Matthew 5:1-12
Gospel Reading for All Saints Sunday (Year A)
This first dark evening, EA and I drove back to church for All Saints Choral Evensong. St. B’s had been hyping this service for some time. And by hyping, I mean Episcopalian hyping which is basically just letting us know that it was going to be a beautiful and meaningful service. It was indeed both of those things.
I don’t want to be reductive but All Saints Day is a day of heartache and hope. We remember those who have gone before us. Many churches remember those who had passed on in the previous year. It is also a day where we look forward to the time when everything will be made right and we all will be saints in the presence of God.
Within this gorgeous service of music, meditation, and readings of scripture, we took part in a liturgy that I had never experienced before. Everyone was invited to come to the altar rail to light a candle in remembrance of the departed. Then all along the front were chimes of different notes. Each person was invited to ring a chime in remembrance of someone who was no longer here with us. Each ring was for another person. Some would kneel at the front and ring their chime three or four or five times.
I can only describe for you what it was like for 10 or 15 minutes to hear all of these notes ringing out. As they echoed through the sanctuary, you realize that each note is representative of a life. Not just of a life, but also love that perseveres despite time and distance and a stubborn hope that death is not the end of all this. It was good and holy and also heartbreaking. Yet it is the kind of cathartic heartbreak that we need but all too rarely allow in our lives.
All Saints Day is always the First of November and is typically commemorated on the first Sunday of the month. Coincidentally enough, we had just yesterday attended the funeral service for EA’s grandmother Lorene who passed away after 106 years. It is kind of staggering to think about all that can occur in over a century; how much the world has changed in that time. Sitting in that chapel yesterday, I found myself wondering how many people with which Lorene’s life intersected during her time on earth. And I looked at our sons on both sides of us and realized that the echoes of her life would reverberate decades after she passed on.
How strongly the lives of loved ones echo is remarkable. As EA rang her chimes for Lorene, I rang mine for each of my own grandparents. It’s been nearly two years since my Granddad died and even longer since we lost Grandma. Even after that time, I feel their absence acutely. I wish they were getting to see the young men that their great-grandsons were becoming. I miss their love, their encouragement, their wisdom. Yet as the notes of their lives echoed through the sanctuary this evening, I know that their love, encouragement, wisdom, and so much more is still with us.
All of which is to say, I hope that you take the time to remember the lives of the people who have formed you into who you are. That you get the opportunity to say a prayer of gratitude, to let your heart break a little at the reminder of their absence, and to stubbornly hope that you get to see them again. Thank God for the saints in all of our lives and may we pass that love, encouragement, and wisdom on to those around us.