The Dead Don't Die

Hallowtide Cemetery Vespers

A Lesson from the Book of the Apocalypse:

Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. They sing a new song:

“You are worthy to take the scroll and to break its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.”

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Church is not dying. No. The Church is already dead.

In the earliest centuries of the faith, Christianity was driven literally underground. In major urban centers, in Rome and in Paris, Christians gathered for worship in the catacombs, celebrating the Lord’s Supper atop the tombs of the martyrs. Imagine what that must have been like: hearing the words of Jesus, sharing His Body and Blood, over the bones of the saints, a sarcophagus as your altar, knowing that these had died for the faith and knowing that you could too.

Death was a daily reality for our forebears in ways that for us it just is not, yet even in that context, Christians had to grapple with death more than most. The imperial state periodically persecuted them, for no other reason than their faith in Christ, throwing them to lions, burning them alive, crucifying the faithful. I mean, we try to tame it, but our symbol is the Cross, an instrument of public execution.

Suddenly, after 300 years of our brightest and best being led to the block, Christianity was legalized. We could worship openly without risking our necks. And we almost didn’t know what to do with that. What did it now mean that we didn’t have martyrs? What did it mean that our deaths were no longer joined to Christ?

This led directly to monasticism, to people who vowed to live as though they were already dead. In Egypt they holed up in caves; in Syria they climbed onto pillars. Of course, as soon as you want to be left alone, the people come out in droves, as Christ Himself had shown us. So the hermits said, “All right, if you’re going to live out here with me, we have to have some ground rules.” Thus the monks were born.

Monastics are those who live as though they have already died. They die to themselves, die to the ego, that they might rise anew in Christ. It’s all very baptismal, this death and resurrection, joining us to Jesus’ own. On the walls of Mt Athos, the most sacred monastery of the Christian East, are inscribed the words: “If you die before you die, then you won’t die when you die.”

In the West, the first thing that you do upon joining the Carthusian Order is to build your own coffin, in which you sleep every night. And the morning you don’t get up is the morning they nail on the lid. Even outside of Christianity, Buddhist monks wear orange-red robes specifically to symbolize the flames of their funeral pyres. They’re already dead, and so they are free from death, free from the fear of it all.

Now, obviously, most of us cannot be monks. We have day jobs. If those who were killed were the red martyrs, and monastics are now the white martyrs, then the rest of us all are called as green martyrs, those who live out Christian faith in daily life. We too are meant to live as though we have already died, baptized into Christ’s own death and into His Resurrection. And old churches strove to remind us of this.

If you were to walk into a medieval house of worship, you might well mistake it for a house of horrors. Skulls festooned the architecture, along with gory depictions of martyrdom. Primary relics, a euphemism for body parts and bones, were bejeweled and displayed for veneration upon side-altars, bedazzling the dead. There’s a chapel in the Czech Republic built from the bones of 70,000 people.

This grotesque aesthetic we term memento mori, which means “remember death.” It has a long and venerable history as a philosophical and spiritual practice. Many saints and scholars have sat with skulls upon their desks, contemplating mortality. Even up to the Victorian era, people regularly carried coins, rings, or necklaces with little death’s-heads on them.

The intention was not to be macabre or morose. Rather, the point of keeping death ever before our eyes is to appreciate what we have. The flipside of memento mori is memento vivere, “remember to live.” We only have so much time here on this earth, so we ought to make the best of it.

Moreover, so many of the things that obsess us—wealth, power, possessions, pleasure, fame, success—these are all passing away, slipping through our fingers like sand through an hourglass. Put not your faith in that which dies, which passes all away. Turn instead to the immortal, the intangible, the spiritual. Goodness, truth, and beauty; wisdom, love, and grace; these things endure forever because they are of God.

To accept mortality is to accept gratitude. This in turn releases us from worldly fears of losing what we have, for we never really had it in the first place. And each moment free from fear makes a man immortal.

We are Christians, my brothers and sisters, heirs of mighty mysteries beyond all mortal ken. We know, do we not, that life is death and death is life? We proceed from God, are sustained by God, and return to God. We know that God in Jesus Christ has conquered death and hell, and that He has done so precisely by becoming one of us, like to us in every way save sin, to lead us down into the grave and right back up to heaven. He tramples down death by death.

That’s what All Saints’ is really about: to know that we the living have died in Jesus Christ; while all the dead we lay to rest are now alive in Him. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? We can stare her straight in her bony face and laugh her all to scorn. For our womb is the grave, and our grave is the womb, and our Lord is the Lord of us all.

Memento mori. Memento vivere. For Christ is the King of the quick and the dead. And to Him everyone is alive.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.