Honoring the Memories

The following is from my sermon preached this past Sunday, November 7th for All Saints Day.

This past week, I was talking with a friend about the unique religious rites associated with All Saints Day. I told him about the sermon I was preaching tonight and the fascination from my research of the various religious ceremonies people have performed in honoring the dearly departed. For instance, in Japan, there is the Obon festival celebrated in July. In China, there is the celebration of the Moon of Hungry Ghosts. In ancient Rome, the ghosts of the ancestors were appeased during Lemuia on May 9th.

My friend and I talked about our perception that Americans seem to understand death with scary associations—both of us agreed that perhaps television, graphic novels, and gory movies are responsible for tainting our images of death. As a result, we surmised, some of us confuse
darkness with evil, and approach death with fear—thus the emphasis in American celebrations of Halloween with demons and ghosts, the gory and the grotesque.

My friend Ed is a psychiatrist here in New York City. He told me an interesting parallel to the celebration of death that he observed last year while visiting with friends in Guatemala. There death wasn’t scary—rather it was a celebration. On November 1st, Ed and his local friends participated in a ritual called the “Sweeping of the Graves.”

Each year, families would come together to go and visit each of the gravesites of their dearly departed mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, friends and lovers. As they arrived, they would first spend a time cleaning the gravesite. They would cut down the grasses surrounding the tombstones or markers. They would scrub off the dirt from the stones. Then, having brought food, drink, music and candles, they would sit down around the gravestone.

The food and drink they brought was the favorite food and drink of the person who died. The music they would play would be the favorite music of that person too. Lighting candles as they began, everyone would sit down and eat the food and drink the drink. They talked fondly and remembered the fun and joy of their dearly departed.

During the festivities, the family would then invoke the spirit of their family member or friend that the departed spirit might speak to them with words of wonder and enlightenment.

When they were finished eating and drinking, and talking with their ghosts, they would then visit other gravesites, mingling with those there who were eating and drinking and dancing to the music of their loved ones—each family telling the other about the love of the person they were celebrating. All the while, the spirits of the dead would be mingling and talking with each other and one another.

What an interesting contrast indeed...

You can read the rest of the sermon by going visiting my church's website.