Good morning on this feast of All Saints, when we remember all the faithful Christians who’ve gone before us. Properly speaking, All Saints Day was this past Friday November 1st; in the church we transfer it to the Sunday after so we can celebrate it when we’re all together. On Friday we lost one of our church matriarchs, Nancy Stratton-Crooke. She’s the envy of all faithful church ladies for having died on All Saints Day. We’ll of course read her name in the prayers today, and later this evening at the chanting of the necrology, the list of the dead, at Evensong. We remember her with fondness, and much gratitude.
All Saints’ Sunday at the beginning of November often comes with blustery fall weather, the kind that makes you grateful for the extra hour of sleep. The kind of weather that prompts you to turn inward, stay inside, be more reflective. This year our readings for All Saints are those often used for funeral services, which lends a slightly more solemn tone to the day, even if the weather does not. All Saints’ Day is a celebration of the resurrection from the dead. As our prayer book tells us, every funeral is a celebration of resurrection from the dead. Yet within that larger context of hope, we still make room for grief.
I’m struck this year by the readings, and especially the story from our Gospel about the death and raising to life of Lazarus.
It’s only in John’s Gospel. Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha were Jesus’ closest friends aside from the 12 disciples. If you had a map charting the movement of Jesus in his last days you’d see a line running back and forth, from Jerusalem to Mary and Martha’s home in the village of Bethany nearby. This was one of those visits, his last there; this story takes place right before Jesus’ own death, and is commonly read a couple weeks before Easter where it foreshadows Jesus’ death and resurrection. Placing it here, away from Holy Week and Easter, allows us to appreciate other aspects of the story.
When Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus became ill and died, Jesus was off, elsewhere. Mary sent for him, but it took several days (we don’t know why) for Jesus to arrive. Once he gets there, it has been four days since Lazarus has died. Tradition at the time held that a spirit left a body for good on the third day. There could be no doubt that, by day four, Lazarus was gone. Jesus arrives, beholds all the people present, is moved by their grief, and allows himself, also, to feel the loss of this dear friend.
The part of this story we know from Lent is that Jesus only then summons Lazarus from the tomb. Lazarus comes back to life. But everything that happens before and around that event is remarkable, too--especially, the feeling, the emotion. Of Lazarus’ sisters. His friends. Everyone else who was there. Even Jesus, the Son of God who shows intense emotion just like anyone would.
On Friday--All Saints’ Day--I took my daughter Naomi to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the exhibit on four painters in Siena (in Tuscany) who had an enormous influence on Western art. I love this period in Italian art, the 1300s. I’ve made my family travel with me to Italy to see specific pieces of art from this time in remote villages in Umbria and Tuscany and the Veneto. The main piece I wanted to see at the Met--and I couldn’t believe the coincidence with this Sunday--was the raising of Lazarus by Duccio. It was actually on loan from an art museum in Texas (of all places!) but what was amazing about it being here in New York was that it was placed--for the first time since 1503--alongside the panels it was with originally.
The thing about this period that I find remarkable was the tentative but newfound freedom of these painters to show the emotions of people. And this is such an important Gospel story for that. Lazarus’ sisters, his neighbors, his friends, Jesus, all show us in their grief just how much love there was for this man.
It’s a remarkable passage with some good lessons for All Saints’ Sunday. The first is: it is OK to grieve. And it is OK for grief to look messy. It was messy for those in this reading. There’s blaming: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” There’s guilt: those two extra days away could have prevented all of this after all, what took you so long. There’s anger--the Greek for Jesus weeping can mean that he was almost viscerally grieving, or that he was angry; it’s a shame translations make us choose when there could be multiple meanings here. But above all there’s just deep feeling. The weeping. The keening.
It’s OK to grieve. And the fact that Jesus weeps here is an especially powerful example for our husbands, our sons, our fathers, the men in our culture who (we’re told in so many ways) aren’t supposed to show signs of weakness (which grief is not). Jesus wept.
The second lesson in this passage is: it’s important to grieve together. Some of my most meaningful moments as a priest have been at funerals here at St. James, people crowded in (like the men and women in our Gospel passage--like the men and women in the Duccio painting of it) [crowding in] to be together, showing solidarity, and remembering what really matters.
On a few occasions officiating funerals I’ve looked up from the pulpit to see people I haven’t seen in years, some who left the church for this, that, or the other reason (and let me add here that I try not to fault them their need to do that. I’ve been that person in other contexts, so I get it). But, in those moments of collective mourning over a life of someone we loved in common, when we also recognize our own vulnerability and mortality, [Whatever it was that once divided us] in that moment just seems … a lot less important.
When it comes down to it, we’re all people with a limited time on earth. Why do we argue over anything? I ask that, too, as we stare down this week’s coming election, when we might see some real hatred and anger from all sides. Why? We all have a 100% chance of death, after all. Isn’t that enough to find a lot more common ground than we do? What is wrong with us?!
This passage also reminds us that--and this is the last lesson I’ll draw from it-- We have no idea what death is. It only looks to us like an end. Reason would say, it is, The end. But reason is limited by our observation of the world we see and can access, and that’s not all there is. The story of Lazarus compresses into one moment the truth for all of us and those we’ve lost: that beyond the grave God calls out to us, calls us to new life, on the other side of this one. Don’t assume death is the end. Don’t assume we have complete insight . We don’t. I’d sooner bet on that than on what we think we know.
On this All Saints’ Sunday, as we remember those who’ve finished their course here on earth, we also give thanks for the love we shared, love that gives rise to our grief in the first place. And above all, we give thanks for the hope that this day inspires. As we’ll say in our proper preface at Communion shortly--one of my favorite lines in our Book of Common Prayer--
For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not
ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is
prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.
Amen.