"The After Life" November 01, 2015

The Wisdom of Solomon 2:21 - 3:9 Revelation 21: 1-6 According to Consumer Reports, we in the United States now spend as much and more on decorations and costumes for Halloween than we do for Christmas. In other parts of the world, focus is not upon All Hallow's Eve, wearing costumes, passing out candy, or shaving cream, toilet paper and eggs; but instead on this All Saints' Day, a time for naming those who are with God, going to cemeteries, lighting candles, singing a favorite hymn. We are troubled that no matter how many times, we beat cancer into remission, no matter what we have overcome, what we have accomplished, no matter whether we reach 100 years and more or not, we are mortal, we are creaturely, and we die. All Saints' Day is the proclamation of a counter-cultural reality: that Christ conquered death, and baptized with Christ, sharing in Communion through him, God is with us not for 70 or 80 or 100 years, but for all eternity! Etiology is the study of stories of origin. Where have we come from. According the Rudyard Kipling, “How the Elephant Got its Trunk” “How the Leopard Got its Spots” “The Cat Who Walked by Itself”. According to Iroquois Indians “How all creation sprung up on the back of a great Tortoise”. Genesis “How God Called Time and Space into Being, forming Humanity in God's Own Image, and breathing God's Own Spirit into Us as Life.” While every culture has stories of their etiology, the origin of things the origin of life as we know it, periodically in human culture there is fascination with Eschatology, with where we are going and the End of life as we know it. Just as the first lines of Genesis describe the identity of a thing is contained in its seed, we are who we were made to be by God, so also in Revelation our goal in life, our purpose and end also describe who and what we are. T.S. Eliot described “Our end is our beginning”, described in Latin by the Early Church as “Exitus Reditus: All things come forth from God, all things ultimately return to God.” A year ago we spent time in California with our son, and friends there described their perception of the difference between the East Coast and the West, that on the East Coast we have a 300 and 400 year history, which inspires a love of what is historic, the origin of things; whereas on the West Coast emphasis is on what is new, what is next, where we are going. Reviewing recent novels and films produced, there seems to be a pre-occupation with the end of the world, cultures particularly of teen-agers who survive ordeals, who win over conspiracies, confronting what is next after this world, after this life. Throughout the last many years we have worked to improve and restore the beauty of this Sanctuary. But as much as we have attempted to confront issues of Accessibility, Lighting, Hearing, Musical Instruments and Acoustics, this Sanctuary was designed in the late 1800s with every image, the shape of the room, the trinity of Arches, the Stained Glass Windows all taken from the Book of Revelation. Particularly from this image of a new Heaven and new Earth, a City of God. The Scripture Lessons for this day are different from our norm, the First lesson not actually included in our Pew Bibles. In an earlier era, there was what was referred to as the Catholic Bible and The Protestant Bible. The primary difference being that the Catholic Bible, and now most Bibles being published included The Apocrypha, and some the Pseudopygrapha, where the Protestant Bibles did not. The Pseudo-pygrapha were books of Gnosticism, including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Judas, which although from the same time period and geography as the Christian New Testament were considered by those who codified the Biblical Canon, as based too much on Miracles, Magic, Philosophy and not on Christian Truth. The Apocrypha were books written after the period of the First Testament, after the Hebrew Bible was canonized, and before the writing of the Epistles and Gospels of our Christian Testament. These include Tobit, Judith, additional Books of Esther, The Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, and additional Books of Daniel. Resolving our hearts and minds to death is painful. Imagine the early human creatures, whether Eve and Adam, or Professor Leake's Lucy. You have your partner, your mate, your companion, without whom your life is at risk. They share in your safety and hunting, and cooking, they are your lover and the other parent to your children. Last night as you went to sleep, you cuddled up against their warmth. But this morning, their body is cold, cold as the dawn air. Their flesh is not full, but sagging from their skeleton. All color has left them, and they do not respond to your voice or touch. After a few days they begin to smell. How do you cope with this change? How do you reconcile that at one moment they were sleeping beside you, sharing in all of life, and now they are dead? Ancient Judaism believed that after death, we were dead, our bodies and souls went to Sheol, the place of the Dead, the Foundations of the Earth. It was from the Hebrews that we had the image of On a Final Day, the day of the Lord, the day of Judgement, all souls would be released from Sheol and rise up from their graves to be with God. Greek Culture believed in a Duality to Life, that there is the Physical and the Spiritual. As described by Plato in “The Cave” I could show you a throne, a Rocking Chair, and a stool and describe all of these as being Chairs; yet, if you closed your eyes and I named for you “A Chair” we each would envision our archetype of what a Chair is supposed to be. So also with human life, that this physical life has many experiences and varieties, but there is a Spiritual life which is Immortal and Eternal. The Romans had a three-tiered conception of the Universe, with this life, and Heaven and Hell as three separate yet connected realities. Because the Greco-Roman culture co-opted Christianity, because Christianity became the religion of the Holy Roman Empire, we have inherited many of these ideas, which were not Christianity. Roman culture required that when a person was near to death, a family member or servant was paid to sit vigil beside them, in order that insofar as Breath is equivalent to Soul, when you gasped your last this other person was to catch your last breath in their mouth, from which Roman Christianity developed what is identified as A Christian Kiss, to be shared at any of the Sacraments. However our Texts for today describe something wholly different at the end of this life. According to The Wisdom of Solomon, “God created us for incorruption, made in the image of God's own eternity.” So the point of being formed in the image of God has nothing whatsoever to do with having a beard, sandals, long white hair, being male or female! We were created in the image of God, as eternal! That eternity was interrupted by the sin of humanity, and restored by Jesus Christ! “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, where nothing can ever touch them.” Revelation describing that “The Home of God is among Mortals” defies that after death we see a bright light, or we are transported to the Pearly Gates, or that there is a Purgatory for working off and atoning for your sins, No. But that in this life, God wrestles with us, we wrestle with relationships and brokenness, and after death instead of our crossing over and going somewhere, after death God enters into each one of us. The question of the After Life is not who gets in and who does not, who is saved and who is corrupt, but that all of us, All of us, have acted and said and thought things which are not of God. After Life, God is in all of us, we are all brought together as God intended for Creation, and Communion, this physical act as well as the relational reality where we forgive one another and we are forgiven. Forgiveness changes us, and grants us a foretaste of the Kingdom of heaven where all of us serve one another, and all have enough. How amazing if instead of looking at a stranger, and questioning are they for us or against us, are we in competition for survival, for the goods and chocolate of this life, instead if we could see all the saints in our midst.