All Saints' Day: Baptism and Burial

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Revelation 7:9-17

All Saints' Day: baptism and burial

All Saints' Day seems as if it should hold the answers. And yet instead it is like struggling to find the opening in a curtain that has no opening. Tangled up and twisted, desperate to glimpse the mysteries of the other side, to find answers to the questions that vex us, questions of life and death, of time and eternity. Here we are so close and yet no closer.

What brings us here? To this place? To this day?

To this place – equal parts baptism and burial.

To this day – equal parts baptism and burial.

What brings us here? Is there something we seek? And if so where might that something be found? In the wood of the pews – wood that wears a million fingerprints, worn into shape by a million worshipers, the living and the dead, who sit and stand and sit again and kneel and sit again, wood that holds cards and pencils but also decades of prayers whispered into the air and tears never wiped away – at least not yet?

Or in the stone – stone that seems as if time is no match? Stone that stoically watches, unmoved, unaffected. Stone that could tell the tales of those who filled this nave, this chancel, this pulpit – from one generation to the next, but chooses to stand in stubborn silence?

On the water – the water that sits, still, in the font? It awaits Holy Spirit; it awaits today six more heads. It is water that has the power to change souls, to make born again, to carry death and resurrection, and yet it is also just water.

Or in the chalice – where wine will wait for something mystical to happen, to absorb salvation? But in the meantime will be pestered by gnats while this priest adds the necessary manual acts that will drive away those pests, desperate to protect the holy from the profanity that closes in on us.

Or might it be in the people? Oh, the people: so fickle in a way that wood and stone never are. Today we are looking for saints and so we look into the past because we are sure that here we are simply surrounded by human beings, very real, very frail human beings, human beings struggling right now to intermittently attend to a homily, distracted by money and children, life and mortality, nary a halo in sight. And even though a few of the humans are dressed in the guise of holy men, don't be fooled, the halos, if there appear to be halos, are only the product of old lighting and golden thread weaved through priestly vestments – halos as fool's gold.

All Saints' Day seems as if it should hold the answers. And yet instead it is like struggling to find the opening in a curtain that has no opening. Tangled up and twisted, desperate to glimpse the mysteries of the other side, answers to the questions that vex us. Here, in this place, on this day, we are so close and yet no closer.

What brings us here? To this place? To this day?

To this place – equal parts baptism and burial.

To this day – equal parts baptism and burial.

I deal in mysteries, that is my business, and yet I want to know. Those I love keep fading into the darkness of eternity, the same darkness which continually pulls me closer, and I want to know what lies beyond the darkness, to know the the unknowable. Don't you? Is that why you are here? It would take one glimpse. One glimpse behind the curtain, one tear in the veil, would change everything. To rather know than believe. True, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” But which is better: to be blessed or to rest assured?

I lie in bed, in the dark, not every night, but sometimes, and I wrestle against the cold inevitability of death. I question the arrangement – to know that death is coming but to not know where it leads. It seems less than ideal. Like it should be one or the other: know and know or not know and not know.

That is how it feels in the dark but then, in the day, I stand at someone's bedside and I say Last Rites. And in that moment, though I still don't know, it feels like it is OK, like some divine voice whispers peace through eternity and into my soul – not to untangle the mystery, just to remind me that death is not the end of the story.

Death is the reality waiting at the end of each mortal life. And while that means that every person lives with a measure of grief, also there is grace in a procession that leaves nobody out. We sit where others have sat. And we pray where others have prayed. And though the path of life and death leaves us with more questions than answers, it is a path that is paved before us. It might feel like uncharted territory, but it is not. It might feel like we walk into the darkness alone, but we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.

This day, All Saints' Day, is equal parts baptism and burial, life and death. And that sounds like a juxtaposition of opposites, as if the two were separated by forever and eternity. But the separation is no wider than perception. Death and new life live together in the waters of baptism. And so new life finds its way into burial. The beginning of the journey is also an ending, so the ending of the journey is also a beginning.

With God at every gate.¹ And so the mystery, perhaps every mystery, leads us to the same destination.

We don't get to know. I don't know why. And so we are asked to trust – to trust that in the shadows, and behind the curtain, and in every mundane miracle, and in every desperate night, and in every precious death, and through every darkened gate there is God.

And we are asked to trust that God will love, keep, treasure every little one we bury in baptism and every loved one born into eternity. And we are asked to trust that God will see us through both life and death.

We long to be scholars; we get to be mystics. It is not that there are no answers. It's just that easy answers keep us from deep truths and so God does not give us easy answers. God is calling to go deeper; to break the surface and drown in the mystery. We would never learn to trust God, to rely on God, to search for God if the answers to life and death and eternity were easy to find.

It is a change of perspective; it is a new way of pursuit. Edward Hays says that, “The challenge of the saints of the twenty-first century is to begin again to comprehend the sacred in the ten thousand things of our world; to reverence what we have come to view as ordinary and devoid of spirit." The wood and stone and water and wine are rich with sacred stuff – holy vessels disguised as common. And in these pews are saints – flawed and fragile, of course, but made holy by Spirit and marked as Christ's own forever. Even death is teeming with resurrection life. We will never know all of the answers; but the sacred truth is everywhere. Close your eyes; trust your heart and you will see God at every gate.

1 From Emily Dickinson's poem The Journey.