All Saints and All Souls

 

Half of my time is parish-based (the other half is city-centre/civic based) and half of that time is currently invested in one of the local schools, at their invitation. This afternoon, we talked all things Halloween/All Saints’ Day/All Souls Day and from All Saints to St Nicholas (for whom the parish church is named)/Sinterklaas/Santa Claus and from there to Advent and Christmas and evidence for God and back again to death and ghosts and evidence for what they called afterlife and how Christians celebrate our communion with those who have died, held together, as we are, by and in Jesus. A sprawling conversation, with a lot of tangents along the way.

 

Evidence

 

The best evidence for the bodily resurrection of the dead is the persistent hope of the bodily resurrection of the dead, and the lives of billions of women and men oriented, in the here and now, to that hope.

For a narrow scientism, this is no evidence at all. But the failure is one of scientism, not of evidence. In all the known universe, there is not a shred of empirical evidence that love exists. We can measure short-term and long-term physiological changes attributed to love, but evolutionary biologists can and do offer alternative explanations. There is no standardised, universally accepted scale (Hk, hugsnkisses) by which we can measure the love we have for one parent, sibling, or child in comparison with the love we have for another; nor by which we can track the rise and fall of love for a spouse over time. And for scientism (as opposed to scientific enquiry) what cannot be measured cannot exist. Yet deny the existence of love, and you will rightly be pitied.

The apostle Paul said that if there is no resurrection, then Christians are to be pitied above all people. Not commended, as good people who seek to serve their neighbours. Not condemned, as hypocrites who think they are better than others. But pitied.

On the other hand, if our hope is not in vain, we are the most hopeful of all people, for death has no hold over us, now, keeping life at arm’s length from us, or when it comes for us.

Don’t discount evidence simply because it doesn’t look like we were told it should. Evidence for the bodily resurrection of the dead is all around.

 

For all the saints

 

The Apostles’ Creed, the baptismal confession of all Christians, says of the Church:

‘I believe in…the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.’

The Nicene Creed expands:

‘We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.’

It is perhaps a commitment to the forgiveness of sins that is the most culture-critical aspect of this confession in my twenty-first century British context (and while the Nicene Creed emphasises baptism as a sacrament of forgiveness, the Apostles’ Creed makes forgiveness of sins, without qualification, a creedal sign of the baptised). But today, we ought to reflect on the communion of saints, on resurrection and life.

Today is the Feast of All Saints, the day Christians are called to give thanks for and rejoice with all those who have gone before us, who have died ‘in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our frail bodies that they may be conformed to his glorious body, who died was buried, and rose again for us’ (taken from the Committal, Common Worship Funeral Service).

Tomorrow is the Feast of All Souls, the day Christians are invited to give thanks for and rejoice with those we have known personally, who have died in this same hope.

One of the local churches I serve has been a confessing community since 930AD. There are many more Saints to rejoice with than Souls. The other has been a confessing community since 1939. There is among our number one man, in his nineties, who was there on Day One. Here, in contrast, the Souls outnumber the Saints.

One of the things I note in Sunderland, among both those who would locate themselves at the heart of the confessing community and those who slip in and out of our buildings to remember their dead before God, is a crisis in confidence in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, and therefore in our ability to look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Every day of the year functions as a truncated All Souls, in which my loss is cut off from the community, becoming individual (that is, atomised) rather than personal (that is, embedded in relationships and an institution that provides meaning). People leave written prayers for the dead, imploring God to take care of their relatives. Every Sunday becomes a day to read aloud the names of those whose anniversary of death has come around, yet again, that week. There is no letting go, and therefore no meeting up again (as with, say, the Mexican day of the Dead celebrations; as All Souls ought to be). There is no receiving the grace to expand around our grief, such that we ourselves are signs of resurrection and participate now in the future breaking-into the present. These things are more peculiar to Sunderland than they are to any of the other cities I have lived in, Glasgow and Sheffield and Liverpool. This is not to say that grief does not break in uninvited, nor that it should be pushed away: rather, that when it comes, we can be confident in the promises that are ours in Jesus Christ and encourage a collective confidence in place of a collective anxiety.

The resurrected person of Jesus Christ bridges the divide between this life and the life of the world to come and holds together those we see and those we see no more. Through him, we are one. Through him, we can engage in conversation, using both shared words (liturgy) and the personal imaginative gift of prayer (our own words, shaped in part by the community). The rhythms of the year, these Feast days of Saints and Souls, are a gift that is both a duty and a joy. They ought rightly to be attended to, in their time. May these days be filled with light and celebration.

 

Further thoughts on All Saints & All Souls

All Christians have hope in the promise of the resurrection of those who have died in—or known by—Christ. But we hold a range of views concerning the time-line of eternity, so-to-speak. As I understand it, the Roman Church remembers those who have reached the joy of heaven on All Saints; and those who are in the intermediary state of purgatory, or purification, on All Souls. Anglicans don’t subscribe to the doctrine of purgatory, but are open to an intermediary state (indeed, heaven itself is temporary, awaiting the new heaven and new earth).

