Readings for the Feast of All Saints (Year C)
Daniel 7:1-3,15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31
This sermon was preached by Fr. Daniel London at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on November 3, 2019.
In the 150th year of Christ Church Eureka, Daniel had a dream and visions in his head as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream: I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, while driving in an SUV through a beautiful retreat center along the French Riviera. In this vision, I had arrived late for a scheduled worship service but just in time for a massive potluck buffet, which seemed to be hosted by the world’s leading French chefs. As final food preparations were being made, lo behold! I realized I was in the company of departed souls, specifically Dan Vega and Jill Stover and other friends of mine who had recently died. Sadly, I woke up from my dream before having a chance to stack my plate with all the delicious food and to catch up with old friends.
When awake, my spirit was not troubled within me and my visions had not terrified me as was the case for my namesake, the Hebrew Prophet Daniel. Instead, I felt encouraged and not entirely surprised since I tend to have dreams of deceased friends and loved ones, especially soon after they have passed away. These dreams always affirm my belief that in death, life is changed, not ended; that at the grave we all have reason to make our song, “Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.”[1] These dreams affirm my belief that this life is a mere shadow compared to the abundant life we will enjoy after we pass through the gateway called death. And these dreams also affirm my belief that what we do in this life, the choices we make, the ways we invest our time and our money, will have an enormous influence on the next life that awaits us all.
This next life that awaits us all has been experienced and described by saints, prophets and seers of visions since antiquity. There are some alive today who claim to have had such experiences of the afterlife. Although I certainly believe in “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come” (as we say in our Creed), I retain what I think is a healthy skepticism of these personal accounts of the afterlife, including those in my own dreams. It often seems that many of these people have their own agenda or doctrine or axe to grind. However, there is one recent account of the afterlife that I find particularly compelling. It’s the account of a neurosurgeon in Virginia named Eben Alexander, who, prior to his experience, agreed with most scientists that “Near Death Experiences” were simply fantasies produced by the brain under extreme stress. When Dr. Alexander suffered from a severe form of bacterial meningitis that shut down his brain and put him into a seven-day-long coma, he woke up to a heavenly life so real that it made this earthly life seem like a dream. You can read about the details his experience in his book Proof of Heaven, which is a fascinating book but with a very misleading title because one of his main points is that we will never have any scientific proof of heaven because scientific materialism is not equipped (and never will be equipped) to make such a conclusion. On the cover of the book is a butterfly, which is appropriate because he experienced parts of the afterlife as full of angelic, butterfly-like creatures. He described his experience flying with his angelic guide when he wrote, “We were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface, alive with indescribable and vivid colors—the wing of a butterfly. In fact, millions of butterflies were all around us—vast fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the greenery and coming back up around us again. It wasn’t any single, discrete butterfly that appeared, but all of them together, as if they were a river of life and color, moving through the air. We flew in lazy looped formations past blossoming flowers and buds on trees that opened as we flew near.”[2] Dr. Alexander was also a skydiver, and he said this experience was a thousand times more thrilling and a thousand times more real than any of his flying experiences, even those he had in dreams.
Alexander’s experience of butterflies in the afterlife resonates deeply with a 3,000-year-old tradition and natural phenomenon that takes place every year in Mexico on El Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, which we celebrate as the feast of All Saints and All Souls. Our Mexican brothers and sisters believe that souls and angels from the afterlife visit us in this life in the form of butterflies. This belief is affirmed and enhanced by the fact that millions, even up to a billion, monarch butterflies from North America migrate down to Mexico on the Day of the Dead, on All Souls day, and have been doing so since time immemorial. It is perhaps Mexico’s most magnificent natural spectacle that almost seems supernatural. And is not the butterfly one of the most beautiful and stunning symbols of life after death!
The great 18th century Anglican bishop and philosopher Joseph Butler used the analogy of a butterfly to describe life after death in his book The Analogy of Religion.[3] Butler essentially said that this earthly life is another womb out of which we will eventually emerge. Just as life outside our mother’s womb is far more bright and expansive than life within the womb so too is the life on the other side. Think of a caterpillar in its cocoon. If you open up the cocoon, all you’ll see is white goo. It looks like the caterpillar is dead and gone, but, in reality, the caterpillar is transitioning into a magnificent butterfly that will soon dance in the sky with the sparrows. In the same way, we will shuffle off this caterpillar-like clothing and emerge with more beauty and color than we can ever imagine. Jesus Christ revealed this to us by appearing to his friends in his resurrected body, by returning to us caterpillars as the butterfly.
