Sermon Preached at Northbrae Community Church, October 30, 2005 By Ron Sebring

One was dressed like a Viking warrior, with a spiked club and black cape.

I thought all that was strange until it dawned on me that this is Halloween.

· Carved pumpkins …

· Little witches riding broom sticks …

· Little skeletons with broad, rosy smiles …

It all sort of creeps up on us around this time of year.

Images of Halloween flood our memories.

Ø Going around the neighborhood in our favorite costumes, ringing doorbells, saying "Trick or Treat."

Children love to put on masks and pretend.

Adults, too. It recalls something basic in all of us.

Ø Going to a strip-mall parking lot and picking out just the right pumpkin to carve for our front porch. Children tugging at our sleeves. This one. No, this one.

Ø One of my memories, not many years ago, was when Connie and I were invited to go with friends to a "Day of the Dead" ceremony.

It was sponsored by the Guadalupe Center in Kansas City.

We gathered in the fellowship hall of a Spanish, Catholic Church.

I remember how strange it felt when we first entered.

Mock graves: mounds of dirt with tombstones, all across the floor.

The stage was elaborately decorated – like our altar here – with flowers, fruits, crafted streamers. And memories.

No timidity, talking about death, here. It was right out in the open.

At one point in the service, we formed a circle.

Quiet music in the background.

And people were invited to pronounce, spontaneously and at random, the names of loved ones that had died.

When I’m a guest at a service like that, I prefer listening to talking, but I felt it within me, bubbling up, the urge to pronounce the names of my mother and father. Frank and Thelma Sebring.

With a little moisture around the eyes, and a whisper that cracked midway, I said their names.

The feeling was like they were present, in the room.

Then I understood how so important, ceremonies like this!

      At this time of the year, several holidays converge.

· Pumpkins sold in parking lots.

· Black and orange ribbons decorating shopping centers. Spooks and ghosts.

· Children dreaming of how they will dress up for Halloween.

As the sun darkens the last day before going off daylight savings time, it’s time to think about Halloween; the last day of October is near.

Goblins, between three and four feet high, begin wandering neighborhoods.

Parents standing near, giving as much an illusion of freedom as possible.

Halloween: All Hallow’s Eve: it falls on the eve of All Saint’s Day.

It is an ancient Celtic tradition for the end of harvest season. Bonfires.

It clears the land of troubling spirits, so saints have less resistance.

All Saint’s Day is recognized mainly by Roman Catholics and Anglicans on Nov 1^st.

Pope Gregory IV started it sometime back in the 7^th century.

· On this day, we remember our torchbearers.

· People who made a difference for humanity.

· We have many of them right here, in our windows.

All Soul’s Day follows All Saints Day, November 2.

This was a remembrance instituted by the monasteries in France, and became an annual practice in 998.

Originally, it was a way to pray and give alms to assist souls in purgatory.

· It has become a time when people remember loved ones.

· Souls who have been "saints" in our own lives.

· People who have helped us grow, and who have companioned us.

In Mexico, it is called the "Day of the Dead." Día de los Muertos.

It is a blend of Roman Catholic and Native American traditions.

It is a time when the souls of the dead come and visit.

People decorate their homes and celebrate with playful imagery.

· Cleaning and decorating their homes. Burning incense.

· Leaving food offerings for wandering spirits.

· In some places, they hide sugar skeletons in loaves of bread … believing it is good luck if you bite into one of these.

In some places, departed children are remembered on the first day.

Known as the "Day of the Little Angels." Día de los Angelitos.

Adults are remembered on the second day.

     We are fortunate when a saint and a loved one from our past comes and visits us.

§ When we happen upon a picture, or an object that reminds us.

§ A song. A smell.

§ An omen, sometimes called an "agreement." A raven, or dove, that calls to us of a morning.

It reminds us that we are not in this world alone. Our memories connect us.

We have and will continue to be carried and sustained in a river of relationships.

It’s a river that reaches way back to antiquity, and forward into eternity.

