Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
THE CHRONICLE
October 27, 2002
Volume 47, No. 36

Halloween

Life is relationships -
To sever them is death.
Christianity seeks ultimate relationships,
And resurrects the dead.
Richard Miller

Halloween has come to be a playful and prankish reminder of the reality of death.
Ghouls and goblins, witches and winged bats, cats and clever costumes are a way to make fun of the mystery of mortality, for mystery it is. Couched within the
bewilderment and fear and the eternal hope that is grounded in faith, we seek to
come to some tangible understanding of the macabre mystery of death. What the
Halloween merriment really reveals is that the mystery of death is just another side
of the mystery of life.

You can just imagine the look on people's faces when I ask them if they have been
raising the dead! Yet we say every Sunday in the Creed that we believe in 'the
communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and the
life everlasting.' In these phrases we are affirming that death does not separate us
from those we love, even though they are no longer visible to our sight. We are
declaring that we are still united to them just as we were when they were living,
breathing, human beings. In spite of what we say in the Creed we often act in our
daily lives as though death is the final and ultimate separation between us and those we love. When someone close to us dies, we go through the normal grief process and then try to go on the best we can - forgetting them as much as possible in order to be free of the pain of loss and to get on with the living of our lives. We rarely, if ever, consider that it is our responsibility to keep them resurrected in our lives.

I was once invited to participate in a family reunion at a friend's ranch. The
festivities included an outdoor worship service in the area of the ranch where my
friend's parents are buried. This area is known as "the secret place." Nearly 200
relatives flew in for the celebration. As we gathered at "the secret place," I was
surprised and delighted to see that a crowd of deceased family members had arrived before us. No, we were not seeing ghosts, and we had not unknowingly tiptoed into the "twilight zone." Our host had taken photographs of his deceased kin, had them enlarged, professionally framed, and reverently set in the limbs of the aspen trees. Those kin had spiritually prepared the place even before we took our seats. Their presence was as palpable as the beating of our own hearts as we prayed. My friend believed in the possibility of raising others from the dead, and he had made that possibility a reality.

Jesus proclaimed, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even
though they die, yet will they live." The veil between earth and heaven is ever so
thin. Death is not the final end - nor is life the final beginning.

Whom will you raise from the dead this Halloween?

Renee Miller+

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