Life or Death?

Depending on your choice of a calendar, this past Wednesday was either All Souls’ Day, or if you are a Phillies baseball fan, it was the day of game four of the World Series. And on Wednesday, two very different gatherings occurred.

Here in the church at 7 p.m., around thirty-six people, including musicians, gathered to pray for the repose of the souls of the faithful departed who have gone before us in the hope of the resurrection. Shortly after 8 p.m. on the same night, just sixteen miles away at Citizens Bank Park, over 45,000 people crowded the stadium to watch the hometown team play the Houston Astros. At the risk of creating a false opposition between Church and a perfectly enjoyable sport such as baseball, Wednesday’s two different gatherings might tell us something about two different ways of living.

Every year on All Souls’ Day, I’m moved by the power of praying for the dead. Indeed, if attendance at Masses here was any indication, All Souls’ Day was a greater draw for people than All Saints’ Day. On Wednesday, I stood at the altar, reading several pages of names of people who have died and are beloved of this parish. I read the names of my grandparents, my spouse’s grandparents, and of your family members and friends. On the list were former teachers of mine who were influential in shaping my future as a musician. There were names of former rectors of this parish, as well as parishioners who died in the past year, to whom I was privileged to administer the last rites of the Church and whose absence here is deeply felt. On the list, too, were friends who died far too young and suddenly. And there were, of course, many names of people I knew nothing about. In the blank space at the end of the list, at some undetermined point in the future, my own name might appear, as well as yours.

In the church, at the crossing in front of the rood screen was the catafalque draped in a black pall, representing the souls of all who have died. It’s an odd ritual in an age where death is constantly spoken about in euphemisms, where people “pass away” and don’t die, where with increasing infrequency the bodies of the dead do not even darken the doors of churches for funerals, and where people shudder to prepare for and anticipate their own deaths. Indeed, we do everything we can to avoid death. We shield our children from it as if they are better for it. We inhabit an age that is terrified of death.

And yet, if you were to sample any random person entering Citizens Bank Park on Wednesday evening, they would probably have told you that they were living life to its fullest by enjoying America’s greatest sport and supporting the hometown team. Of course, in and of itself, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with relishing baseball and rooting for the home team. Part of life is indeed enjoying our time on earth. But on the simplest level, could it be that the gathering in this church on Wednesday, if small, was the truest celebration of life? No one would necessarily guess it, with the black vestments, pall-covered catafalque, and somber music. But, yes, I dare say that here in this church at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, all who gathered here were celebrating life to its fullest.

This existential question about the nature of life versus death prompts the dialogue between Jesus and the Sadducees in Luke’s Gospel. The point of contention is whether there is a resurrection from the dead, and so, the central issue at the core of Jesus’s engagement with the Sadducees is the nature of true life itself.

Recall that the Sadducees were strict interpreters of the Torah, and because they couldn’t evidence of the resurrection from the dead in the Torah, they didn’t believe in it. And so, the hypothetical scenario they proposed to Jesus was meant to highlight the preposterous character of the resurrection. In this hypothetical situation, a woman and seven brothers follow the customs prescribed in the Torah, which were intended to provide for the sustenance of a family’s biological line and care for the widow. Whose wife would the woman be in the resurrection? Jesus’s responding words are perhaps strange to our ears. But as I’ve said, at the root of the exchange between Jesus and the Sadducees is the nature of true life itself.

And maybe another concern arises from this hypothetical scenario, too. There are no children from the seven marriages. What will happen to the bloodline? What will happen to the family name? How, indeed, will this family live on? Can there be real life beyond the biological family? And are these questions at all strange to us?

Although it may be unstated, this is the great fear of not just the Sadducees but of our own age. Even for many who call themselves Christians, this earthly life is smothered with the fear of losing all that seems to constitute our lives. We fear the loss of all those attachments that pose as the source of life but are really the source of death because they hold us in their grip and prohibit our freedom.

I’m talking about the fear of losing respect and status in the eyes of others. I’m talking about the fear of losing one’s wealth and having nothing to leave to one’s biological descendants. I’m talking about the fear that we will not have done enough to merit advancement in our careers or get into the right college. I’m talking ultimately about a fear that’s often unexpressed and yet is palpable and real. This fear is that there is nothing beyond this earthly life with its joys and sorrows. Or on a shallower level, eternal life is simply an escape from earthly woes rather than a glorious way of living that surpasses all we can imagine. Even though many will tell you that they believe in a resurrection from the dead, they live as if it does not exist.

This fear is expressed in all kinds of ways. It’s seen in the preference of the sports field over the pew on Sunday mornings. It’s seen in the preference of one more activity on a resume instead of participation in a life-changing ministry. It’s seen in idolatry of the biological family over a valuing of the family of God. It’s seen in the scorekeeping we do to buttress our own sense of worth and in the cutthroat competition that sucks us into its black hole of death. Our busyness convinces us that we are living when we are really dying.

Maybe the question is this: why have we failed to grasp the power of resurrection life? Do we need to find all our life’s meaning in bloated resumes, promotions, and biological lineages because we don’t know how to find joy in the true life that God gives? Or is it perhaps that we fear God more than we can rejoice in his love for us? What do we fear the most about death?

But maybe there’s another way of looking at this that rises above bleak, false dichotomies of comparing church versus stadium, spirituality versus secularity, or life versus death. In the midst of life, we are in death, and vice versa, we could say. This past Wednesday, here in the church, people did show up. They showed up, I believe, because we have not completely lost a sense of resurrection life. It’s the Church’s duty—our duty—to give voice to the hope of the resurrection in a world that will quickly deny it while also giving lip service to it. Resurrection hope and reality does not simply lie in the future but touches even the present.

The power of the All Souls’ Requiem, at least for me, is in how it moves me beyond myself. There’s something almost impersonal about it, and yet its most personal quality focuses only on the souls of the faithful departed and the incredible power of God to sustain life beyond the grave in a way and form that we cannot even begin to comprehend.

Page after page of the names of the dead read by the light of unbleached candles reminds us that those souls for whom we have cried and mourned do not live on through mere memorials, recitation of names, bloodlines, and financial legacies, but solely by the power of God. Remembering the dead is a sure and certain acknowledgment that true life awaits us as a freedom from the chains that are all too familiar to us. Resurrection life assures us that our value lies not in our accomplishments or possessions but in being a child of God and being baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And perhaps the greatest gift of resurrection life is that we are freed from sin and fear. We are unshackled from all that yokes us to proving ourselves worthy in God’s eyes. We are freed from the strings of this life’s attachments, which make us less than who we really are and lead us to fear losing God’s favor. And the best news of all is that, in the resurrection life, each of us lives only to God, who has called each of us by name and made us his own.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
November 6, 2022