Dancing With the Dead
II Timothy 4:6-8
Amy Jacks Dean, November 4, 2001 (All Saints’ Day)
It had been about one year after my 16 year old nephew’s death when I returned to my home church’s fellowship hall to attend a bridal shower for my niece. I had taken Bennett with me to the shower and he toddled around and played like all 14 month olds do, as she opened presents and everyone oohed and aahed at the wonderful gifts. After the party, we were cleaning up and my 2 20-something year old nieces – Bennett’s first cousins (one being the bride-to-be, the other the sister of my deceased nephew, Kevin) – volunteered to take Bennett outside to give me a break. Exactly what all parents of toddlers need from time to time – a break! As we finished up with the last of the dishes, my sister, Kevin’s mother, and I walk outside to find the cousin three-some. They weren’t on the playground. They weren’t in the nursery. They weren’t in the car. We looked across the street to the church’s little country cemetery and there they were. The cousin threesome was really a cousin foursome.
You see, Kevin’s grave had had just enough time that the grass was almost grown over, but the grave was still new enough that there was slight a hump in the ground – the ground had not fully settled back to flat. The grave is an interesting way to measure grief – some of the wound and sting of his death was healing just as the grass was coming back in, but there was still a swollen place in our hearts that throbbed and it just wouldn’t go down. I’m sad that the grave is now flat with grass growing strongly on top. I wish the grass would only partially grow and that there would always remain slight hump in the ground.
Sitting on that slight mound of mostly grass was Cassie, Kevin’s sister, toward the headstone and Jennifer, his cousin – the then bride-to-be, sitting toward the foot marker which has a bronze etching of Kevin’s face. And in between the two of them was Bennett toddling around, prancing about, dancing with the dead – right smack dab on top of Kevin’s grave. It was an interesting sight. We had all subconsciously been so careful not to step right on his grave. We walked around it, we stepped over it, but out of respect or out of some hesitant reluctance, we never stepped on it. My sister and I looked at each other, smiling – the girls had just plopped right on top of the grave and Bennett danced around. They were talking about wedding plans and honeymoon and thank you notes and when would Cassie finally get a diamond, while Bennett played, never thinking that it might be irreverent. And they were right. They treated that space as holy by including Kevin’s tangible memory in their everyday lives. And my sister commented how pleased Kevin would be. Kevin had fought the good fight, he had finished the race (though it seemed too early for us), and he had kept the faith, and his three cousins honored his memory by dancing with the dead that day.
These words from II Timothy are powerful and emotional – many times read at funerals or gravesides as words of strength and comfort and hope. Whether Paul wrote these words himself is up for debate. But the truth remains – this was Paul’s final testimony and his last requests. One commentary pointed out, “Whether it was penned by Paul or inserted into this part of the letter by a later writer, the effect is the same. What we have in the first place is a moving self-testimony at the end of the career of one of the greatest of the world’s movers and shakers . . .we should allow [these words] to work on us in the way that the eulogy delivered at the funeral of a very fine person works on us – at the emotional level, to fire us not simply with admiration for that person, but with resolve to cherish the memory of that person and to allow it to influence and mold our own lives for the better.” (New Interpreter’s, page 859)
Today is All Saints’ Day – a day when we are reminded that we don’t have to reinvent faith with each new generation. Will Willimon says that “we think with, are guided by, and encouraged by the words and lives of the saints” and that we should “think of the Christian faith as extended conversation with the dead, a dialogue with the saints.” Willimon observes that it is indeed odd that a society so wrapped up in the contemporary is willing “to submit to the past, to presume on this day, that those who have gone before us in this faith may know more than we know about living the faith today.” (Pulpit Resource, Vol 29, No 4, pages 19-20)
Our faith, when lived, should carry us – through good and bad, bitter and sweet – faith is for the long haul. We are born into this world with a capacity for something spiritual – something beyond ourselves – something that many of us end up calling “faith.” And that faith carries us through life and into death and out on the other side into what I believe is a Blessed Hope of the forever presence of God. Now I pour all of that “life, death, and Blessed Hope” into one sentence, and it sounds so neat and so tidy and so simple. But it is not. It takes perseverance to live through life and into death and finally into Blessed Hope. The dictionary definition of perseverance is: to continue steadfastly, especially in something that is difficult or tedious. (Oxford American Dictionary) That is what the life of faith takes – perseverance and steadfastness for as wonderful and abundant as life is, it can be difficult and it can be tedious. The ability to keep on keeping on, struggling and questioning and thinking and doubting and growing up – and I’m talking about in our faith. Being childlike is wonderful. Being childish is foolish – and there is a difference. One of the best ways to persevere is to do some Dancing with the Dead.
I asked Gray Clark if I could share an email with you that he sent to me on Monday, September 17th, less than one week after the September 11th tragedy.
