"My Soul Waits" All Souls Day 2015: a sermon

“My Soul Waits”

All Souls Day, Nov. 2, 2015

St. Thomas’ Episcopal, Richmond

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1 “But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.”

Tonight we remember by name our loves whom we have lost, from our sight, but not our hearts. We stop tonight to name our losses. We name them so we do not forget. In a few moments we will name some of my dearly departed along with yours, and of those who could not be with us tonight.

Some days it is easy to feel them close, to feel the impact they had on our lives. To feel the continuing echo from the life they led. Part of me hungers for the touch of a hand, for the warmth of a voice, and I know they will not happen. But the ache is there, the longing remains. It remains because we love. True Love never dies.

Our Lord and Savior promises us in our reading from John, “The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” Our dear loved ones in Christ are not gone, even though they are not with us.

My wife and I used to have a dog with deep anxieties. When he would be left, he thought it was forever. He thought it was for always. And sometimes, he would wreck the house in his despair. “Mom and Dad are never coming back! What am I to do?!?!” A sense of time is not something dogs possess. Fortunately we do. We can remember what came before, and we can look ahead to what can come.

As I have grown and matured, I have been able to see the ways my life has been directed, and those experiences have helped my grow in my faith and understanding. The one who has been with me all along will not forsake or abandon me. More and more I see that we are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but rather we are spiritual beings having physical experience. We come from love, and to love we shall return. When we transition from this life to the next we are welcomed home.

I lost my father when I was very young, and I have now lived three and a half times longer without him than I did with him. There is not a week that goes by that I do not actively miss him, and I would give anything in this world for 5 minutes more or for a chance for him to meet his grandchildren. But alas, it will not happen on this side of heaven.

Tonight we gather together, to be the children of God, bearing one another’s burdens and grief, and sharing our own as well. Yesterday, we were reminded that Jesus wept, with those who mourned and to mourn himself. Isaiah’s prophecies spoke of Jesus, I believe, being a man of sorrows, one acquainted with grief. (Is. 53:3) We come together in his name, and he is here in our midst, holding our burdens close, weeping as we weep.

But the story does not end there. Just as Lazarus returning and Christ’s own resurrection make promises that there is something beyond, we hold this hope that their is life beyond holding those we miss and a hope-filled promise for us as well. C. S. Lewis likened dying to a small child playing on a carpet with their toys, so enamored that they fall asleep not even knowing they had done so, only to awaken in their sun-drenched bedroom in their pajamas tucked in so snug with the dawn of a new day. He says it will be like that, and yet we live with fear and worry about what is to come. I, like Lewis, look to the steps God has taken with me in this life, and also to the promises of Scripture that have rung true for me, and I can look to the future with the eyes of faith that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. It is with that faith, that I wait for the Lord.

Psalm 130

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;

my soul waits for the Lord

  more than those who watch for the morning,

  more than those who watch for the morning.