Halloween or All Saints Day

Pastor Richard Baker
Trinity United Methodist Church

(11/1) A realtor was opening a new office and wanted to celebrate and so he planned a wonderful affair with finger foods, balloons, and flowers to mark the occasion. Unfortunately, there was a mix up at the florist and flowers for a funeral were sent mistakenly while the flowers for the new office opening were sent to the funeral home. The funeral home received flowers with a card saying, "Good luck in your new location," while the realtor’s office received flowers saying, "We are sorry for your loss."

This year, Americans will spend over twelve billion dollars on Halloween. It comes in second only to Christmas for the amount of money spent on outdoor decorations. Our Mexican counterparts celebrate the Day of the Dead on November 1st, coinciding with our All Saints Day. We spend an enormous amount of time and money on something most people genuinely fear, and that is death. In our country, 2.4 million people die each year with a total of over twenty billion dollars spent on funerals.

Isaac Asimov once wrote, "Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that is troublesome." Shakespeare described death as the "Great Unknown." But Max Lucado, a Christian author and pastor wrote, "We see a hearse; we think sorrow. We see a grave; we think despair. We hear of a death; we think of a loss. Not so in heaven. When heaven sees a breathless body, it sees a vacated cocoon and the liberated butterfly."

As we approach Halloween this year, maybe we should look at how this holiday started, and what it truly means. Halloween has its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhaim, a pagan religious celebration that was meant to celebrate the harvest and the end of summer. People would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off evil spirits. The idea was to disguise yourself so as to trick death if it came looking.

Pope Boniface started what has become known as All Saints Day, in 609 A.D. for the church to honor the Virgin Mary, but also to remember all the martyrs. Out of that, the church has developed liturgies to honor those who have come before us. In our Wesleyan tradition, we set aside the first Sunday in November to remember and celebrate those people who in the past year died and now rest from their labors. Every family who wants their dead to be recognized is invited to come forward and say out loud the person’s name to remember as a candle is lit. As we remember those who have finished their race, it connects us to our eternal home as we believe those people are now in heaven and have become "the Saints." It encourages us to remain faithful, as we celebrate the words from the Book of Hebrews. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders us and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."

We believe that "great cloud of witnesses" includes all those who went before us and are now beholding the face of God and are praying for each of us. We do not wear costumes to try and disguise ourselves because of death, while we may fear it, it is not something to hide from but a recognition that one day we will join those saints.

Graveyards hold a strange fascination for my wife and I, and we particularly enjoy visiting very old cemeteries. On older gravestones, you will gain some real insight as to how those folks regarded death. On all older stones it says things like, "Here lies the body of so and so." It does not say "here lies so or so," because it was and still should be the idea that what has been buried is just the body. We believe at the point of death the soul goes on to be with the Lord, and in sadder cases, that soul is lost. We were touring the North End Church in Boston, and the docent told us that there were 1,500 bodies stacked in the basement. We were a little taken aback, until she shared that in the older Puritan tradition, that it was believed that after the body died and the soul was raptured that all that remained was something like a husk of corn. Why would you preserve that? That belief held with the original Mayflower people. Only one of them has a marked grave. The rest are lost to time.

It is fascinating that something we all fear is commemorated in so many ways. One of the stranger customs that grew out of this occurred at the beginning of the last century. People would ask if their departed loved ones could be photographed doing what they did in life. A carpenter might be photographed in his workshop, or a wife might be photographed in the kitchen. In some of our rural communities, that custom continued for many years. One of my seminary professors shared the story of receiving a new appointment to a rural part of West Virginia, and after arriving, received a phone call from the local funeral home. A member of his new parish had died, and the director informed him that all viewings were held in the person’s home with the funeral being held in the church. He was told to prepare himself for seeing the casket on sawhorses in the living room. That day when he arrived, he saw the casket, but it was empty. The gentleman who had passed was a grandfather, and his body had been removed by his family and placed in his favorite recliner, and all the grandchildren were taking turns sitting on his knees, while photos were taken. As bizarre as this may seem, like our Puritans ancestors, they saw death as something not to be feared but as the next step on the journey we all will take.

We may not wear costumes, but we all try to hide from what is just the next step on our journey to be reunited with our Creator. I have many fond memories of taking our children trick-or-treating, and now we enjoy seeing our grandchildren getting dressed up and going out to see how much candy they can get. But that next Sunday, we hope to see them in church as we commemorate those saints and remember that each of us has an appointment with God one day.

We want them to know that because of Jesus Christ, death is not to be feared. We may not want to run towards it, but we don’t run from it in fear. We want them to remember that we are eternal beings and that Christ has conquered the grave. We hold fast to the words of the Apostle Paul, who told us in 1st Corinthains, "Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."

"Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?"

"The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

May the Lord bless you and keep you and may the Lord’s face shine upon you and be gracious to you today and every day.

To learn more about Trinity UMC visit them on-line at www.thetrinityumc.org or better yet, join them for Sunday service!