Revelation 7.9

Peace be to you and grace from him who freed us from our sins.

In my family growing up music was important.  So also in our family with our children. It wasn’t just that we sang them to sleep with lullabies.  Our children became familiar with composers and their works and spoke of music and musicians with respect.  They trusted that the music which filled the rooms of our home came from special people who somehow were friends.  They felt real.  So real that I should have watched my words more closely.

On a date night ages ago my wife was still inside with our youngest getting settled with the baby sitter.  I was outside in the car.  Our eldest was swinging and dancing around the Gingko tree out front.  She asked, “Where are you and Mommy going, Daddy”?

“We are going to a concert to hear some music.  You be a good girl now, and listen to the baby sitter.”

“Daddy, are you going to see Johnny Bach?”

“Oh, honey, Johnny Bach is dead.  He died a long time ago.”

“But, you didn’t tell me!”

Let me translate her tears.  In her little four year old way she was saying, “Daddy don’t do this to me.  Don’t talk to me about death.  It is too scary to think of the important things in life not being here.  You, Mommy, my sister, Johnny Bach, all this give me meaning and keeps me safe.  Don’t tell me it is going to end.”

A big part of being a good parent  is helping children grow up.  And growing up means learning to live sequentially, in linear fashion.  It means developing concrete notions of past and present and future.  It means realizing that at best we overlap but only for the littlest of whiles.  Time travel while a delightful, romantic notion is only a figment of imagination.

Well, once a year we do get to wind the clock back an hour.  But when we get to church it is still Sunday, All Saints Sunday as it happens this year.  This is the church’s time to remember loved ones who now and forever recede into distant memory.  We have been forced to learn, to speak of them in the past tense.  No longer a “we” or an “us.”  Life goes on without.

C. S. Lewis on the other hand described God as the one having all eternity to listen to the split second prayer of the pilot whose plane is about to crash. God has no beginning or end.  God is above space and time.  God lives in the eternal present.

To get our minds around this, we need a new vocabulary word.  Anamnesis.  It loosely means “remembrance.”  It is a Jewish concept found already in Hebrew Scriptures. Calling the past into the present so that the past exists in the here and now with all the reality and consequence associated thereto.  In Christian Scripture our Lord lifted the cup and bread and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”  He doesn’t mean we should say ”Here’s looking at you Jesus.”  So powerfully present this cup of Christ’s blood, it takes up physical space. So undeniably real this bread, Christ’s body, it casts a shadow. You can taste it. The past existing in the present.

We bank on anamnesis when we say the creed.  “We believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”  From God’s perspective all are connected.  And all are present to our God who sees the beginning and the end.  And us as part of it.

This great multitude which no one can count gives us perspective. In their company we begin to grasp what we believe, what we confess, how we discern the options and make our decisions. Through the Saints we begin to see our purpose and place in the world today, living as the beneficiaries of and the investors in God’s gracious grace.

I really should watch my words. The longer I live the more time feels fluid.  I still hear the “but, you didn’t tell me!”  And I hear myself saying back, “Oh my dear child.  Much as I hate this, I am the one to tell you.  Yes, there is something called death.  And it will break your heart as it breaks mine.  Your fears are right.  Death is the awful finality which sooner or later catches up with everything.  I wish I could spare you.  Even this daddy’s heart cannot do that.

But more than anything in the world I want to be the one to tell you the deeper truth.  There is something in this universe stronger than death.  It is God’s love, after which your tender love, and my love and all true and selfless loving comes. 
There is a kingdom of those so loved, an invisible cloud of witnesses who surround us even as we speak.  By their prayers, by their blessing and benediction, by their witness and example, yes even by their music they remind us of God’s loving heart for all. For that reason, even in the midst of sadness we give thanks to God for them.  And just like them we work to make a loving difference in the world.

Meanwhile, in good Christian fashion, we do what’s right in front of us. You dear child, be a good girl and listen to the baby sitter.  And your Mommy and I when we come home will tuck you in and kiss you and your sister good night.

And you, good people eavesdropping, we also do what is in front of us.  We give thanks to God for the blessed who have been our blessing, showing us how to bless.  And then we make ready to eat at the banquet table around which absolutely all of God’s beloved from all lands and all times are gathered. 

Yes dear daughter.  Even Johnny Bach.