All of a sudden, one day, your suit that you bought gets used a lot less for weddings, and a lot more for funerals. All of a sudden, you notice that people your age have died. They're not supposed to do that, are they? That's for old people! And then, one by one, the members of the generation older than yours start to pass away as well, and then, as may surprise you, an uncle or aunt somewhere dies, and you realize that you're now the older generation. The generation older than yours is all gone now.
This is all quite shocking, and happens to most of us, once again, if you live long enough. The longer you live, the more you will tend to outlive your peer group, to the point that no matter what a great guy someone is, if they're an octogenarian or better when they die, they're not going to fill the church up too much for their funeral. A 17 year old who dies certainly will. Now, this is because the older you get, the more people that you know and love die. Death is a fact of life.
This is why a Christian celebration like All Saints' Day becomes more important as you get older. For the younger person, it is intensely important to hear and know what Christ does for you - how he forgives sins, how he promises life everlasting, how he divides your sins from you as far as east is from the west, all that good stuff. And this is all good and true, of course, but to be honest, there are other things to consider on a day like All Saints' Day. And this is the one day where I don't talk about what God has done for you. I talk about what God has done for them.
Them? Who? You know who. You know who because you have been told at some point, somewhere, that someone you love has been taken to the hospital, and it's not looking good. You may have been pulled out of a hospital room by a doctor into the hallway for 'the conversation,' in which the talk has moved from treatment to comfort. You may have spent hours at a bedside in a hospice, listening to machines beep until they stop beeping. And you very probably have gone to a funeral. You have walked into the church where there have been baptisms and weddings, but now the tears are of sadness, because a loved one is not coming back. You may have walked out to a graveside on a crisp autumn afternoon, and had the funeral director give you a flower from the arrangement on the casket right before it is lowered down into the ground, and then gone from sight forever. You may have had the responsibility of placing the urn into the ground or into its niche, which is the last act of earthly service you can provide for that person, and then that space is sealed, and there is nothing left that you can do. If you haven't had any of these experiences yet, you will. Just give it enough time.
And this is why we speak the way we do on this day. This is why we have the sorts of conversations that we do around this day, in this space, because what God does for you is important, but so is what God has done for them. This needs to be a major guiding force for you, it needs to be a major consideration more now than ever. Honestly, it's always better to deal with an issue before it becomes a crisis. It's good to look at your roof before it rains. It's good to deal with your blood pressure before your heart attack. And it's good to think about what God does for those whom you love and cherish before they're gone.
Maybe you will, maybe you won't, but in all the ins and outs of life, you need to think about and consider the line from the middle of the beatitudes, where Jesus says 'blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.' Well, how on earth is that supposed to happen? Honestly, I don't think we really truly consider this that often, but the only real comfort that you can get from the world when someone dies is to be told that they lived a good life, and they were a good friend. But that will make you feel worse if it's true! If it is true that someone you love lived a truly good life, that they worked hard, were a wonderful husband or father, wife or mother, friend, aunt, whatever, you'll just feel worse to hear that. The best you can hope for is that you will eventually forget how great they were.
Or, you can turn to the one who gives peace as the world does not give. Who forgives sins, and covers over unrighteousness. You can turn to the one who binds up the wounded, and who promises resurrection, and life everlasting. And that is real, genuine comfort. It's comfort that does not go away, and it works better the better the person is. If you have someone who is genuinely good, who was a good person whom you loved and cherished, then the reality of the resurrection will be actually better and sweeter the more that is true. And Christ knows this. This is why the resurrection is the major point of the Christian faith, because all these humans on earth are unique, and cannot be replaced. The comparison that I made on Sunday was that although each person is unique, they all go into that great cloud of witnesses, just like a snowbank is made of a great pile of snowflakes, indistinguishable until you extract just one and realize that it is fully unique. And for every single person about whom you have said that you would give up anything to see them again one more time, Christ did give up anything, in fact everything. He gave up everything that he had for that solution to manifest and to be made real. The cross of Christ was where that issue was fully and finally resolved, and life was guaranteed not for a while, but sealed for eternity.
So on All Saints' Day, we face these losses with confidence, with strength, and with vigor, remembering what we forget for most of the year. We usually think about what Jesus does for us, but something of supreme importance for us to remember is what Christ does for them too.
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