All Souls

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green

There is a tension in the New Testament between two ideas of eternal life. It’s about verb tenses – which doesn’t sound very interesting, but bear with me. In the last clause of today’s Gospel, we have the verb: anasthsw. (from which we get the lovely name Anastasia) The Greek ending ‘sw’ tells you immediately it’s first-person future: ‘I will raise up’ And to be totally clear, we’re told ‘on the last day.’ The picture painted is of a final day when all will rise to meet Christ, which is why traditionally we are buried with our feet to the East, so, rising, we will face the direction from which he will appear. Incidentally, priests are buried with their feet to the West so they can gather their faithful. I’m sure you’re not all happy that I might be the first face you see after a thousand years, or at the current rate of bad events, maybe six months; But it’s not my current plan to stay here for the rest of my life so, very likely, you’ll have some more attractive face to welcome you on the day of judgement.

However. In the line before we’re told that it’s the will of the Father that all who see and believe in the Son may have eternal life. exh (subscript iota) – may have – zwhn aiwnion – eternal life – from which we get the lovely name Zoe. exh - The mood is subjunctive, the tense is present. Not will have or should have – at some point – But may have, may possess now – eternal life.

And in the most famous verse in that Gospel we have the same tense: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Not ‘will have eternal life’; ‘have eternal life’: The one who takes hold of this love that made the world already holds eternity in the palm of their hand.

We have a sense of this in how we experience the death of those we love. On the one hand they have been transported to some future that we hope to share in. They are no longer in our present world, but we hope to see them again. Our reunion is a future event.

And, yet, we may also sense them with us. That celebrated sermon by Henry Scott Holland remains a favourite reading after a hundred years because it speaks to experience: ‘What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner.’ – Death is nothing at all.

This duality of time often filters in when people speak about loss: In a recent interview, Maurice Saatchi said he went to visit his wife’s tomb for breakfast every day for seven years and talks to her all the time. ‘I think about Josephine continuously, I don’t know if that’s rare or completely normal for scouples who are separated, but I live to see her again.” The article began: “We'll see you at 11.30am,” says Lord Saatchi. His wife, Josephine Hart, died 11 years ago and it is clear that I will be meeting them both. 

The novelist David Grossman, who lost a son to war, writes hauntingly:

… A man from far away
       once told me that in his language
       they say of one who dies in war,
       he ‘fell’.
       And that is you: fallen
       out of time,
       while the time
       in which I abide
       passes you by:
       a figure
       on a pier,
       alone,
       on a night
       whose blackness
       has seeped wholly out.
       I see you
       but I do not touch.
       I do not feel you
       with my probes of time (62-63).

But how do we make sense of this? I am quite often asked by the bereaved that most straight forward question: “but where is she now?” The answer is “she is with God” – but we might want to think about that a little more. The image that initially conjures up – of our beloved with a kind old man – is not the most helpful or convincing way to think about death.

The letters of St John describe God in a way that unsurprisingly is taken up more in the wedding service than the funeral: ‘God is love and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them.’ The essential point of Christianity is that our universe is created and shaped by love; And that even when it appears weak and overcome, the power of love – as Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Jennifer Rush, Huey Lewis and the News, 10CC and Luther Vandross all tell us – the power of love – will overcome all evil – even the vampires at your door (and it might just save your life).

We’re a little bit over-used to this concept. It’s sentimentalised in our culture, because of our Christian heritage. But it remains the unique selling point of Christianity – That the power and wisdom of God is revealed to us in the weakness and frailty of a person who has chosen to live by a rule of compassion, even at the cost of suffering and death, A life which chooses to give itself for others.

Now, what faith chooses to believe is that what is sewn in love is reaped in joy. That the love we give and receive is stronger than death. That because it shares in nature with the divinity that created the world, love is eternal.

Christianity is a metaphysic of love. The only thing that is real, the only thing that survives in the crucible of death that is this world, is love. Love created us; Love redeems us on the cross; And as that love lives in us so we are given immortality. We are really no more and no less than the love we give and receive.

So the act of faith that brings us here tonight; That requires us to remember those we love and see no more; Is the force of eternity within us, which is the power of resurrection, the power of love, a light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome.

We cannot help but be moved when we hear those stories from war – and they are not uncommon – of friends giving their life for one another. If we take time to really follow the passion in Holy Week, we cannot but be moved by the story of Christ. We may know ourselves stories of immense bravery, or of commonplace unselfishness in lives given, spent for children, partners, friends.

In the economy of the world this makes no sense. You have one life – get the most out of it. In the economy of faith this is everything. We are what we give.

But when we experience love, when we know love, we know this now. We have eternal life now, in the present. We have love that is more important than anything, that is stronger than death. So tonight we give thanks for that love whose object has fallen out of time. For the love that sustains us in memories, and the love that is not yet cold in our hearts, but endures eternally. For the light that shines in the darkness. Amen.