When Dr. Eben Alexander woke up from his coma, he initially became somewhat depressed because this earthly life felt so shallow and empty in comparison to the afterlife, but he was encouraged by an experience that reminded him of the abundant life beyond. Before his coma, the skeptic Dr. Alexander said he would occasionally visit the local Episcopal church, but identified mostly as a “C & E’er,” one who only darkens the door of a church at Christmas and Easter.[4] (I would prefer to call him a CEO Christian – a “Christmas Easter Only” Christian.) After his coma, however, he experienced church and worship as profoundly moving. He writes, “I didn’t make it back to church until December 2008, when Holley [his wife] coaxed me out to services for the second Sunday of Advent. I was still weak, still a bit off balance, still underweight. Holley and I sat in the front row. Michael Sullivan [the priest] was presiding over the service that day, and he came up and asked if I felt like lighting the second candle on the Advent wreath. I stood up, put my hand on the brass pole, and strode to the front of the church with unexpected ease.
“My memory of my time out of the body was still naked and raw, and everywhere I turned in this place [the church] that had failed to move me before, I saw art and heard music that brought it all right back. The pulsing bass note of a hymn […], the stained glass windows with their clouds and angels, [a painting of Jesus breaking bread with his disciples all] brought to mind the celestial beauty of the Gateway. I shuddered as I recalled the bliss of infinite unconditional love I had known there.
“At last, I understood what religion was really all about. Or at least was supposed to be about. I didn’t just believe in God; I knew God. As I hobbled to the altar to take Communion, tears streamed down my face.”[5]
My friends, when we gather in this sacred place to worship, we join our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, with all those who have passed through the Gateway into celestial beauty, all those who have shuffled off their caterpillar-like clothing to become like heavenly butterflies, all those who have come to the ineffably joys God has prepared for those who love him, all those who have worshipped as part of Christ Church Eureka for the last century and a half; and all those loved ones who remain dear to our hearts. They all join us when we worship here, or perhaps I should say we join them. I have heard some of you say that you feel the presence of your deceased loved ones when you’re worshipping here. You sense them shining their smile upon you. The Gospel Truth of All Souls day is that they are indeed with us here and now, loving us in ways that we can only imagine. So let us receive their love right now. Let us give thanks for their love, even when it might cause tears to stream down our face.
St. Paul says, “I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers” (Ephesians 1:16). May we continue to give thanks for our deceased loved ones whom we remember this day in our prayers; but more than that, may we give thanks for those deceased loved ones who are praying for us; who are praying a version of these words of St. Paul, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give [us] a spirit of wisdom and revelation as [we] come to know him, so that, with the eyes of [our] heart enlightened, [we] may know what is the hope to which he has called [us], what are the riches of [our] glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe” (Ephesians 1:18).
Let us give our gratitude permission to flow through us on this day of All Saints and All Souls and our Pledge Ingathering as we each prayerfully make a pledge to generously and responsibly give of ourselves and our resources to this church that is fully dependent on our pledges. Without our pledges, this church will not continue; but with our gifts, we can grow and continue to fulfill our mission of glorifying God here with all the saints in heaven and earth; we can maintain this sacred space where deceased loved ones smile upon us now and where we can smile upon future members of Christ Church when we cross over. We can grow and continue our mission of following Jesus Christ, the one who appeared as a butterfly among caterpillars; and we will grow and continue our mission of serving all people through the power of the Holy Spirit, as a portion of our pledge is given to people in need, as our financial gifts transform and travel like the monarch butterflies to provide relief and aid to people here in Humboldt County, other parts of California, Cuba, Honduras, Israel and beyond. Let us make all God’s saints and all the faithfully departed proud of us on this day as we join them in worship, in gratitude, in love and generosity; and as we learn to embrace the ineffable joys God has prepared for us in this life and the next. Amen.
[1] Book of Common Prayer, pp. 382, 499.
[2] Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (Simon and Schuster: New York, 2012), 40.
[3] Richard H. Schmidt, Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality (William B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, 2002), 108.
[4] Alexander, Proof of Heaven, 34.
[5] Alexander, Proof of Heaven, 147-148.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 