All Saints/All Souls (John 11:32-44; Revelation 21:1-6a)

I remember one of my chaplain colleagues, who was about 20 years older than me, once said, “Every year, patients are getting younger and younger.” She didn’t mean there was an actual increase in the number of pediatric, adolescent, or young adult patients in hospital admissions. Instead, she—and I—were simply getting older by default. This shift in perception is a natural part of aging: what once seemed like an "older" age now feels closer to our own, making younger people seem comparatively younger. British novelist Martin Amis, in one of his interviews, succinctly expressed this human process of aging: “The future’s getting smaller, and the past is getting bigger.”

With aging (and illness), we are all subject to death and, thus, separation. The Feasts of All Saints and All Souls highlight death, sharing a common purpose: to remember the dead. My simple, perhaps somewhat too protestant, way of distinguishing the two is whether those we honor are globally or locally saintly. We honor and commemorate the saintly aspects of the dead that continue to influence who we become and how we act skillfully. 

St. Agnes, for example, is believed to have been martyred around the age of 12 or 13 during the reign of Emperor Diocletian, who persecuted Christians in the early 4th century. She is known for her faithfulness and purity—qualities we might strive to embody. The holy acts of “local” saints, in particular, center on mutual love, which is intimately expressed in the form of ongoing grief. We personally know these local saints, and despite our shared perfectly imperfect human flaws, we recognize the beauty, grace, and compassion they had for us. These values are handed down to us, creating a lasting communion with them. 

This morning, I would like us to focus on the lesson from Revelation. The words from Revelation are comforting: “...he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more…” Yet, I would like us to reflect on what underpins this consolation: “See, the home of God is among mortals.” The home of God is within us. This is a reiteration of Jesus’s gospel. Recall the phrase from our confession of sin in our morning prayer: “We forget that we are your home.”

We don’t need to wait until after death for every tear to be wiped away. Biologically speaking, the dead don’t shed tears—only the living do. We journey into the home of God within through the Breath of God. The very first breath of a newborn and the very last breath of a dying person both come from the Breath of God. In the home of God within, we follow that same Breath through our own breath and commune with those who are now part of the Breath.

And there’s more. We gain a clearer understanding of who we are now in relation to who they were to us. In their physical absence, we can no longer be who we once were. We unbind ourselves from the hurts and pains caused by separation, beginning anew our relationship with them through the Breath of God in the home of God within. In that place and time, here and now, death is no more. 

While the future may be getting smaller and the past bigger, as Martin Amis said, “You have to head forward.” We can indeed head forward in the home of God, where we are present with “the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”