Touched by Holiness

Yesterday was the official date of All Saints Day, a commemoration we will observe in worship this Sunday. On this day we are reminded that the lives of those followers of Jesus who have gone before us have been touched by holiness. By virtue of their faithfulness in walking the way of discipleship, of seeking to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with their God, they are holy. Saints. All saints. Psalm 116:15 says, “Precious in the sight of [God] is the death of [God’s] faithful ones.” Our loved ones’ lives do not go unnoticed by God, and at their death God is present in an especially powerful way, ushering them across that final frontier with attentive care.

To say that the death of saints is precious in God’s sight is not to sentimentalize death or to soften its impact. Death is a wrenching experience for everyone involved: the dying person herself, her family and friends, and God. While in one sense death can be considered a natural part of life, in the book of Genesis it is not a part of God’s original plan. It enters the picture with the advent of sin and disobedience. According to this stream of the biblical tradition death is an enemy. It is the enemy. Paul calls it the final enemy in a passage in which he envisions the ultimate triumph of God and of life: “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54).

In an episode of the TV show M*A*S*H, Hawkeye Pierce is operating on a patient when the nurse suddenly reports, “I’m not getting a pulse.” Hawkeye springs into action, opening the man’s chest to perform an emergency heart massage. He practically wills the patient back to life, muttering, “Live, damn it. Live! Don’t let the bastard win.” Later, a visiting colonel who happened to witness the scene asks Colonel Potter, “When he said [that], who was he talking about?” Potter replies, “Death. When it comes to death, Pierce is a sore loser.… He’s one doctor who’ll never be nonchalant where death is concerned. He’ll always take it personally.”

That’s the way God is. God is never nonchalant about death. God always takes it personally. Jesus took it personally; he wept with sorrow and, as the nuances of the Greek wording hint, anger at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Because death is an enemy that wreaks such havoc in the lives of God’s children, God takes the initiative to swallow up death, “the shroud that is cast over all peoples.” That’s why God enters the scene in the Incarnation—Jesus came to teach us how to live . . . and how to die. In his dying he broke the power of death for all time. In his resurrection he opened the gates of life to all peoples. In a sublime passage from Revelation 21 we read, “‘See, the home of God is among mortals. [God] will dwell with them as their God; they will be [God’s] peoples, and God … will be with them; [God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new’” (vv. 3–5).

Death is real. It can be ugly and painful and slow. It strikes the young as well as the old. It can call into question all that we thought we knew about life, the universe, and everything. It can even lead us to doubt the goodness of God. Death represents a rending of relationships; it is a rupture that can lay waste the bereaved with its suddenness and finality.

But death does not have the last word. God has the last word. In Revelation 21:6, Jesus says, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

The hope we celebrate on All Saints Day is the hope of reunion. In the words of the burial liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, it is the “sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life,” when we will feast on God’s banquet of rich food and well-aged wine (see Isa 25:6), we will laugh and rejoice with ones we have missed for so long, and God will come and brush the tears from all of our eyes.

For we, too, are touched by holiness. We, too, are saints. We, too, are the beloved of God, who will drink from God’s own cup the water of life.

Grace and peace,
bob