It’s a river in which we touch untold lives in undreamed of ways.

Until, like all rivers, we join with one another in the ocean.

Dr. Fred Craddock, my preaching professor of years ago, once told a story about waiting at the Portland airport. Craddock Stories, by Fred Craddock, ed., Mike Graves and Richard Ward, pp 78-79.

While waiting, he got to visiting with an elderly couple, returning from Hawaii.

It was vacation time, for them.

They returned with a deep suntan … brown as gingerbread, Craddock said.

· The old gentleman still had a lei about his neck.

· She wore a straw hat.

· They carried in a paper sack; gifts for their grandchildren.

They visited, unaware of the tragedy that was about to unfold.

He suddenly grabbed his chest and fell to the floor.

Paramedics came running up, almost immediately.

But there was nothing they could do.

The instincts of being a pastor took over, and Dr. Craddock stayed with this woman, sitting beside her and listening to her story.

Her husband broke his glasses when he fell,

And this is what she wanted to talk about. Broken glasses.

"I didn’t bring another pair," she said. "He wanted me to bring another pair, but I forgot. That was the only pair he had."

Her husband was lying there on the floor, dead.

And she wanted to talk about his glasses!

Dr. Craddock explained this like she was in shock, and this was the minds way of protecting itself from death.

Delaying looking at it until the mind can make some sense out of what is essentially nonsensical. In the moment, it seems so "unreal."

This was a life-changing event for this woman, and she had to go slow in coming to terms with it.

This process of coming to terms with it, … is ongoing.

It is an illusion to think that "grief" is something we can "work through" in stages. No. Grief is a Presence that we get use to.

It is something we embrace, and hug, and hang on to, until it becomes for us a blessing.

Which is the deep wisdom in Mexico’s Día de los Muertos celebration.

Þ The saints in our history, who have carried the lantern for us and who hold it up so we can find light among the shadows and follow.

Þ The souls in our lives who have touched us along the way, made a difference for us, and have passed on.

Þ Children who meet premature deaths … whether before they are born, or those lost in a war, or at any age when they die before their parents.

Things never that should have happened!

     We remember, and we want to worry, all over again, about having forgot the glasses.

Or did we give a "good-bye" kiss before leaving for work that morning.

It’s the little things that flash back. Little questions.

And all over again, we need a way of putting it in perspective.

And to reclaim perspective.

And to reclaim perspective often, until we are gifted by it – being wiser and more seasoned and profoundly more able to love, in deeper ways.

      I’ve seen it happen after a funeral service. Right after. People gather. Mill around.

Always after the graveside service when the final prayer is said.

Families hang around the tent for a long time -- talking, visiting, sharing memories.

And pretty soon, you hear the laughter returning. People want to laugh. People reclaim their permission to laugh.

My stepdaughter and her companion, Kevin, lost their baby, after she had carried it for seven months. A lingering tragedy.

While we were in Portland this summer on vacation, they took us to the gravesite.

They took flowers. Connie had made an arrangement.

Kevin is a big man, muscled, a construction worker. Broad shoulders. Thick hands.

And he stood there with tears in his eyes.

He tried not to show it, but his eyelids kept fluttering.

Afterwards, we walked around looking at tombstones.

Something had resolved within him, at least for a season.

His humor started coming back.

We walked around, looking at all the things people leave beside a gravestone – flowers, teddy bears, a letter in a sealed envelope.

We came across one grave stone for some gentleman.

His wife had left for him, beside a small bundle of flowers, an unopened can of beer. Really.

She had taken a magic marker and carefully printed on it: "I miss you so much."

Kevin got that gleam in his eye, and said, "I’ve a mind to drink that beer, and write on the can, ‘Thanks, hon.’"

We laughed.

I think I heard that gentleman in heaven laugh.

And I look up to Kevin, this youth of a man who towers over me in size and strength.

He taught me something that day. The land upon which we stood was sacred.

And how I best be finding my own sacred land.

And that I, perhaps, need to visit it often.