Sermon for November 1, 2009

                    Scripture                   Mark 12:28-34

                 “Thin Places”         Rev. Christopher Fazel

            Today is All-Saints Sunday or All Hallows Day – November 1st.  The word “hallow” comes from an Anglo-Saxon word “halig” which means to “make holy.”  Holy also comes from “halig.”  So there.

The night before All Hallows, on October 31, is "Hallows Eve" or in Middle English, Halloween.  Now, these days in our land, Halloween is far more widely known than All Hallows Day but the two are really one.  Most of us understand Halloween in terms of images -- jack o'lanterns, scarecrows, haunted hayrides, kids in costumes ringing your door and shouting "trick or treat."  But where did this crazy holiday come from?  And why is it lodged in our annual cycle of festivals? 

            You know, Halloween these days gets a lot of bad press especially from some Christian groups.  And that's not because of the excesses of candy consumption, but rather because they correctly identify Halloween as a pagan holiday.  But let's not raise any red flags.  Pagan is from the Latin "Paganos" meaning peasant.  A pagan was originally a tiller of the soil whose understanding of God was derived from the forces of nature. 

            Now, well before the birth of Christ, Roman historians studied the Celtic and Germanic tribes of Europe and wrote about their pagan festivals.  One was called Samhain, which meant, “end of summer.”   It was their new year, which began around October 31st.  The Roman historians tell us that Samhain was a very special time.  It was believed that during that festival, the veil that separates this world from the spirit world was rent asunder, and the spirits of the dead mingled with the living.  It was a time when the living remembered, gave thanks for, and communed with those who had died. 

In point of fact, most all religious traditions have rituals and traditions that honor and seek communion with those who have left this earth.  These traditions are at least as old as the Egyptians, and certainly extend back to the earliest strata of human consciousness.  Our Christianity is no exception to the rule.   We have our rituals and traditions too.  At the very heart of our communion sacrament is the belief that the dead are included in the eternal communion of the Living Christ.  

Theologian Marcus Borg talks about “thin places.”  He says a thin place is anywhere your heart is opened.  Hopefully, our hearts are opened in worship, so by definition, we are here and now at a thin place – that place where the boundary between this world and the next is thin. 

            For the ancient Celts, Samhain was a thin place.  Christians chose the same holiday to remember and commune with those who have died, calling it All Saints Day – not because they’re all saints, but because we keep faith that not even death cuts short our journey toward the promise of the gospel, which is “we shall be like Christ.”

            And in our reading today, Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms how to become that promise:  “Love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.  And love your neighbor as your self.”  Now, certainly these ideals are not uniquely Christian.  Nevertheless, Jesus lifts them up as the most important aspirations of the human race.  None of us is there yet.  But when we gather in the spirit of those ideals, seeking to grow into them, we come to a thin place.  We get a foretaste of the joy of eternal communion in the spirit of the Living Christ, where we all may gather in peace.  Here in the place, around the world, and even into the great mystery, we are one in that spirit.  We feed one another the bread of faith and the cup of hope. 

So, today, we take a moment, as people have done since before the dawn of recorded time.  We pause to remember, honor, and bless those who have preceded us through the mystery of that transition we call death.   We commune with them – here and now -- through the eternal and omni-present Spirit that we call the Christ.  As mortar to bricks, this Spirit binds all living beings, including those who live in the flesh -- and those who live in finer forms of reality – in that mystery we call the “hereafter.”     

And so we celebrate that good news – all together – here now – in the eternal communion of the living Christ.  Let us pray.

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