“Whatever happens Tuesday, or any day, our mission of love remains the same. And we will claim the power of that love. And we will not shrink back from the challenges of each moment, and we will hold each other when we get weary, and catch each other when we fall. And like the saints before us, together we will love and cry and laugh. Together we will show mercy and make peace and walk humbly, together we will speak truth boldly, create deep beauty, and with God’s help we will proclaim that no evil can stand against the power of love.”

Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on All Saints Sunday, November 4, 2018.

“ I don’t want to lose this feeling … and yet I know I will. I can already feel it slipping away.”

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About 16 years ago, a dear friend of mine was in a horrible car accident. A friend of his was driving him home from Talmud study at their synagogue, and a delivery truck came out of nowhere and slammed into their car.

When he woke up in intensive care, he was told it was a miracle he had survived. His friend, 30 years old, with a wife and young daughter, had not.

Weeks later, after he had been released from the hospital, we sat together on a park bench in silence, contemplating all that had happened, when he said this:

He said, “I’m kind of scared. This has made everything is so clear. I know exactly what is important to me. Exactly what matters. I know what I need to be spending my life on and I know what doesn’t matter at all.”

“Right now, it’s all so clear.”

“That sounds like an incredible gift,” I said. “Why do you think you’re scared?”
And he looked at me with the slightest of smiles and pain in his eyes and said, “I’m scared because I don’t want to lose this feeling … and I know I will.

“I’m scared because I can already feel it slipping away.”

In that moment, I understood just what he was saying. I imagine many if not most of us do. Death can break us loose from our moorings. Death can send us deep into grief and despair and make us feel like we don’t know anything. And … most all of us have had at least one moment when death – facing our own or that of someone we love – has made everything so clear.

Death has a way of teaching us what really matters. Faced with death, we know what gives meaning to our lives and what is meaningless distraction. We know what we need … and more to the point, we know WHO we need. It is all so clear. And most all of us have had that clarity fade as the gravitational pull of our death-denying world has drawn us back into its orbit, back into the busyness, back into the fog of fear.

And it is about fear. For there is courage that comes from the clarity and fearfulness that comes from its fading. We have become more and more estranged from death as a culture, and that has led to us being more and more fearful not only of death but of so many things.

It used to be that almost everyone died at home, cared for and surrounded in their final days and hours by extended family. We didn’t hide from death. We didn’t shield each other from death. We didn’t delegate the responsibility for the end of life to nameless professionals.

When someone died, it was the family who loved them through it. It was the family who washed the body, built the coffin, hosted the visitation, even prepared the grave and lowered the body into the ground.

In the last century, all that has changed. We isolate and protect ourselves from death. We have built a culture of deep denial of death’s inevitability.  And that has made us not only more fearful of death and fearful in general but increasingly unable to receive death’s gifts.

And yes, death has gifts. And chief among death’s gifts is this gift of holy clarity. The gift of recognizing that life is short … and that is not entirely a bad thing. Life’s brevity gives life meaning. Life’s brevity gives urgency to the present moment and the moment after that … and the moment after that.

This morning, we hear one of the most exquisite pieces of music ever written, Mozart’s requiem. Mozart was commissioned to write it for someone else, but at some point, he realized it was his life that was running short, that death was coming for him, and soon. At some point, he realized he was writing his own requiem. And at some point, he realized he would not even live to complete this awesome work, that those after him would have to finish what he had started.

It is no accident that the parts of the requiem that Mozart wrote are some of the most brilliant and beautiful music ever to come from that brilliant and beautiful soul. Because at some point he knew his time was coming to an end and he had to make every measure, every note, every rest matter.

That memorial book we have placed on the table – it is overflowing with names of people who have filled our lives with deep beauty and inspiration. Names of people we scarcely can believe we are going on without. Names of people whom we thought would always be there. And yet today here we are … and there they are.

And one day, we will join them. One day, others will gather, and read our names, and remember us.

Eventually, all our names are going to be in that book. It could be next year. It could be 100 years from now, but they’re all going to be there. Eventually even that book will be no more because All Saints Church, this city and this nation themselves will pass into eternity. Eventually our sun will supernova and all we have ever known will once again become the stardust from which we came.

Life is short … and that is not entirely a bad thing.
It gives life meaning.
It gives urgency to the present moment.

And when instead of turning away in fear, we embrace how incredibly fragile and short life is, we have a chance to receive its greatest gift.

To consider exactly what is important.
Exactly what matters.