Nonetheless, the idea of purgatory is a helpful analogy for the process and purpose of remembering.

The human being is a storied creature. The act of remembering is not so much about living in the past as about curating the stories which have shaped us in regularly-refreshed arrangements to inform the continually changing present. Just as the best museums and art galleries do.

All Souls creates room to remember those we have known personally, and lost. These memories are in a state of purification: alongside thankfulness, we also experience numbness, sorrow, regret, anger, a need to extend forgiveness either/or both/and to the deceased and to ourselves—a whole range of memories with emotional attachments that need to be worked through, over an indeterminate but lengthy period of time.

All Saints creates room to remember those who have passed beyond that initial stage, for whom we are able to lay to rest the hurt and pain human lives inevitably cause, and gladly give thanks for the good that endures. This is not to pretend that our ancestors were saints in the popular sense of ‘did no wrong’ but rather to receive the gift of forgiveness of sins and the redeeming work of God to bring good even out of evil.

Of course, how we curate those stories can still help us address the ongoing challenges of our own time.

So, for example, there is much in the history of Europe (a history that has shaped me), inseparable from Church history, that is lamentable; but there comes a time to focus on the good, the amazing riches of that cultural inheritance.

That we observe All Saints first, and only then All Souls, reminds us of the end goal of memory: the ongoing passing from death into life.

All Saints & All Souls

We are about to enter a Season of Remembrance. Today is All Saints’ Day, when we remember all those who have gone before us, and whose deposit of faith we have inherited. In our locality, the congregation stretches back to 930AD, so that is a lot of saints, or saints-who-were-also-sinners. Tomorrow is All Souls’ Day, when we remember those who we ourselves have known and loved, who have passed through death to life ahead of us. Soon after, we come to Armistice Day, when we remember the cessation of hostility of the First World War; and Remembrance Sunday, when we remember those who have died in conflict in that and all subsequent wars.

The First World War changed the way we think about death and the dead. For many families, there was no possibility of a funeral, or a grave. Mass monuments for the whole parish in a sense took us back to the mass ‘parish grave’—for a long time, people, other than the very rich, were buried together, with marker stones indicating that they were buried ‘nearby’ rather than actually marking their grave. The Service of Remembrance in a sense took the place of a funeral service. And often, both the monument and the act of remembering took place in the market square, rather than the church building.

The Service of Remembrance has become a ‘holy cow’ that cannot be questioned. But I wonder, at what point do we need to let ghosts lie, and allow people to pass from this form of Remembrance to the remembrance of All Souls’ Day and then All Saints’ Day?

I wonder, for example, whether after next year, after 100 years has passed, we need to stop marking Armistice Day, the end of WWI; and allow Remembrance Sunday to mark those wars that have been fought since that War? And if 100 years is not enough—we don't mark any wars that pre-date WWI in this way—then when might be? 150? 200? Never?

It is not that remembrance is not important; but that it comes in more than one form.

I still remember my grandfathers, who fought in the Second World War (so, an All Souls’ connection) but know no-one who fought in the First World War (they have become to me an All Saints’ connection).

Remembrance involves a letting go—not a perpetual holding on—an entrusting to God, and a move from grief at loss to thankfulness for all that was good. It is a process, as much for communities as for individuals.

Perhaps we need to remember what remembrance is truly for?

We are all beggars

Thoughts on All Saints’ Day:

Jo and I are recently back from four nights spent in Prague.

One of the most striking features of this faded-but-hauntingly-beautiful city is the number and, even more so, posture of its beggars.

They kneel, their faces pressed against the ground, hands stretched out in front of them in an imploring prayer for mercy to passing tourists and pilgrims. To the sheep and the goats. The hands and the feet of Christ.

The beggars around the Charles Bridge remind me that we are all beggars before God.

And if that statement makes you bristle –

whether

‘I am not a beggar; I am a daughter of the King!’

or

‘Why should I care one iota for a god that treats me like a beggar?!’ –

then perhaps that reveals most how we view beggars.

Are not beggars also someone’s daughter, someone’s son?

Are not beggars made in God’s image?

Do they not find themselves in circumstances beyond their ability to control?

Yet, do they not still possess agency, the ability to do something, for others as well as themselves?

And are we not dependent on God for our every breath?

The beggars who sleep on the streets are not the only beggars in Prague, not the only beggars on the Charles Bridge at night. There are other beggars, in the guise of tourists, stood in front of a statue of a saint – or before the many prayer-stations that encircle the naves of the many churches. Praying for a miracle, for themselves or for a loved-one in circumstances beyond our ability to control.

