The sounds of the choir rise into the air. The incense dances to the rafters. We breathe together, the congregation as the body of Christ, gathered to bear witness on this Feast of All Souls. Soon, names will be spoken into this same air as we read the Parish Necrology, the names of those who have died this past year. Each name requires breath. Each name is carried on the breath of the person speaking it.
The air in this church is filled with so many things we cannot see, but know are there. Things like music, breath, prayer, memories.
The service of All Souls exists in a thin space, the place where in Celtic tradition, they say heaven and earth come especially close. That is where we linger tonight, a little mixed up in the space between the living and the dead where Christ is made real.
This year, the remembering feels a little abrupt as we have just lost a beloved parishioner and member of this choir. Julia Putnam was here practicing tonight’s music not even two weeks ago, rehearsing the Requiem. Her name is among those we speak aloud tonight.
Sometimes death catches us quite by surprise, knocking the breath right out of us. The suddenness of Julia’s passing reminds us how quickly everything can change, and how deeply we love the people who share our lives.
Julia is one among many beloved people whose names will be read. Some deaths were anticipated and others came without warning. But every name represents a particular life and a specific grief.
A Requiem mass honors the dead while proclaiming hope for the living. Christian hope is so much more than holding on to memories. It is proclaiming the resurrection of the dead, the restoration of the whole person by God’s life-giving power.
Now, Christian hope doesn’t ask us to pretend death doesn’t hurt. Our mourning is a both/and. It is sadness with a tremendous amount of hope and assurance in eternal life. For as Paul says, we do not grieve as those without hope. We wipe our tears with one hand and follow along with the prayers with the other.
In the reading from the Letter to the Thessalonians, Paul is addressing a community who believed the second coming of Christ was imminent, within their lifetimes. As their loved ones died, they were concerned they would be left behind in the coming of Christ. Paul is reassuring them that the living and the dead belong together in Christ.
Our modern context is different and yet our theology the same. No one who belongs to Christ will be forgotten and we already have eternal life.
What does “eternal life” mean exactly? Eternal life is not an endless stretch of time that begins after we die. Eternal life is participation in God’s life, and it begins right now.
“The hour is coming, and is now here,” Jesus says (John 5:25). That is the thin space where we worship tonight, the place where eternity and this present moment overlap. Christ has conquered death, and still, we die. Eternal life has begun, and still, we wait for its fullness. We grieve those we love, and still, we trust they are alive in Christ.
Soon, Doyt and I will read the names of this year’s Necrology. When we say a name, we breathe it into the air. There is something deeply intimate about that.
We are using the breath of our living bodies to remember those who breathe no longer. The choir does the same thing as they sing this gorgeous Requiem.
I think most of us want to be remembered. We want our lives to matter. Reading the Necrology is an act of love and tender remembrance. Every name matters. But human memory, as precious as it is, has its limits. Someday, even the people who remember us will be gone. And that’s the beauty of Christian hope. Our hope does not depend on the living remembering the dead. For we will never be forgotten by God.
God does more than remember the dead. God raises them and this is why we have hope. Memory is something we do. Resurrection is something God does.
Jesus promises that “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (John 5:25). The same voice that calls us into life now will call us into life beyond death. Tonight we will speak the names of our dead with our own fragile breath. But Christ speaks their names too, with the voice that calls the dead to life.
The dead do not dwell with us physically any longer. They don’t breathe this air. But we are still bound to one another, because we share the life of Jesus. Death interrupts our earthly relationships, but it cannot undo our belonging to Christ. We often say, God doesn’t put an end to anything God loves. And God loves each and every person we name tonight.
We speak their names because they matter. They were our mothers and fathers, children, grandchildren, friends, and relatives. We breathe their names into this room, along with the incense, to be caught up in the air together, with our prayers and our love.
And Paul’s promise holds: one day we will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air. We will be caught up together in the air and the angels will receive us.
At the very end of the service, the choir will sing its final piece, In Paradisum. “May the angels receive them in Paradise…” Thus begins the choir’s final prayer for the departed.
Doyt pointed something out to me recently that I want to show you. Above the altar, in the round stained glass window, there are two small angels at the very top, looking down on us. Have you ever noticed them? Tonight, as the choir sings In Paradisum, let these angels become a visible reminder of the glorious company of the saints in light to which the dead are now joined.
May you, the body of Christ, be received into eternal life, into the fullness of God’s love. And may you find rest and peace. We never stop loving those who have died. We entrust them to the One whose love is greater than our own.