of it. You are loved and you are precious to the one who is mightier than death. Yes, it still hurts that they are gone, but they will not be gone forever. God has seen to that. Amen.
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