“Those We Love, but no Longer See”
November 4, 2018
Solemnity of All Saints
(Year B; transferred from Nov. 1; with All Souls' Prayers
for the Dead)
Homily preached at Trinity Parish Church
Ashland, Oregon
The Very Rev’d Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
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Last year on October 31, we saw the
500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses on the
door of the university church in Wittenberg Germany, usually seen as the
beginning of the Protestant reformation.
Luther was protesting, of course, the shameless sale of indulgences—a
money-to-escape-punishment-for-sin scheme by Dominican priest Johan Tetzel to
raise money for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Clearly, Tetzel had overstepped Christian
faith by claiming that the “moment that the money in the coffer goes ching, the
soul from purgatory does spring.” The
Roman Church continues to this day teach the authority of the Church to forgive
sins, but has always condemned Tetzel for losing his way in removing remorse,
amendment of life, and repentance from the equation and reducing it to a
monetary transaction. The Pope’s
reaction to Luther, fired up by his anger at the loss of revenues from the
indulgences and the implicit criticism of corruption in the church, also
over-stepped the faith and brought the great scandal of the division of Western
Christianity.
But then so too did the Reformers overstep
in its reaction to the teachings of the Church associated with
indulgences. Desiring to rid the Church
of the pretense that it had some intermediary role as far as forgiveness of
sins went, they argued that when a person died, they were immediately judged by
God and sent to Heaven or Hell. Thus, no
purgatory, and no way that our acts here on earth, whether payment to the
Church or even prayers for the dead, could assist the dead. They were gone, dead, and judged, so we’d
best not worry about them any longer, thank you very much. Calvin tied this to the idea that God had
already predetermined from creation whether a soul was to be saved or to be
damned: his infamous doctrine of double predestination.
But in this, the Reformers erred
almost as grievously as had the Roman sellers of indulgences. Scripture gave several examples of faithful
people praying for the dead, mainly in the later books of the Old Testament. Luther
and Calvin reacted by cutting out the books in question out of their canon of
scripture, though they had been part of the Greek Canon of the Old Testament
from the beginning. They appealed to
these books; absence in the canon of the TANAK that the Rabbis drew up in the later 1st century of the common era, even though they drew the list up two centuries after their inclusion in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. To this day, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have 46 books in
the Old Testament, while Protestants only have 39. We Anglicans have traditionally printed the 7
Old Testament books in question in our Bibles, but in a separate section known
as the Apocrypha of the Old Testament or the Deuterocanonical books.
In arguing that a soul met judgment
immediately upon death, and thus no prayers were needed, the reformers turned
aside from the scriptural idea of a general judgment day at the end of
time. And in affirming predestination,
Calvin turned aside from the clear teaching of scripture that God has a
universal salvific will, i.e., that God intends salvation for all, though we
might turn this aside through our own faults.
Though at times we Anglicans have
toyed with these errors of the Reformation, notably in the 39 Articles, in
general we have shied away from what we usually see as Protestants throwing out
the baby of faith in a benevolent God and the value of our decisions and actions
with the bathwater of anything that might have once been used by Johan Tetzel
to defend his wretched trade. In
general, we have affirmed that God never willingly afflicts any of God’s
creatures, and that there is much about the afterlife we do not know. We keep those 7 books in the Old Testament,
though we concede that it is not a good idea to try to prove doctrine from them
to people who reject them anyway. As a
result, we have allowed people to make up their own minds about purgatory or
prayers for dead. And we have prayed for
the dead a lot.
I believe that we must have
confidence and hope that all will be well for our beloved departed, and not
just for those who died in the embrace of the Church. This hope is the basis for our praying for
the dead. It is also why we celebrate
both All Souls’ Day right after All Saints’.
C.S. Lewis, in his great work Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, writes this:
“Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to him?“I believe in Purgatory. Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on the ‘Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory’ … [but T]he right view [is] … in [John Henry] Newman’s “Dream [of Gerontius].” There … the saved soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a moment longer ‘With its darkness to affront that light’…“Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, ‘It is true, my [child], that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy’? Should we not reply, ‘With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be cleaned first.’ ‘It may hurt, you know’ – ‘Even so, sir.’“I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don't think the suffering is the purpose of the purgation... The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.“My favourite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am 'coming round',' a voice will say, ‘Rinse your mouth out with this.’ This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But . . . it will [not] be disgusting and unhallowed.”
Since it is impossible to know what
is inside the human heart, in practice many of us remember and pray for all the dead, confident that God wants
to save all his creatures. God is love,
and love draws us all on. I am hopeful
that, in the end, God’s love will overcome all our human crankiness and
resistance. Perhaps, just perhaps, all
the departed will one day be faithful
departed since the faithfulness at issue is God’s,
not ours. And washed and scrubbed, dried
with large soft towels and dressed in comfortable fresh clothes, we will be
welcomed to the royal banquet, not as permitted strangers, welcomed from
outside, but as family members who belong there and without whom there could be
no party, beloved all.
Blessed and beloved: All Saints and
All Souls. But also all of us here: Blessed and Beloved.
Each week we say “Therefore we
praise you, joining our voices with angels and archangels, and with all the
company of heaven.” Fr. Tom reminded those
attending the healing Eucharist on Thursday that this includes the beloved
departed. We may not see them, but we
hear them in our praises: a communion of saints indeed.
Sisters and brothers, and everyone
in between: I have confidence that love
will triumph in the end. I believe that
we will be reunited with those we love, and not one good thing in our lives
will be lost or wasted. And the bad and
painful things will be redeemed, transformed into joy and easy comfort. I truly believe this, though I do not presume
to know the details and schedule, or even how this might look on the
outside. But I know it will feel like
love and joy on the inside. In God’s
economy of grace, not one thing is lost.
I invite
us all to pray this week with special intention for those we love, but see no
longer. Pray for them, and ask them to
pray for us. Think of what they prayed
for when they were here. Wonder what
they might be praying for now, in that great company of the Blessed. If they weren’t churchy, and it is hard to imagine
them praying, ask what their hopes and fears were, and what their hearts
yearned for, what they expected of us, especially when they were at their
best. For yearning is prayer. And then find a way to keep on or start
working for that. I know my dad and mom
want me to listen better to others, and live the truth God places in my
heart. I wonder you’re your loved ones,
no longer seen, desire from you?
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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