To know what we need to be spending our life on and what is meaningless distraction.

To know that we need not fearfully try to dodge death because it cannot be avoided. And free of that fear, we become free truly to live.

Eventually all our names are going to be in that book.
Eventually even that book will pass away.

What are we waiting for?
What are we afraid of?

You, me, all of us … we have one life.
It is short … shorter than we think.
And that is not bad … that is a gift.

We have one life.
How will we use it?
How will we spend it?

We are – each of us and all of us – writing our requiem.
How glorious and beautiful can we make it be?
Jesus knew his life was short, and so he took his friends aside and sang them the most beautiful and extraordinary of songs. We hear it in the Beatitude Gospel this morning.

When we know our life is short, how do we live?
What do we do?
Jesus says, that’s simple:

We love.
We cry.
We laugh.

We show mercy. Make peace. Walk humbly. Speak truth boldly.

We fear no evil for we remember that no evil can stand against the power of love.

We know our life is short … shorter than we think.

There is no time to wait.
There is no need to fear.

Life is short … shorter than we think.

How will we use it?
How will we spend it?

This year, this day, this very hour …  and for the rest of our lives … how will we give it in love?

The past two years have been hard, in some cases brutally hard. We have endured profound losses and we have powerful feelings of grief and pain that must be felt so we can move from that grief and pain to healing and life.

We are tired. We are worn down. And yet we know there are so many others even more tired than we.

And … that exhaustion tempts us. The sheer volume of affronts to basic human decency and attacks on basic human rights that greet us each new day tempts us. Tempts us to the easy road of cynicism. Tempts us to the paralysis of hopelessness and despair.

I hear it in your voices, and I feel it in my own heart. We are tempted to feel and think and act like victims of what is happening in the nation and in the world. As we approach this week’s election, we are committed to the sacred task of casting our ballots as certainly we should be. And… more and more, particularly those of us with the most power and privilege, are tempted to believe that the results of that election will immutably cast our future in stone, that we are somehow powerless in the wake of the color of the wave.

And so we are tempted to await the news of Tuesday night and Wednesday morning with the fear of the accused waiting for the judge’s ruling, believing our freedom, our power lies in the news we will receive and not in our own hands, not in the power of the love of God.

We must resist that temptation.
Together, we can resist that temptation.

We can resist the temptation to cynicism, powerlessness and paralysis because our power and salvation has never, does not and will never lie in the success or failure of any political party or temporal structure. The names in this book, the pictures on this altar and the truth they have taught us in how they have changed our lives is that our power, our salvation, has been and always will be in how boldly and deeply we are willing to love.

No matter how oppressed a person might be. No matter how marginalized or targeted. No matter which party or candidate or ballot initiative prevails, our greatest power  as human beings can never be taken from us — and that is the power we have to meet every challenge, every attack, every evil with deep, abiding love.

And because that is our power, we are not now nor will we ever be … victims of any election, any administration or any circumstance.

We are not victims. We are survivors. We are lovers. We are midwives of God’s creation always being born anew. We are all … Saints. All of us. The whole human family. In here and out there. Our names are already written in the book. Our pictures are already on this altar.

This day is a reminder that we are all writing our own requiem. It will be unfinished. Someone else will always get to write the next section. And it is a gift that we only have one life, and that life is short, because the chance is ours, in this day, in this moment, to make it the most beautiful song of love we can.

The history of All Saints Church is not the history of being resigned to the fate that is given us, but as Beatitude people being shapers of a future of boundless hope and love. There is no limit to our compassion. There is no limit to the love of God that can flow through us and bind us together. The only boundaries to the music we have left to write are the boundaries that fear imposes and the limits of our imagination and willingness to love.

And so, whatever happens on Tuesday or any day, our mission of love remains the same. And we will claim the power of that love. And we will not shrink back from the challenges of each moment. And we will hold each other when we get weary and catch each other when we fall.

And like the saints before us, together we will love … and cry …  and laugh.

Together we will show mercy … and make peace … and walk humbly.

Together we will speak truth boldly, create deep beauty, and with God’s help, together we will proclaim that no evil can stand against the power of love.

Eventually all our names are going to be in that book.
Eventually even that book will pass away.

What are we waiting for?
What are we afraid of?

You, me, all of us … we have one life.
It is short … shorter than we think.
And that is not all bad … indeed that is a gift.

We have one life.
How will we use it?
How will we spend it?

We are – each of us and all of us – writing our own requiem.
How glorious and beautiful will we make it be?

Amen.