Sermon preached on Thursday 2nd November 2023

17:45pm Sung Eucharist of Requiem

“I suppose all of us hover between two ways of regarding death, which appear to be in hopeless contradiction with each other.”

Those were the opening words of a famous sermon preached in St Paul’s Cathedral by Henry Scott Holland, who died in March 1918.

The first of the two attitudes to death Scott Holland describes as:

“the familiar and instinctive recoil from it as embodying the supreme and irrevocable disaster. It is the impossible, the incredible thing. It simply traverses every line on which life runs, cutting across every hope on which life feeds, and every intention which gives life significance.”

 It is this depiction of death which gives the sermon the title by which it is known: The King of Terrors.

 Some of you here tonight who have been recently bereaved may have a good deal of sympathy with this view of death: the memories are poignant and often painful still.        

    Often we feel that sense of being adrift and having to relearn how to face the world.  Or, an experience reminds us unexpectedly of our loved one and we have a sudden shaft of awareness of their personality and the rawness of our loss.

 Our own bereavements when we are confronted by the apparent finality of death can help us to empathise with those suffering from awful tragedies themselves – and to be moved by compassion at some of the situations faced by others in our world – as at this time.

  The second attitude to death described by Scott Holland is what made that sermon so famous: this second view of death is phrased in words that are probably familiar to most of us. This attitude is that ‘Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened.’

This partial extract from the whole sermon is often used at funerals; it is implicitly comforting and consoling. It offers a degree of reassurance to those nearest members of the family who are actually reeling from the reality of the first view – that death is significant and final and something irrevocable happens in death.

 There is perhaps an awareness that comes much later in the process of grief, that somehow our loved ones and we still enjoy some sort of continuity, some sort of communion together.

 Those who experience loss sometimes feel that though separated, and beyond our reach, the departed are not that far from us. The experience of bereavement changes us – giving sometimes a shared understanding with others, and a mysterious, almost mystical, feeling that we share in a different dimension after the death of someone significant.

 In that sermon on the two different contradictory attitudes, and how we veer and vary constantly between the two, Scott Holland concludes that

‘our task is to deny neither judgement but to combine both. The contrasted experiences are equally real, equally valid.’

Death is the king of terrors, and yet in a certain light, death is nothing at all.

 For those of you who have been bereaved maybe a longer time ago, I wonder if what brings you here this evening is that you have discovered the secret and the solace of dealing with death – for combining the two contradictory views about death is something, I think, that faith - and perhaps only faith makes possible.

 The teaching of Jesus is absolutely clear: that each and every human being is loved and known and understood by God. Jesus talks about how a shepherd knows each sheep by name; of not even a sparrow falling to the ground without God knowing and caring; of God numbering even the hairs on our head. In the Gospel reading this evening Jesus promises ‘I will lose none of those that I have been given.’

 In fact Jesus says in this Gospel passage this is the whole reason that he came, and lived on earth and died and rose again: to open to all the promise of eternal life. ‘I have come down from heaven… to do the will of him who sent me; and his will is that I should lose nothing of all he has given me, but raise them up on the last day.’

All has been given to Christ – and so all creation, all souls, all the departed will be raised up. Nothing that is important or special about our loved ones will be lost; in Christ they will be raised to fullness of life. In Christ they will be fully alive at the last.

 So our sense of loss and grief may be tempered, or refined perhaps, slowly and gradually, by the knowledge that the dimension of eternity that has opened up for them is also a dimension that we can begin to live too, and to live into through bereavement.

 This is why many people find reassurance about the future as well as the past in coming close to God, turning to God in private prayer and public worship, because they feel closer to their loved ones who are now in God’s care. If the departed are safe with God, then the nearer we are to God then the nearer we are also to them.

 Worship is a thin place where earth and heaven come very close. Here in this beautiful space, and here through the services offered, we come closer to all those who join with us in worship and prayer and praise: that great multitude beyond our sight, upon another shore and in a greater light; that eternal light which the words of the requiem service remind us of so beautifully.

 As, later, we each light a candle, we remember that our light symbolises God’s far bigger light; and we can be confident that our love is part of God’s far greater love – for both the living and the departed.

Amen.