All Saints' Day
November 5, 2006

“And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘See the home of God is among mortals.  God will dwell with them as their God, and they will be God’s peoples.  God will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ ”        Revelation 21:3,4

When I was a little boy, we used to sing a song in Sunday School.  “Heaven came down and glory filled my soul.”  Back then, and for most of my life since, I have thought of heaven, or eternity, as something beyond me, on the other side of death, where those we love but see no longer abide, a place far away and where in this life I could never go.

Lately, though, I have begun to think of eternity in a different way.  As something I can taste and see and feel and know right here and now.  Moving to Cape Cod has only  intensified  these feelings.  These words of French poet Arthur Rimbaud resonate deeply: “L’eternite, C’est la mer melee au soleil.”  “Eternity, it is the sea mingled with the sun.”  My sense is for many of us living on the Cape, we have these very same intimations.

Traditionally, All Saints' Sunday is a time of remembrance, a time to recall those who stand upon a distant shore, that great company of saints who live in light perpetual.  I wonder this morning if they could speak to us and if we had ears to hear, what would they say?

Would they echo the sentiments of renown Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein when he wrote: “Death is not an event in life; we do not live to experience death.  If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”?

And if eternal life truly belongs to those of us who live fully in the present, what would our loved ones, faithfully departed urge us to be and do right here, right now?

Friends, I hear them saying to us: Time is fleeting.  There is no time for subterfuge and deceit.  The past is gone.  The future is not here.  Therefore, there is no time for putting off what must happen now. Rather, we are to trust the keeper of eternity, as we hear in the Book of Wisdom.  For those who trust in the Lord will understand truth, and those who are faithful will abide with the Lord in love.

For who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, asks the Psalmist, and who shall stand in the Lord’s holy place?  Those who have clean hands and pure hearts.  Those who do not lift up their souls to what is false and do not swear deceitfully.

I wonder this morning if we can be as close to our loved ones, faithfully departed as we are to ourselves.   I wonder if we can see with them the new heaven and the new earth foretold by the John the Divine in the Book of Revelation.  I wonder if we can join them and our Creator God in the sacred task of making all things new.
  
I wonder if we can summon the same kind of courage that Lazarus drew upon as he was called forth by Jesus from the grave.  Can we dare to believe that death no longer has dominion over us.  That in Christ we are all alive, the dead and the living.  That in Christ heaven and earth are joined in a new creation.  That in Christ, all our weeping, all our grief, all our loss is turned into perpetual joy.

There is a wonderful saying of St. Irenaeus, Bishop of  Lyon in the 2nd Century: “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.”  I love these words, because in their light, that old Gospel song I sang as a child takes on a new meaning, for, indeed, “Heaven has come down, and glory fills our souls.” Right here, right now.  As we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, as we are held up by their prayers and they by ours, as we join together, on either side of death, of making all things new.

On this All Saints' Sunday,  I am thinking particularly of our dear friend Don Mehlhop whom we buried this weekend.  Don knew eternity in this life.  He lived fully in the present.  Two weeks ago we sat together at his kitchen table.  Don’s soul was vibrant and aglow.  Sure, the tumor in his lung was painful, and his physical energy was ebbing, but he told me quite plainly: “I’m not ready to kick the bucket just yet.”

Don was still very much engaged by the world around him.  He wanted to talk about politics, and his distain for the current regime in Washington.  He wanted to talk about the world, and his fears about the damage we are doing to the environment.  Ninety one years on the earth had given him a passion and devotion for this life, and he wanted to drink every last drop from the cup he was given.  As we sat together, it became abundantly clear to me that Don was already in his eternal home.  His impending death was just a marker along the way.  He was already held by the celestial light that embraces us all.

And it makes me wonder anew about the one communion and fellowship we have in the mystical body of Christ our Lord.  It fills me with glory that Don and all those we love but see no longer are as close to me as I am to you.  For in the words of that beloved hymn we have just sung, “the world is bright with the joyous saints who love to Jesus’ will.  You can meet them in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea, for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”

Friends, our faith, our hope, our joy, our love is incarnate.  Heaven has come down, glory fills our souls, every tear is wiped away, mourning and crying and pain shall be no more; death shall be no more.  Eternity is here.  Eternity is now.  The saints are marching in.  “From earth’s wide bounds, for ocean’s farthest coast, through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.”