For certain, there will be those who rub a statue shiny-bright in hope of good luck. But for many, there is something far deeper than luck being invoked. There is a recognition of the communion of saints – that in Christ heaven and earth, time and eternity, are held together. A reaching out to the great cloud of witnesses who cheer us on; asking that they not be so mesmerised by the glory of the throne of heaven that they neglect to join with the Son in interceding for us before the Father.* No different from asking a friend to pray for you, or a tourist to share their money – their experience of change – except that certain saints (living, and dead) have a track record for standing with others in their time of need.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should confess that I did not give money to any of the beggars. I confess – confession, not self-justification – that I was overwhelmed by them. That I still am.

Their need is real.

And so is mine.

We are all beggars.

And if we can embrace this truth, it might make all the difference in the world.

*This is understood by Orthodox and Catholic Christians, but ranges from problematic to unacceptable for Protestant Christians, for whom the idea that Jesus is not the sole intercessor who might be invoked in heaven compromises the doctrinal belief that Jesus is the sole mediator between God and humanity. I have no difficulty with making such a distinction; but if you do, please [1] try to understand the significant practices of other traditions, and resist the temptation we all experience to dismiss what we don’t appreciate, and [2] try to identify the practices in your own tradition that reveal your need for something beyond yourself.

At Sixes And Sevens With You

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then, the whining school-boy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then, a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then, the justice,
In fair round belly, with a good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare, As You like It, Act II, Scene VII

Men and women move through stages of life. And this is as true of communities as it is of individuals. Think of a neighbourhood, or a city, or a local church. To borrow from Shakespeare’s insight, they start out with the dependency and mess of infants; must learn certain core lessons from those who are further along; consider themselves special, and perhaps misunderstood; go in search of adventure, and reputation; consider themselves one from whom others can learn; shift into decline, becoming a shadow of their former self; lose need of, and use for, reputation.

Some, who care about the church, worry that the church as we know it will have died, in the West, within a generation. Others dispute that idea. I would suggest that both are wrong. The local church progresses through a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It always has, and it always will. The church as we know it, at any moment in time, is playing a part; and if we will commit to one community over a long length of time, we will experience the changing seasons. On a regular basis, in big-picture terms, any local church dies, and a new local church rises from its tomb – and the people who make up that church at that time experience the pain of decline and death and the mess of new life – a new life that might be as unrecognisable as the resurrected Jesus, with only the marks of his suffering to identify him.

It seems to me that the temptation of the missional movement within the Church – a passion with which I identify, and a network within which I participate – is to believe that a healthy Church would always look like youthful energy and confidence, and to see churches that are moving through the sixth and seventh Acts of life – whose energy and capacity is failing – as failures.

And it seems to me that such a view would be more conformed to our wider society, with its obsession with youthful vitality and vigour, and attempts to reverse the aging process at all costs, than it has to do with being conformed to the mind of Christ.

The lesson we need to learn is that the God who is faithful in the mess and vulnerability of infancy; and in the stubbornness of childhood; and in the self-absorption of adolescence; and in the naïve confidence of young adulthood; and in the limited wisdom and far wider folly of maturity; is also faithful in the humbling shrinking of aging, and in the mess and vulnerability of dying.

We are invited to discover God’s faithfulness in every stage of communal life, by responding to the invitation and the challenge to be faithful to God and to one another through every stage of communal life.

Each changing season comes with its difficulties to be faced, requires re-ordering life. But there are things beyond all we could ask or imagine to every stage, things that we can only receive in their rightful Act.

We need to learn our parts in Acts 6 and 7, learn to bring these lines to life with sensitivity.

This, too, is something we might reflect on between All Saints and Advent.

All Saints : All Souls : Part Three

All Saints’ celebrates the unlikely heroes of the Church. Hand-in-hand with this goes All Souls’, which commemorates those we have known personally and no longer see, because they have gone ahead of us into God’s presence.

The longer you live, the more people you will know personally who have died. As I write, I have never lost a parent, or sibling; a spouse, or parent-in-law; or a child. But I know many people who have lost several of those closest to them. And children and teenagers are not exempt from such experience: death shows no favours.

We need to help our children and teenagers face death, appropriately. Not in the way that a trained grief counsellor will work with a school after the tragic death of a pupil or teacher. I’m not thinking here of immediate aftermath responses, though we need to think through these too, of course. But by creating dependable spaces where people can mark the reality of having lost someone, perhaps by lighting a candle; can share their memories, and be listened to; can ask questions, without any guarantee of answers – and without easy answers – but with the guarantee of being listened to; and by sharing hope (which is not the same thing as answers).

The Church calls this space All Souls.

Around our building there are memorials, in stone and metal and wood, to men and women of previous generations who have worshipped God and served the community faithfully in this place – including the church warden who died in a tragic accident in the belfry, crushed between bell and tower wall; and the man praised for his ‘disinterestedness’, which, in the language of his time, meant that he showed no favouritism to prestige or power but treated everyone with equal concern, and not, as it might suggest today, that he showed no concern for anyone.

