“For a moment, we forget.
In a moment, we remember.
For a moment we remember.
And then in a moment, we forget.
Today we come together to honor both those whom we love but see no longer and also the struggle and dance of we whose journey on earth is not yet done.
Today we come together to proclaim that though death seems final, though we long so deeply for the things that still seem so close and yet we increasingly too easily forget – the warmth of her touch, the smell of his hair, the sound of their laugh … we come together to proclaim that the parting of death is but painful and powerful illusion.
That what God has joined together not even death can tear asunder.
That when we
Say Her Name
Say His Name
Say Their Name
We are proclaiming that we have been … and always will be … One.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on All Saints Sunday, November 3, 2019.
Follow All Saints Church on Twitter @ASCpas. Like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AllSaintsPasadena/.
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For a moment … we forget.
And then in a moment … we remember.
Morning dawns.
Our eyes open.
Our mind emerges from sleep.
The world comes into focus, but the dream world still seems just as real … maybe even more real.
For a moment … for just a moment … we forget.
We forget that the world that is
… isn’t the world that was.
We forget that life hasn’t been changed forever.
For a moment, we forget
Then in a moment … we remember.
She is gone.
He is gone.
They are gone.
The other side of the bed is cold.
The room and the house are oddly silent.
No new text messages light up the phone on our nightstand.
There is a new normal that seems like it will never feel completely normal.
She is gone.
He is gone.
They are gone.
It feels like they have died all over again.
And even though your voice might not utter it, your heart does.
You say her name.
You say his name.
You say their name.
Because for a moment … we forgot
And then in a moment … we remembered.
(Pause)
Time passes …
And one day, for a moment we remember.
And then in a moment, we forget.
Days have turned into weeks into months into years.
Remembering turns into forgetting.
What did she smell like?
What did his laugh sound like?
What did their hand feel like in mine?
The forgetting fills us with sadness and fear.
The forgetting can feel like betrayal, like abandonment.
The forgetting can feel like death has come all over again, like the one we love is slipping further and further away.
And we know all over again.
She is gone.
He is gone.
They are gone.
And in hope that it will keep the memories alive.
… that the forgetting will stop.
… that somewhere that voice that is getting harder to recall will come answering back.
You say her name.
You say his name.
You say their name.
This is how we grieve.
This is how we remember.
This is what we gather to do today.
To say her name.
Say his name.
Say their name.
It is no wonder that the hashtags
#SayHerName
#SayHisName
#SayTheirName
have become an integral part of the movement for black life in this country. Because our insistence that names be said and not be forgotten is so many things.
It is our lament for those who are gone too soon.
It is our rage that death can have such power, such seeming finality.
It is our insistence that those who have been lost are not so easily disposable.
It is no wonder that from Sandra Bland to Atatiana Jefferson.
From Trayvon Martin to Botham Jean.
From Sierra/Simon Bush to Ellie Marie Washtock
…crowds have gathered in the ancient tradition of lament, of protest, of screaming the power of life in the very face of those who wield the power of death
…it is no wonder that the cry that has been on our lips,
the demand we make to those who would deny or dismiss these precious images of God is:
Say Her Name!
Say His Name!
Say Their Name!
Scripture captures the human hope that our names are not forgotten but written in heaven and in the book of life. That matters to us. And so, this day each year, we write the names of those precious to our lives, those who have died … in this book of life. Not because we believe they were any more or less special to God, but because they are special to us.
Because their lives were a part of our life that changed us by their presence and is changing us by their absence.
Because denying or forgetting them feels like a loss upon loss too great to bear.
Because we have a deep primal need to see and to say
Her name
His name
Their name
Because our insistence that names be said and not forgotten is our insistence that not only do we not go gently into that great night … but that night will not have the final word.
There is perhaps nothing at once more natural and yet feeling more unnatural than death. That’s because from the very beginning of our self-understanding in scripture, we have known that it is not good for us to be alone. That God’s deepest desire for us and with us is relationship. Because the very nature of God is love … and love must always have an object … so much so that we even use language of trinitarian relationship to sing the poetry of the very nature of the divine.
We are quite literally made for each other. And so, when we are parted, even in the holiest of deaths after the longest of lives, it is jarring. When we are parted, even when the parting comes before birth, even when the parting is from a child who never had a chance to feel the warmth of our skin against theirs, it is jarring. It seems unnatural.
We are meant for each other and now we are apart from each other. And the struggle to deal with that paradox sometimes seems like it will be our undoing.
This morning, our worship is framed by an extraordinary piece of music, Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living. Historically, a requiem is a mass for the dead… but Forrest recognizes a deep need also to sing the struggle of we whom death has not yet claimed but still has profoundly touched.
Forrest’s Requiem for the Living sings the truth that life and death are a seamless garment. A unity that however much it seems torn by the moment when the heart stops and the last breath escapes, is in truth a mystic sweet communion that cannot be broken by anything in heaven or on earth.
And … it sure doesn’t feel that way. We do feel undone. We feel ripped apart. Not just from one another but inside ourselves.
