Deuteronomy 34:1-12
I would like to begin this morning with some clever and humorous on ramp that leads you into the sermon, as we celebrate both All Saints Day and the Day of the Dead tradition from Mexican and Mexican-American culture, what should be a festive occasion. Maybe I’d even use the Disney film “Coco,” for despite the companies mis-steps over the last century, it has become a champion of diversity, equality, and inclusion.
Unfortunately, I cannot move to festivity without first acknowledging the thousands dying in the Middle East, as extremists provoke, terrorize, and slaughter.
The fact, that I am wearing my orange “gun safety” stole instead of the traditional white stole for All Saints is a reminder that we are reeling from yet another mass casualty slaughter in America, and given that we are nearing 600 of these preventable tragedies this year, it takes a lot to make the national news. I served in Maine, and still have friends in the state.
The exact same people who are vomiting up the excuse that this is a mental health problem refuse to support red flag laws, and refuse to fund treatment for mental illness and addiction. It is beyond sinful, their love of chaos, though it certainly profits their billionaire bully buddies.
Like some twisted version of “The Sixth Sense,” they pull the covers up under their chin and say “I see brown people.”
So yeah, a little whirlwind of despair and anger up here in the pulpit this morning, and a reminder of something I said a couple of weeks ago. People suck. But I ended in praise, for that is how we roll, like the psalms that often turn from lament to praise.
As the great gay poet concluded in “O Me! O Life!,” the powerful play goes on, and we may contribute a verse. Let us pray to that Divine Mystery we name as God that our particular “sound and fury” might signify something rather than nothing, unlike MacBeth’s, and that when we leave, like those celebrated on our “ofrenda,” and in our listing of our faith community’s deceased, the balance will fall on the side of love.
Of course, “I see brown people” is a twist on the title I chose for this sermon, that famous line from “The Sixth Sense,” a film that fooled most of us before hurtling toward an unexpected climax. And I do see dead people, just not in the way of screenwriters, where one show after another gives us the supernatural, with danger and drama and comedy, Beetlejuice and Ghost Whisperers and stuff too scary even for me. And I watch the evening news.
I see dead people in our stained glass, which is perfectly lovely and a bit weird at the same time, since Congregationalists traditionally abhorred that sort of thing. Early in the Zurich Reformation, Protestants stripped the churches of art, theologically justified but culturally tragic, for countless precious treasures went to the fire, reminiscent of Savanarola’s spastic “bonfire of the vanities” just a few years earlier in Firenze.
Still, here we are, with these beautiful gifts honoring important people, those depicted and those memorialized. There is a desire, at least among some of us, that we might add to our artistic expression, incorporating images that represent the diversity of our community and historical accuracy, a whole lot more of those “brown people” when it comes to the Ancient Near East and our own American story. What would it say to the wider community to see John W. Jones immortalized in a house of worship?
I see a dead person when I walk Oscar in the park, for let me tell you, sisters and brothers, it is not every pastor that has a beloved distant predecessor cast in bronze right outside the doors. But, of course, it is not just good old T.K., but those courageous founding families, and the Eastmans, and Bob Lester, and that rascal from Hannibal.
I see dead people in this building, for it was sweat and ingenuity that earned the money that paid for this beautiful if rather large house of worship, and it is largely sweat and ingenuity that pays to maintain it, some from current members and friends, some from those who contributed to our endowment over the years. And at times, a bit of duct tape and some prayer.
I see dead people in how we worship and how we witness, for despite the efforts in every generation to freeze our tradition at some point when it met their own particular needs, our faith has always thrived when it adapted, and died when it became rigid, so that our worship brings forward things from the very beginning but also new things, forms and expressions from today.
Butterfly wings on the other side of the globe do indeed, have unexpected effects. We would not be here, in this form, had Huldrych Zwingli not attended a sausage party during Lent. How’s that for weird and glorious!
I have always struggled to understand how Congregationalism made the leap from Puritans and Pilgrims, who… let’s be honest, do not have the funkiest of reputations, to the progressive radicals that they became and that became a characteristic of today’s United Church of Christ. I mean, our theological ancestors might have been okay with “Burning Man,” but there would be an actual man burning, for witchcraft or heresy.
John Robinson may have spoken about “more light and truth breaking forth from God’s Holy Word” when he blessed the departing Pilgrims in Holland, but based on something I learned at a Twain lecture earlier in the year, I suspect the Congregational theologian Horace Bushnell broke out a fair bit of light and truth on this continent, and that he himself might have been influenced by Friedrich Schleiermacher, the brilliant German theologian of the previous generation. I am starting to suspect we have a little bit of Schleiermacher in us. And no, you can’t treat it with antibiotics.
I see dead people in you, for you are the sum of your experiences, and many who have influenced us, for good or for bad, are dead, but we choose to lean into the good, for that is our claim, that the thing that lies under it all, that sings the universe into existence is essentially good, and that humans, rubbing up against mystery, name it God. We experience it in people, both particular people like the rabbi from Nazareth we name as Savior and in people generally, in the rituals people create to act out a story that was given to us by people now dead, and in the beauty of creation, evolved primates with a sense of self and magical thumbs, and bears wandering around Golden Glow.
And because God is a God of grace, a God of love, we call lean into the good, and and celebrate all as saints, for surely our Creator can find the good in every bit of her Creation.
I see dead people and this thing called life is weird and amazing, and you, my friend, may yet contribute a verse. Amen.