The Rev. Noah Van Niel
November 3rd, 2019
The Chapel of the Cross
The Feast of All Faithful Departed (C)
What happens when we die? It’s a question, as a priest, I’m asked a lot. It is, after all, the great mystery that has plagued (or inspired) humankind since the dawn of time. Yet I rarely hear sermons on it because I think, frankly, most priests are as unsure about it as anyone else. It’s perfectly reasonable to believe in eternal life and still have a hard time articulating exactly what it looks like. But given that tonight we mark The Feast of All Faithful Departed—or as it is more commonly known All Souls’ Day—the closing act of this autumn triduum where the veil between this world and the next wears especially thin, and the spirits and specters of All Hallow’s Eve give way to the triumphs of All Saints, to the solemn remembrance of all those whom we have loved and lost which is our work this hour—I thought I might offer a few of my own ideas, based on my own experiences, prayers, and engagement with Scripture and the teachings of our Church, on what happens when we die.
The one thing I am pretty sure about is that it’s not like a cartoon from The New Yorker—where people stand around on clouds with wings and robes locked in an eternal cocktail hour of amusement. I prefer to think about it this way: we believe we have been created, not just by something but from something; blessed with existence by a power that is more than our biological make up. So it makes sense to me, that when we die, the part of you that makes you, you, that soul, that divine spark that is aflame as you walk this earth, returns to the source from which it was given. We came from somewhere. We came from God. And to God shall we return.
In what form will we make that journey? Well, everyone has a theory. But based on the examples of Jesus in the Resurrection, it seems clear that we are recognizably ourselves. As the catechism of our prayer book says, “God will raise us from death in the fullness of our being.” We’re not talking night of the living dead, we are talking something more essential and more ephemeral—though no less real. We are each of us unique and wondrous creations while we walk this earth, what if we stay that way, even when our bodies expire? What if we are changed in form, but we remain ourselves, and perhaps even more ourselves, even more the person God created us to be because we are free from the sediment of earthly existence that covers our truest and best natures with less than divine urges, impulses and actions?
And if we can imagine that, might we also imagine that that is how we will know others in that heavenly realm? For if we are recognizably ourselves, even after death, they too will be recognizably themselves. People we have loved and lost, we might still know and see; drawn to one another by the love that bound us here on earth. Because if love is the substance of our God then love is the thing that freely transcends life and death, the thing that will unites us with those who have gone before. For the fact that we loved them here on earth means we were never actually separated from them to begin with. And once we are there, with them, in the presence of God, abiding in love, we remain that way for all time. Imagine that.
Yes, but who gets to go? That’s the billion-dollar question, right? It’s the tension on display between the titles of this feast day—The informal but all encompassing “All Souls” and the official, more qualified, “All the faithful departed.” Our prayer book defines heaven as “eternal life in our enjoyment of God.” So what if we imagined heaven not as a club one had to gain entry into, but rather a state of relationship. In our lives, we are all being called into deeper relationship with God. Some choose to follow that call, others to flee from it. But I don’t think God gives up on calling us home once we die, in fact I think the call becomes even more insistent. Again, from our catechism: “we trust that in God’s presence [the dead] will grow in his love, until they see him as he is.” Those who have chosen to pull away from God and led notoriously evil lives may have further to go to return to the sea of love from which they sprang, and they may put up more of a fight, but God’s not going to give up on them. And those who may not have counted themselves Christians but led noble, righteous lives may have just as much claim to citizenship in that heavenly Kingdom as those who came to Church every Sunday. Everyone is being drawn back to God. Hell, then, is not so much a place, as it is a state of broken relationship, a distance, a feeling of separation from God who is always, eternally, trying to bring us home.
Because God did not make death, the Book of Wisdom tells us. And He will not settle for it to reign over us eternally. “He created all things so that they might exist…God made us in the image of his own eternity…” In other words, God made life. God is life, eternal life. The very fact of death is a violation, an offense, against God’s nature which is why he has offered us repeated testimony that death, while a painful separation for us, does not mean a painful separation from Him. In the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see that claim born out most clearly, the claim that death never conquers God; God remains its master. To worship a savior who can traverse the thin membrane between life and death, to follow a resurrected Lord, gives us a new perspective on what death is. A perspective that tells us that while this earthly life is limited, it is not the limit of our life with God. It is this story, this example, this promise, that calms me when the fear of my mortality grips me by the throat in the middle of the night. It is what gives me a faith that (most days) is stronger than that fear. A faith that when we pass across the borderland from this life to whatever is next, Jesus will be there to take us tenderly by the hand and lead us on, lead us home.
And while we cannot know for sure how it all will play out once we exit this earthly stage, we do have glimpses of how it might be, glimpses that fuel our hope and give color to our dreams, glimpses, I pray, of how it truly is. Glimpses like this: “But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them…their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace…In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble…[they] will understand truth, and…will abide with him in love, because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones, and he watches over his elect.” Amen.