ReMembered Word -All Saints Sunday

... Before us loomed what to my eyes seemed the carcass of a palace, a place of echoes and shadows. ...
A blue-tinted gloom obscured the sinuous contours of a marble staircase and a gallery of frescoes peopled with angels and fabulous creatures.  We followed our host through a palatial corridor and arrived at a sprawling round hall, a virtual basilica of shadows spiraling up under a high glass dome, its dimness pierced by shafts of light that stabbed from above. A labyrinth of passageways and crammed bookshelves rose from base to pinnacle like a beehive woven with tunnels, steps, platforms, and bridges that presaged an immense library of seemingly impossible geometry.  ...
Welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. ...
 This is a place of mystery...a sanctuary.  Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul.  The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it.  Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs [their] eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.  This place was already ancient...many years ago.  Perhaps as old as the city itself.  Nobody knows for certain how long it has existed, or who created it. ... when a library disappears, or a bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here.  In this place books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader’s hands.  In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner.  Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.
                                                                     -The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, pg. 5-6.

What a delight, to have sat down at the beginning of this week with the novel, The Shadow of the Wind, and within a few pages read the words I just shared. How fitting when spending the week preparing to celebrate All Saint’s Sunday, to remember those who have died over the past year.
As I look back over the year, I am amazed at the variety of texts and hymns chosen by you or your loved ones, as words to be read at funerals and gravesides to bring comfort and hope; to help you grieve; to start your journey of letting go, healing, and looking forward. The books accessed from the library -from the Bible, from the hymnbook, were holy words written across centuries:
Our spirits were lulled by Psalms and words of the Prophets – the Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want; you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb; for you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace, the mountains and the hills before you shall burst in song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands; I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord.
Our hearts heard the Gospel proclaimed: do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day; do not let your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me; I go to prepare a place for you, so that where I am you may be also; I am the resurrection and the life; Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; they will be guided to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, death will be no more; mourning and crying ad pain will be no more; listen, I tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
Our voices sang hymns that wound hope into our beings: O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder  consider all the worlds thy hands have made; Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me; Blessed assurance Jesus is mine, oh what a foretaste of glory divine; I come to the church in the wildwood; true man, yet very God, from sin and death He save us, and lightens every load.
This is a smattering of the texts that we shared as a community when facing death.
We could easily add the texts read at Bible Study this past week from Revelations, 1 John, and Matthew. We can add the texts we heard this morning: 
The book of Daniel shares with us a vision of the four winds of heaven; four great beasts; and the promise that the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever- forever and ever. Ephesians regales the power of salvation, the riches of God’s glorious inheritance, and includes a vision of  God’s immeasurable greatness, above all rule, authority and power and dominion, not only in this age but also in the age to come, the fullness of him who fills all in all. And then Luke, in a comfortable rhythm, satisfies with the poetry of the Beatitudes, encouraging that yours is the kingdom of heaven; you who are hungry now will be filled; rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.
The snippets of holy words that we turn to when we face death are like the books found in the cemetery of forgotten books – a place described as a mystery, a sanctuary; where every book has a soul – that of the writer, of the first reader, of every subsequent reader; every time the words are read they grow in spirit and strength. How strong must be the words we take comfort in? How many funerals have you found yourself singing, Amazing Grace, or hearing the words from Paul, for I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. For thousands and thousands of years Hebrew scriptures have been passed along, for just shy of two thousand years Christian texts have been proclaimed, for a few hundred years faith communities have found solace in the hymns we sing. When the words are spoken and sung, the words and thoughts are re-membered, brought back to life, resurrected- to be what we need for the day, to grow for what we, or someone else, will need for tomorrow. The words re-member us.
At times of loss we loss pieces of ourselves. You could say that we become dismembered – pulled apart, shaken, confused, anxious, -- simply put we are not the same. The mystery of the word of God -the words that we turn to for comfort and strength- put us back together by helping us remember who we are, by reminding us of the promises of faith, by re-membering us by bringing us together with other members in the body of Christ – people who can share our burden and grief, people to share the mystery of faith and the promises of resurrection when such words may not remembered in our grief.
I think I appreciated the idea of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books because I see the community as a repository, full of guardians. In places like this, names are written down in the church record book, and remembered, long after stories are no longer told of our loved ones, long after their deeds are forgotten, long after there are no more relatives or friends. Future generations – pastors for sure- come along and  gaze over the pages of who was here, to understand the great cloud of witnesses who came before, and the inheritance in which they now accept to work and serve. By remembering and re-membering, our spirit grows and strengthens.
I have my own pastoral record book that goes with me from place to place, recording all baptisms, confirmations, marriages, special sermons or presentations, students I’ve mentored, and of course funerals. As I re-membered people while writing this sermon, I resurrected memories and re-membered myself by remembering what I was taught by the faithful and the not-so-faithful, and their families. I was amazed by the diversity of people who make up ‘the great cloud of witnesses;’ I was astonished by the vast holdings of those who are members of the same church community and neighbourhood --people who because of a sharing of Word and sung hymns-- communicated with each other, shared faith, sat side-by-side, and worked at getting along with each other so that they could be God’s hands in the world. The 138 people recorded in my funeral section covered the spectrum: politically right of right and left of left,  homophobes and those in same-sex marriages, those condemning mixed race marriage, those adopting children of other ethnicities, both those who supported and did not support females in ministry, gun carriers and hunters and pacifists and vegans; people calling God he and others who welcomed the occasional she; those who saw communion as a symbol, eating beside those for whom it was holy sacrament. You get the idea. Despite differences that could have been very divisive, the Gospel and Mystery of God, was a unifying force. Together in all our uniqueness we were a member, all members, re-membered in the family of God.
 The Gospel and the Mystery of God shared in holy space is truly amazing.  Our togetherness, what we share here, is experienced and shared as holy text for those who follow.
I have witnessed the effect of hearing and voicing the texts we turn to at times of death.  From the 138 written in my book I witnessed:  strength when facing debilitating disease, visions of angels at bedsides, the peace brought by communion, slipping into the next life while saying the Lord’s Prayer, the singing of hymns while dying to express thanks and joy for what has been, final words of great hope, the waiting to offer forgiveness and a last hug, the humility of confession and beauty found in the acceptance of absolution, exchanging peace in the holding of a hand, the presence to be patient and welcome basking in the richness of silence ... and in all these circumstances entering the great Mystery – where sacred texts and words come flooding to the surface and work as holy ointment.
Today may you be re-membered as you remember your loved ones. Be encouraged by the voice of God spoken through texts and hymns, be supported by the voice of the community of faith, and may you grow in strength and spirit. Through Word receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever --- forever and ever.

Once, in my father’s bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into [their] heart.  Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later ---no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget--- we will return.  For those enchanted pages will always be the ones I found among the passageways of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. 
                                                                             – The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, pg 8.