Homily given by Rev. Frank Clarkson on All Souls Sunday, October 27, 2019
When I was a boy, there were times that I would lose something, and this felt awful—it could make me feel sick to my stomach even. It could have been something inconsequential, but losing something could give me a kind of sick at heart feeling. Like I was lost too.
Do you know what I mean? Have you ever been lost? Can you remember how disorienting and scary that can be? Can you remember losing something that was important to you? How did that feel?
In a few minutes we are going to lift up the names of people and pets that we have lost to death. And this is such a big kind of loss, probably the biggest kind, because it feels like we have lost them for ever, it can seem that there is no hope of finding them, or ever getting them back. Death is such a final thing, and there’s no getting around that. The person that we loved is gone from us in real and tangible ways. But are they lost to us? In some way, yes. And in some ways, no.
A few years ago, after my father died, my brother in-law Gill said to me, “You know, in the years since my own father died, my relationship with him has actually gotten better.” Gil had a tumultuous relationship with his dad; they were very different from one another, but after his death, Gill continued to work on that relationship. And he discovered that his dad wasn’t lost to him at all.
The farmer and poet Wendell wrote a series of elegiac poems for a friend who had died. They conclude with these lines:
He goes free of the earth.
The sun of his last day sets
clear in the sweetness of his liberty.
The earth recovers from his dying,
the hallow of his life remaining
in all his death leaves.
Radiances know him. Grown lighter
than breath, he is set free
in our remembering. Grown brighter
than vision, he goes dark
into the life of the hill
that holds his peace.
He's hidden among all that is,
and cannot be lost.
This month we’ve been reflecting on our free faith. And any faith worthy of the name should help to set us free. Free to be who we are while we are here, to love who and what we love, free to follow the Spirit where it leads, free to do the work we need to do, so when the end of our life comes, we aren’t, as the poet says, “sighing and frightened, or full of argument.”
We’ve had a lot of death here this fall. Our former administrator Lisa Compton, and Diane Brokvist, and Larry Somes, whose service is this afternoon. On the day that Diane died, her family and her closest friend were going to the funeral home for a moment with her body before it was cremated, and I was on my way to join them. I hoped for a moment alone with Diane, the chance to put my hand on her cool forehead and say a prayer for her; a moment when I could say goodbye.
On the drive over to the funeral home, a text came in from Abbe Wertz. She’d heard the news about Diane, and that morning she’d seen a prayer, and she was sending it me, a prayer for Diane. Which I later included in the announcement we sent to you. It was written by the UU minister Kate Braestrup, and it was perfect for that moment:
“O God whose work and will and very name is love, we thank you for the gift we were given in Diane. We yield with confidence to grief, knowing that pain will pass and sorrow ends, but love does not die and will not end. Love abides in us, around us, and beyond us, forever and ever. Amen.”
This is our hope and our faith, that we are part of a great Love that does not end and will never let us go. Life is painful and it is beautiful too. The sorrow we feel when someone dies is directly related to how much they meant to us. Our grief is simply the price we pay for loving, for being connected to others. And would you have it any other way? Would you rather be a rock, or an island, just so you never had to cry?
Life is fleeting. And that makes it so precious, and so sweet. The invitation is to savor life as best we can, while we are here. To say and do what we want and need to say and do, while we can, and not put it off. As James Taylor sang, “Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel…”
And the invitation is have faith that those who have died are not completely lost to us. That if you want, you can continue to be in relationship with them, in a different way, but you can still feel connected to them, can remember them, can feel their presence and you can let that help you to carry on, while you are here.
As the author of the book of Hebrews wrote so long ago, “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses… so let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).
The choir just sang, “Come and find me… you don’t have to look far… come and find me…. I am here.” We all get lost sometimes, and we lose people we love. And the great old hymn reminds us that’s not the end of the story. Because what comes after the lostness is the finding, and the being found:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.
Amen.