St Richard, Haywards Heath All Souls' Day 2 November 2022

The Bible begins and ends in a garden, the garden of paradise. We read in the opening pages of Scripture that "God planted a garden eastward in Eden". In that garden "the Lord God walked" and He walked in close friendship with man.

The refusal by man of friendship with God led him into exile from that garden. No longer in peace with God and nature, man saw his garden overgrown and his destiny to labour by the sweat of his hands. Again and again God offered his friendship. Speaking of his people Israel, God said through Isaiah in Chapters 51 & 58: ‘Her desert shall be like the garden of the Lord…you shall be like a watered garden’.

Finally God came himself in the flesh, taking our human nature, to walk in a garden. St. John says in Chapter 18 that ‘over the brook Kedron in Jerusalem there was a garden’, and into that garden the Son of God came to sweat blood and tears for our redemption. Man created to walk with God in a garden is redeemed by perfect obedience offered by perfect humanity in a garden, the garden of Gethsemane.

That redemption is finally revealed to believers in a garden. ‘Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. They laid Jesus there’.

Then on the third day the Risen Lord Jesus stands in that garden and addresses the weeping Magdalen: "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?" supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away". Jesus said to her, "Mary." she turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (Which means teacher).

The gate of heaven is opened to all believers in a garden, the Easter Garden! She supposing him to be the gardener. St. John recognises the significance of that empty garden tomb and the hailing of Christ as "Gardener".

Was it not fitting that he who had acted in creation to form man in a garden should also recreate man in the flesh of his own glorious humanity once again in a garden? And walk once again in a garden, side by side with women and men restored by the resurrection to new friendship with him, through the will offered in Gethsemane and the blood on Calvary?

Mary Magdalene, Peter, John, walking with our Redeemer in the resurrection garden is a pledge of the eternal destiny of all who welcome what Jesus did for them in the garden secretly, and on the cross on high. We too will walk one day with our redeemer in a garden! For the Bible ends as it begins with a garden. St. John the Divine writes in chapters 2 & 22 ‘To him who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God...then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb’.

Man created in a garden had his eternal destiny opened up in Gethsemane and the Easter Garden and he will enjoy that eternal destiny in another garden, the garden of paradise. Of this garden scripture uses few words save an affirmation that ‘no unclean thing shall enter there’ and that those who enter must be ‘washed in the blood’ of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. No good works, however good, lived by the holiest of men will provide robes suitable for the garden of paradise where man is to walk as first intended, in step with God.

It is All Souls' Day and our thoughts and prayers focus on those we love in Christ but see no longer. Inasmuch as they are washed in his Blood, inasmuch as they plead Jesus' perfect offering and not their own righteousness, Scripture says they will have a place in the garden of paradise. 

Yet ‘no unclean thing may enter there’.  Unrepented sin in the heart - this has no place in a Saint destined to walk eternally at the side of a holy God. So our thoughts turn into prayer today as we pray for those we love but see no longer. We pray a washing and cleansing of hearts set on Christ at the hour of their death, so that their uncleanness may disappear and their entry into paradise be gained. 

As we pray we recognise that we cannot change the basic orientation of departed souls, only beg the Lord to speed the cleansing and entry into eternal joy of those He is drawing already to himself.

The cleansing of souls I speak of reminds me of my own cleansing of an old Vicarage garden in North London.  Where the potential is there the Lord allows it to blossom by removing all constraints, just as I removed the briars and ivy to see that garden flourish on the slopes of Alexandra Palace. Our prayer for the Holy Souls today and always is like my efforts in the garden - in both cases we help God to have His Way. 

All Souls' Day reminds every mortal man and woman of their approaching death and the offer of an eternal destiny. That destiny is not automatic. It needs to be sought from the One who planned it in that first garden of Eden, won it in another garden of Gethsemane and now welcomes Holy Souls washed by his spirit in his blood into the garden of rest eternal and light perpetual, of gladness unalloyed and perfect bliss.

God make the picture words falteringly make of such a garden, a word picture supplied by the word of God no less, into a reality for us and all those we love in Christ but see no longer.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord - and let light perpetual shine upon them! May the garden of paradise be their eternal recreation! 

All Souls Day Saturday 2nd November 2013

God’s not god of the dead but of the living; to him all are alive. Luke 20:38

On All Souls day we seek God, to whom all people living or dead are alive, on behalf of those we love but see no longer.

Christianity’s a faith built on resurrection. Always, to the eye of faith, the sadness of death gives way to the bright promise of immortality brought by Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.

God’s our contemporary – he’s always beside us. There’s no place we could ever go and lose him, unless our hearts are set on a trajectory away from him, like that Voyager space ship set to move relentlessly away from earth until it burns out.

We shouldn’t see death as such a journey away from us. Death isn’t a place of diminishment, like the image of that receding space ship, but a passing into a realm of enhancement that’s near to us. The dead live more fully because ‘to God all are alive’ and as Paul says if ‘living is Christ, dying is gain’ (Philippians 1:21).

There’s huge irony in the hallowe’en cult of shadowy ghosts and ghouls. It is the residue in our culture of the Christian celebration of the full, solid, glorious realm of resurrection on All Saints and All Souls day.

Many of us in accompanying the last passage of our loved ones felt we touched that realm! Many deaths I’ve been privileged  to attend as a priest have had about them that sense of passing to solid joy and lasting treasure, to journey’s end, with end not ‘finish’ but fulfilment!

Our departed loved ones have passed beyond our sight but not beyond our love, indeed our love for them is being expressed through  attendance at All Souls day eucharist. If those we love but see no longer are kept in our imperfect love, how much the more will they be kept in the unselfish love of God?

He sees all, he sees we mortals on earth, our loved ones departed beyond this world and those freed from sin who stand beside him awaiting the completion of God’s purpose in creating us. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews says this of that vigil of the elect for their betterment God has provided something better so that they would not, without us, be made perfect. Hebrews 11:40

On All Souls Day the vestments are the black of mourning decorated with the silver of resurrection glory. The black represents our sorrow and that of our dear departed at the separation of death. The silver represents resurrection faith that nothing’s lost at death and that all things are working together towards God’s grand outcome to be unveiled at the completion of God’s bettering of his creation.

God’s not god of the dead but of the living; to him all are alive.

God is the eternal ground of being itself. The coming of God’s Son to be one with us has made him our contemporary.

This afternoon we recall tearful moments of parting from our loved ones. As we do so the Church assures us by pointing to Jesus who wept over Lazarus before raising him from the dead.

Life and love are one in God. We mortals suffer the end of life and very often the end of love. In Jesus Christ there is no end to either life or love! In him humanity is remade so that, as we rest upon the Lord, we live and love in a greater fullness.

I cannot tell you exactly what happens after death but I can affirm with full confidence there will be that love stronger than death which is ours in Jesus. His resurrection is the pinnacle of history and no one has found serious grounds for disputing it.

As Christ is raised he is our contemporary. ‘Remember’ he says at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20b)

This is surely why we’re here at the eucharist, because Jesus is the living word, who speaks still through the Bible, and the living Bread who feeds us with himself through sacred elements.

We’re here – and Jesus is here – and as we read the list of our dear departed he is as close to them as we’re close to one another in St Giles this afternoon, but closer, for in him we live and move and have our being.  Acts 17:28

God’s not dead, he’s alive! Neither our loved ones who live in his orbit!

God’s not god of the dead but of the living; to him all are alive.

Our prayers this afternoon enfold and advance the living and the dead because that is the very purpose of the living God who is awaiting with great compassion our heartfelt prayers this afternoon.

Let’s pause for a moment and rest in his eternal love.