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A Sermon Preached at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, Oak Park, IL
on All Saints Sunday, November 2, 2008 (Year A, Revised Common Lectionary)
by the Rev. Paris Coffey

Readings: Readings: Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

Every other summer for the past ten years, ninth and tenth grade pilgrims from St. Christopher's have journeyed to one of our earth's "thin" places in hopes of encountering the mystery that transcends boundaries of time and space. The world is dotted with such places, where the veil between this world and the "other" is thin enough for the two to meet. They offer "holy ground," which means that even church can be a thin place, especially on All Saints' Sunday. This day typically concludes the Triduum of Halloween, All Saints' and All Souls' Days, although this year All Souls' falls on Sunday. ALL Souls' is the day designated to remember ALL the departed, not just the most famous, but the truth is that all three days remember the dead and offer us thin places where the veil between this world and the other is translucent enough for us to touch the mystery of life that transcends not only time and space, but death itself.

At least, this is what this day is meant to offer and has offered for thousands of years to human beings with an apparently innate need for transcendence after death. Long before Christianity this need occupied humans in every place and culture, as our church's pilgrims have discovered in the thin places of Ireland, the Black Hills, Taize and Oaxaca. Oaxaca, for example, along with its neighbor Veracruz, is thought by some to be the place where the Day of the Dead originated. The precise origins of this tradition are actually unknown, but they may well date back to the ancestors of Oaxaca's Zapotec Indians as our Zapotec guide believed. Noting that the day was Mexico's principal feast, Fidel acknowledged that the date was changed to All Saints' when Roman Catholic Spaniards conquered Mexico. "Still," he added, "it's the same - the day when spirits of the dead return to eat, drink and be merry with their loved ones."

I'm not sure Roman Catholics OR Episcopalians are as quite as merry with the dead as Zapotecs, especially those blended into Catholicism. Nevertheless, today we eat and drink with our departed loved ones in the Sacrament of the Lord's Table. Many of us, of course, do this every Sunday, and yet Fidel would say that THIS day - or these days from October 31 through November 2ša, when the veil separating one world from another is thinnest - is the time the living and the dead are able to touch one another most profoundly.

Certainly this is true in Irish tradition, where long before the coming of Christ the Celts celebrated Samhain (pronounced "Sow' en"), once heralded as the Celtic New Year. Unlike our own New Year, the Celtic celebration came as the days grew shorter, the season colder and the trees shed their leaves. It came at the close of the harvest's life, but the Celts also understood that in those dark, cold days of winter, seeds would germinate and bring new life in the spring. Winter was a season of death that opened the way to new life, and so the Celts believed also that the celebration of the New Year opened the gates to the other world where communication with the departed was not only possible but natural.

This day of celebration, like the Zapotec's Day of the Dead, became identified with All Saints' with the arrival of Christianity. Many Celtic customs, however, that surrounded the day survived and were baptized in Christianity. Building bonfires, carving pumpkins, bobbing for apples, and even trick-or-treating grew from Celtic customs, supporting Ireland's claim to be the birthplace of Halloween. The heart of Samhain's customs, though, share a claim with other people, cultures and religions, including Christians, who see the veil between heaven and earth/between the living and the dead as thinner than we might think. As today's collect says, "We are knit together in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of Jesus Christ our Lord."

This is a hard thing for rational minded Christians to accept when a loved one dies. Death feels so final. And yet life in the face of death is what Christ came to reveal, "See what love the Father has given us," says First John, "See the great multitude that no one can count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages," says the Revelation to John. "See that God's blessing comes in shapes that sometimes feel at first like hardship or loss," says Jesus, speaking not just to a select few who talk the talk but to ALL who live and walk the way of Christ; for as it turns out membership in the Communion of Saints is not about RATIONAL acquiescence to an idea, but encounter with a Living God who often meets us in the thin places.

As Mahatma Gandhi once said in a Spiritual Message to the World in 1931, "There is an indefinable, mysterious power that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It is this unseen power that makes itself felt and yet defies all proof, because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses."

If you've ever been to a thin place - the sea at sunset, the mountains in autumn, the Irish moors almost anytime, or a little church hazy with incense on All Saint's Sunday - you will know what Gandhi meant. You will feel the connection - often in the quiet - with the Spirit of God and those whose spirits marked these places with their life and love. You will feel and know that we are joined in Christ - the living and the dead - inside time and space and out ... and so I invite you this morning to take a quiet moment, close your eyes and listen in the silence . . . and not just a quick silence, but in a leisurely one that you can relax into, knowing that it will end when I close this time silence with lines from the song, "The gathering of Spirits," by Carrie Newcomer ... Now close your eyes and listen...

let it go my love my truest,
let it sail on silver wings
life's a twinkling that's for certain,
but it's such a fine thing
there's a gathering of spirits
there's a festival of friends
and we'll take up where we left off
when we all meet again.

i can't explain it.
i couldn't if i tried
how the only things we carry a
re the things we hold inside
like a day in the open,
like the love we won't forget
like the laughter that we started
and it hasn't died down yet

just east of eden
but there's heaven in our midst
and we're never really all that far
from those we love and miss
wade out in the water
there's a glory all around
and the wisest say there's a 1000 ways
to kneel and kiss the ground

let it go my love my truest,
let it sail on silver wings
life's a twinkling that's for certain,
but it's such a fine thing
there's a gathering of spirits
there's a festival of friends
and we'll take up where we left off
when we all meet again.

Amen.