They are those who are somewhere along the journey of moving from the living memory of All Souls to the family tree of All Saints. It is a journey we will all make, in time.

Whose stories inspire us, and for what reason? In whose slip-stream do we travel?

And what stories will be told of us, in our wake?

All Saints : All Souls : Part Two

The East Window at Sunderland Minster depicts the Apostles Creed. It is a statement of faith, in word and in pictures. Jesus Christ is at the centre, of both. And in the window, he is surrounded by his first apostles, many of whom were martyred for their faith, which came to be expressed in those words. Several of them hold in their hand the instrument of their death:

Simon the Zealot, with the saw with which he was sawn in half longitudinally;

Bartholemew, with a flaying knife (he became the patron saint of surgeons);

Thomas, with a spear;

James the less, with a fuller’s club;

Philip, with a cross;

Jude, with a club;

Matthias, with a chopper;

Andrew, with a saltaire cross.

(Peter gets to carry his keys; and James the Great his scallop shell, symbol of pilgrims. But both of them were martyred, too. Matthew and John are depicted, along with the other Evangelists Mark and Luke, as Living Creatures before the throne of heaven.)

It is in parts a gory display. And yet, that is not the focus. The focus is Christ, in whose life that has conquered death, their lives – as ours – is hidden, through faith. Death cannot hold them. Violence cannot end love. Darkness cannot extinguish the light.

Also woven into the window are images representing Sunderland, and the River of Life flowing from under the Tree of Life to reach even us.

Those who look on the window, Sunday by Sunday, are testimony that the faith first professed by those apostles is still active in the world, and has been without break. Held together by the One who was dead and is now alive forevermore.

And between them and us, thick in the space where light falls through the window and throws its colour across stone pillars, many more martyrs and many, many more saints. Many more stories, of what it looks like to belong to this community, whether young or old. Yes, the stories need telling and the pictures need interpreting; and now is the time.

It isn’t a window for All Hallows’ Eve – stained glass only works when more light is coming in from outside – but for All Hallows’ Day. When darkness is spent, and must give way to the rising sun. To the risen Son.

Of course, this window is fixed in one particular building. You’re welcome to come and see it for yourself. But up and down the country, there are similar buildings where, in glass and stone, similar stories are told. Those who have ears, listen.

All Saints : All Souls : Part One

Slightly out-of-sync, because I was away for a few days at the end of last week, but this weekend just past saw All Saints’ Day – when the Church remembers the saints and martyrs whose stories of costly faith in their own day inspire us – and All Souls’ Day, or the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed – when we remember, with thanksgiving, those we have known personally who have gone ahead of us into God’s presence.

The shops have been stripped of their Halloween merchandise, to make (more) room for Christmas. But for the Church, from All Saints to the start of Advent is a four-week Season to help us engage with death well.

My observation is that churches up and down the land are engaging with Halloween by offering very young children a ‘Light Night’ alternative to a night that has become increasingly commercialised and Americanised [there is nothing wrong with American festivals, but we aren’t in America], and inappropriately frightening for the very young. But on the whole we are doing less with our teenagers, and with the junior-school age-group who aspire towards the next stage. And this Season is a gift for them.

First we should note that fantasy horror is one of the defining genres for teens (e.g. the Twilight series). This is not just coincidence, or good marketing. The zombie is the ultimate type for adolescence: a creature whose face is erupting; whose limbs are gangly and not under the full control of their owner; whose brain is experiencing a re-wiring; whose language descends into groans and grunts; who reaches out for acceptance, but seems only capable of hurting those who don’t run away. In the transition from death to childhood but not yet restoration as a healthy adult, teens identify with zombies. In the experience of feeling different, of wanting to express themselves differently, and of needing to be part of a gang or pack other than their human family, teens also identify with vampires and werewolves, and other stories of ‘ordinary’ teenagers thrown into battle against elemental forces in parallel dimensions.

And in the same way that TV dramas with a teen-life focus (e.g. The Next Step) are actually pitched at younger children, giving them an image to aspire to, so the teen genre of fantasy horror is also – and quite sensitively – being pitched at younger audiences (e.g. Wolfblood, Nowhere Boys).

Starting with Halloween, we have an opportunity to tell stories, with a high fantasy horror content (that is to say, martyrdom is real and gory, but can be told at the level that Horrible Histories pitches itself at). Stories such as St Francis embracing lepers, the zombies of their day. Or Christians hiding in the catacombs of Rome, facing death in the gladiatorial arena. To tell stories that don’t make disfigurement an object of fun or an incarnation of evil, and don’t portray violence as attractive, but that point to the disarming strength of a community of love, a community that cannot be destroyed, even by death.