“Fearing Death”

(Isaiah 25:6-9)

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day, “See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.  This is the Lord for whom we have waited, let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

            All Saints Day is one of my favorites for many reasons, not the least of which is that we get to honor those among us who have died and gone to be with God.  It is a day when we can, together, look death in the face and not be frightened.  It is our moment to declare and witness that our faith will see us through grieving the death of a loved one or anticipating our own time of passing.

            To quote our new Bishop, Hee Soo Jung, in his All Saints Day message, “The mystery of God lies in embracing and binding both the living and the dead with the bond of divine love.  We are to live by faith in Jesus in the present while remembering and being thankful for those who went before us.”

            The passage from the book of Isaiah that you heard Natalie read is one that I have never used on All Saints Day, but I got interested when I read it this year.  It would have been familiar to Jesus and others from the first century because it was part of their sacred Hebrew scripture.  Several verses in it are quoted in Revelation 21 (which I have so often used on All Saints Day and at funerals).  God wiping away every tear from our eyes is such a wonderful image on this day when we are reminded of our grief.  It seems like the older we get the more grief that we carry around with us.

…Now, to our text: for the ancient Hebrews the high places were the holy spots.  Think of Mount Sinai where Moses went to receive the 10 commandments.  Think of the Mount of Olives which was opposite the temple where Jesus spent time before he entered the Garden of Gethsemene.  We used to sing a choir tune here that I always loved.  Some of the words were, “In the holy mountain of the Lord, where war and strife shall cease.”  This is the vision that God has for us.  The high places were well understood to be holy sites, sites where God’s vision for us was laid out and wished for. 

 Our verses this morning begin with the scene on the mountain, the high place, where God is hosting a banquet of rich food and excellent drink, just the most wonderful meal you could imagine.  This is undoubtedly a reference to the Passover meal (which, by the way, we will be observing at the end of our service today).  These scenes on the holy mountain of the Lord paint the picture for us of God’s dream for the people, where war will cease, where peace will prevail, where death will be conquered. 

The shroud that is spoken of in our reading can be thought of as a burial garment, or it can be a symbol, as it is here, for all the people who are mourning.  So, when the shroud is destroyed, we celebrate God destroying death, swallowing up death forever.  And here we can see where the Book of Revelation, chapter 21, gets its inspiration for God destroying death and, beautifully, wiping every tear from our eyes.

I do love these images because it is true that we will suffer when we lose our loved ones.  There’s no pretending that death does not affect us nor cause us pain in mourning.  But imagine having the shroud of death lifted from us.  Imagine living life no longer fearing death.  Such a beautiful thing this would be.  You can just picture God taking the heaviness, the pain, the regrets, the loss, the sadness from us (if only for a moment).  I think this is so very powerful.

The truth is we live in a culture that denies death.  We have come so far with our medical technology that we have been able to push death further and further out so that people living into their nineties and beyond is no longer unheard of.  This is a wonderful thing–until it’s not.  I have walked alongside  several families who have just refused to allow their loved one to die, insisting that they will keep them alive at all costs no matter what a very bad state they are in.  They think that there will be some sort of medical miracle that will appear. 

I have heard of individuals who, in spite of what their families and their doctors say, will not accept the inevitability of their coming death.  We have turned the idea of death into a terrible thing when, in truth, it is, as we say in the funeral service, a part of life.

Now, in contrast, the death of a young person really is a tragedy that is nearly unbearable.  And yet, our faith tells us that in life and in death, we are held by our God of love, our God who is present, our God who never leaves us alone.    

The verses today end with the words, “This is our God.  We have waited so that we might be saved from our human suffering (at least in this moment).  [Let us be glad and rejoice today].” 

…This All Saints is the day when we can look death in the face and know that God will see us through, that there is something much greater than our life in this moment here on earth.  It is a day when we can be lifted out of our human limitations and see in the way that only our Divine Parent does.  We can be given the vision of God to view the big picture, when the shroud is lifted, when the scales fall from our eyes, when we can be assured that the pain of each day of our human life can be placed in God’s hands, when we can truly let go and let God.

Now, I know that we, each of us, carry burdens.  There is physical pain, that can drag us down and depress us.  There is emotional pain that can devastate us; there are our own troubles and the troubles of our loved ones.  These are real, and they never leave our thoughts and our minds.  There are dealings with others that cause us pain and uncertainty, that haunt us during our days and terrify us in the night.

But, for today, we celebrate the shroud being lifted, if only for this moment.  We celebrate our tears being dried, our eyes seeing how God’s universe is bigger than our little moments here on earth, no matter how huge they seem to us.

Our Bishop Jung has this nugget of truth and hope for us: “Our faith is rooted.  Those roots give us the beautiful wings of devotion to become witnesses of the gospel in this day and age.  May we live this biblical dream,” this playing out of the scene on the mountain, “as we look to the God of our faith.”“Today, let us look to that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, surrounding us, encouraging us, and cheering us on.”  Amen.ReplyForward