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Sunday, October 31, 2010
What Happens When We Remember?
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Philippians 1:3 New Revised Standard Version
3I thank my God every time I remember you
In Paul’s warmest letter he begins by thanking God for every person when he remembers them!
We do that today, right before All Saints Day. We thank people for whom we have felt love and gratitude and now loss.
It is so appropriate we do this each year before All Saints Day—All Hallows Day from which we get all hallows evening. Paul did not think of saints as perfect people; he thought of them in the way that the 5 year old in a children’s sermon thought of saints. When the minister on the Sunday before all saints day asked what a saint was, this one child, thinking of the church’s stained glass windows, said: “I know, the saints are the people that the light shines through.”
God’s light has shone through these whom we will name, and we are thanking God today for these loved ones and friends who have passed from this life to the next life. When we remember them, something important happens to us and in us. Their good examples will still have an effect upon our lives. We will be naming and remembering many. Let me risk just naming a few:
We are helped and comforted and changed again when we remember Margie Hermanson’s enthusiasm for each day of life; when we remember the sensitive writings of Jeremy Spohr and how in tune he was with nature.
We are inspired when we think about Laurie Woodbury Allen’s vitality and love for learning, even in the last years of a long and full life. We are helped to remember Craig Lange’s courage and fearless spirit. We are touched again by the integrity and generosity of Tom Clark.
We can go on and on remembering and thanking God for each of these persons who have left their mark for good on us. How blessed we have been!
We remember these individuals, and we remember our faith again even more deeply, our faith that we will affirm today at communion, “We belong to Christ,” not only in this life, but perhaps even more, in the life to come. In life and in death, we belong to Christ.
These whom we honor belong to Christ even beyond this life, and the words of Christ come true again. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
And our frequent affirmation of faith says it as well: In life, in death, in life beyond death, we are not alone. God is with us, thanks be to God.
We remember our loved ones, we remember our faith, and we remember our mortality. We are reminded again that life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the paths of those who walk this way with us.
We remember our own mortality. I had somewhat of a sobering experience a few years ago when we were in our hometown of Wichita Falls, Texas and we were visiting the cemetery where both of my parents are buried. I had not been there for many years and as we approached their grave, I saw the large tombstone that my mother had chosen for both of them after my father’s death.
It was larger and more noticeable than I remember, and I was just taken aback to round the corner and see the large gravestone that simply said Martz. I was forced to think of my own eventual marker probably in our columbarium in, I hope, many years from now.
Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. When we remember these loved ones and friends, we want to live fully and live well.
One of my favorite poems is about this desire to live fully and to live well. Mary Oliver wrote it. It is called, “When Death Comes.”
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When Death Comes
By Mary Oliver
When death comes
Like the hungry bear in autumn
When death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
To buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
When death comes
Like the measle pox
When death comes
Like an iceberg between the shoulder blades
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
What will it be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
As a brotherhood and sisterhood
And I look upon time as no more than an idea
And I consider eternity as another possibility.
And I think of each life as a flower, as common
As a field daisy, and as singular,
And each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
Tending, as all music does, toward silence
And each body, a lion of courage, and something
Precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement
I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms
When it’s over I don’t want to wonder
If I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
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We are remembering now those who have gone before us and who have not simply visited this world but have left their mark on our hearts.
Before we look at the names on our list, let us take time in silence to think of others whom we have loved and lost and give thanks to God for them as well.