I just wanted to thank you for the sermon yesterday and commend you for your wonderful handling of such a difficult and emotional issue. I have struggled tremendously with how in the world we react to the terrorist activity – with what America does next. As you noted in your sermon, I almost feel like my patriotism is questioned because I do not see how killing more innocent people helps anything at all. I can’t believe a God of love wants that of me. I pray for God to show me the peaceful resolve.
Then he told me this story:
Yesterday (which was the Sunday following September 11th) Cathryn (his one year old daughter) had a cold and we had decided to keep her home and away from other children in the nursery. Elisa’s parents were in town and I volunteered to stay at home with her. I knew that I needed and wanted desperately to be in church to hear your sermon. I brought Cathryn and listened in the Narthex and your words were exactly what I needed to hear. I have thought over and over that I must be un-American for not supporting all out war and the bombing of people who had nothing to do with this. After the sermon, I took Cathryn out and sat in the Columbarium and prayed and cried while I watched her innocently play and wondered how anyone could intentionally harm a child, so innocent, so fragile, and so happy.
When I asked Gray for permission to tell this to you, he said he thinks often of the image of Cathryn “playing among the saints” – dare I say Dancing with the Saints – he said it gives him peace in a time when he feels most uncertain about what the world may be like when she is grown.
If we are to persevere in our own faith, we’d better learn how to do some dancing with the saints. You know, we are not the first to have gone through this life and there is much to be learned from those who have gone before us. I wish I had known Mack McGowan. I’ve already learned about life from hearing some of you talk about him. I wish I had known Cliff Moses. He sounds like a man of deep faith. I would like to have met Ed Echerd. He seemed to be a self-taught theologian full of intelligence and integrity. I’m glad I did know Claire Ashcraft and wish I had known Hugh Sr. I’m glad I got to know Vivian Privette and her sense of humor and Mary Hastings and her sweet spirit and Jerry Moulton and his great strength even into death. All of these, and many more whose names will be read following this service in the Columbarium, are folks who persevered – they lived through the Depression, they have known world wars, they most surely had successes and they most surely had failures, they celebrated births and marriages and they suffered trials and grieved deaths of loved ones – and they persevered in their faith. They fought the good fight, they finished the race, they kept the faith. We need to be Dancing with the Dead.
Matthew Gordon Sumner is his real name – but this rock and roll legend is better known simply as Sting. He’s one of Russ’ favorite musician/theologians. He has a song entitled “They Dance Alone.” It’s a haunting melody, yet somehow peaceful. He wrote this song in the mid 1980’s after visiting Chile and meeting former political prisoners – victims of torture and imprisonment without trial under the deadly dictatorship of Pinochet. He learned of the traditional Chilean courting dance known as the “Gueca.” And then he learned of the “Gueca Solo” or the Dance Alone which was performed publicly by the wives, daughters, and mothers of the “disappeared.” Often, they danced with photographs of their loved ones pinned to their clothes. It was a symbolic gesture of protest and grief in a country where, as Sting puts it, “democracy doesn’t need to be defended so much as exercised.” The song “They Dance Alone” says:
They’re dancing with the dead
They dance with the invisible ones
Their anguish is unsaid
They’re dancing with their fathers
They’re dancing with their sons
They’re dancing with their husbands
They dance alone.
One day we’ll sing our freedom
One day we’ll laugh in our joy
And we’ll dance. And we’ll dance.
(Taken from the CD jacket of “. . . Nothing Like the Sun”)
The prophet Isaiah speaks about perseverance in our Old Testament lesson today in a familiar passage. The prophet speaks of how we, who wait on the Lord, will renew our strength. We’ll mount up on wings like eagles, we’ll run and not be weary, we’ll walk and not faint. That does describe the journey of faith. Some of us are soaring like eagles. Some of us aren’t soaring, but we are able to run without being weary. And some of us are just trying to walk and not faint. Perseverance.
John Claypool in his book Tracks of a Fellow Struggler, describes his journey through the grief of the death of his daughter. He learned to cling to the promise of: they shall walk and not faint, and that is how he survived. He says, “When there is no occasion to soar and no place to run, and all you can do is edge along step by step, to hear of a Help that will enable you to ‘walk and not faint` is good news indeed.” (page 51)
I want to soar and I want to run and sometimes I’ll be happy just to walk and not faint. I want to fight the good fight, I want to finish the race, and I want to keep the faith. And I tell you this, the next time I’m at the little country cemetery of my home church, I’m going to stand right smack dab on top of Kevin’s grave, and maybe even dance. I’m going to spend some time at the Columbarium in prayer, surrounded by some of the saints of this church, and maybe if I do that enough, I’ll learn to dance. May it be so.