White western culture has made an art form of hiding this undoing out of our deep fear that grief is weakness. And so we shy away from our deep distress. We insist that funerals be celebrations of life and resurrection, which is wonderful and true … except this too often comes at the expense of the lament, the wail, the raging scream that remains uncried and unheard.
In Requiem for the Living, Forrest dives headlong into the deep grief we know is there but too seldom make space to express.
The Introit and the Kyrie sing not just of our wishes that the dead rest in peace and power … but the deep turmoil and struggle that we who remain, hearts beating and lungs breathing, face every day. Turmoil and struggle that are the reason we
Say Her Name
Say His Name
Say Their Name
In the Vanitas Vanitatum, which we heard just before the Gospel, Forrest cascades from turmoil to despair, joining the choir’s voice with our voices with voices that have echoed across time and space wailing of the futility of life … vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
This movement sings one of our most primal emotions about death. That as much as anything, death just seems wrong and futile and offensive to our sense of justice. And more than that, it defies what we know deep inside. That there is something about the human life force that feels like it cannot die.
It is a desperate rage against the machine, and even a rage against God … because that is a part of our grief as well.
“You love us, God?” we cry. “Well here we are. In all our strength and weakness. In all our celebration and strife. In all the ways we are mad at hell as you for allowing the ones we loved to leave us.”
Just as the brilliant colors of the ofrenda intermingle with the tear-stained photographs, we cry and sing at once:
“You love us, God? Well love this … all of this. All of us.”
And so, all of us is what we offer on that table. A living, breathing, grieving, singing self-offering, holy and acceptable to God. That is our worship. And then, in a few minutes, as we gather to ask God to bless this whole mess of our lives, along with the bread and wine and gifts of our life and labor, Forrest will in the midst of this mess of rage and grief put on our lips what at times seems unthinkable … a beautiful hymn of praise, a beautiful hymn of truth – not in denial of grief but springing from the depths of its embrace.
With all of our grief and all of our gratitude and everything else in this mixed up, muddled up, shook up world we lay ourselves out before God and we
Say Her Name
Say His Name
Say Their Name
Sanctus, Santcus, Sanctus
Holy, Holy, Holy God
Forrest’s Sanctus gives us the widest angle view of all creation. He takes his inspiration from images from the Hubble Space Telescope of the far flung reaches of the universe … and from the incredible complexity and beauty of what humanity has created in our own march through history.
We say the divine name and proclaim the truth that “the heavens and earth are full of thy glory” and with it the equal truth that what we know deep in our bones is reality. That there is something about the life force that simply cannot die. That just as stars, planets nebulae and galaxies form and disintegrate and reform and re-disintegrate in different combinations of the stuff from which all creation is made and remade and remade again … so it is with us.
That what makes us who we are is so beautiful, so powerful, so enduring that ultimately it cannot be lost.
That when we say the holy, holy, holy name of God we are
Saying Her Name
Saying His Name
Saying Their Name
Saying Every Name
Because all names are contained in that name.
Nothing is lost. No one is lost.
And so, while we cannot deny death’s power, in the face of death, it is in this truth that today and each time we gather at this table we come together to trust.
We trust when Jesus says “today you will be with me in Paradise.”
We trust when Paul writes “nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God.”
We trust when in that moment before forgetting becomes memory, before we realize that
She is gone
He is gone
They are gone
That in that moment between asleep and awake, when it seems like our whole being has no doubt that the one we loved is right there with us … what we experience is not just an echo of a presence gone forever but a thin space where the connection with a presence forever together with us for a moment … makes us one again.
It takes courage to trust that thin space.
It takes courage to trust that our mourning can turn into dancing.
And yet that is who we are — a community of deep trust.
Deep trust that we can be that place of safety where tears can be shed, laments can be wailed, and loss can be grieved without fear of forever falling into despair. That in those moments where we fear we are not strong enough to keep our grief from pulling us under that together we can be the sure and certain hope that will always lift us up.
Deep trust that when we gather each week at this table and proclaim that our song to God is joined by “angels and archangels and all the company of heaven” that this is not just metaphor or wishful thinking but a cosmic reality. That there are ties among us that bind us to God and to one another that cannot be broken even by death.
That the ancestors are not just those on whose shoulders we stand but those whose hands we hold and whose voices ours join.
Deep trust that when we
Say her name
Say his name
Say their name
Something happens that is not just memory but literally re-membering. That when we
Say her name
Say his name
Say their name
We are quite literally put back together because in truth despite all evidence to the contrary, we are never broken apart.
For a moment, we forget.
In a moment, we remember.
For a moment we remember.
And then in a moment, we forget.
Today we come together to honor both those whom we love but see no longer and also the struggle and dance of we whose journey on earth is not yet done.
Today we come together to proclaim that though death seems final, though we long so deeply for the things that still seem so close and yet we increasingly too easily forget – the warmth of her touch, the smell of his hair, the sound of their laugh … we come together to proclaim that the parting of death is but painful and powerful illusion.
That what God has joined together not even death can tear asunder.
That when we
Say Her Name
Say His Name
Say Their Name
We are proclaiming that we have been … and always will be …. One. AMEN.
