All Souls

Reading Romans 13. 8-10

Love, for the Day Is Near

⁸ Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow-man has fulfilled the law.

⁹ The commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not covet, and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: Love your neighbour as yourself.

¹⁰ Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.

Gospel John 6

³⁵ Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

³⁶ But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.

³⁷ All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.

³⁸ For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.

³⁹ And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.

⁴⁰ For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Sermon

I have just started reading a new book by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. It’s called The Great Partnership. The book is all about the two rival positions. The New Atheists, like Richard Dawkins, who say you must be sad, mad or bad to have a faith and believe in a God. And that half of the world’s population who are Christian, Jewish or Islam and have faith in one God.

Most people see this a Science v. Religion, but it really isn’t. Many scientists are open to debate and reason concerning what cannot be seen or proved. Equally most of us who have a faith do not for one moment regard science as incompatible with it.

The new atheists have launched an aggressive assault on religion, and it’s a pretty bleak picture they paint.

For them, there was nothing before the Big Bang. The universe emerged 13.7 years ago from an unimaginable vast explosion for no reason whatsoever. Everything else that developed just happened despite massive improbabilities and coincidences. And at the end of all this, there will be nothing, just as there was at the beginning.

If the new atheists are asked “Why are we here?” or “What is the meaning of life?” the answer is silence. Faith, to them is fiction dressed up as fact. We have no souls.

On All Souls’ Day, when we have all gathered together to celebrate and remember with gladness and joy all those who have meant so much to us and whose lives have touched our own in a particular and special way, in faith, hope and confidence we prefer a very different picture.

The universe was called into being by One who is outside the universe. Eventually life formed and evolved, and messages broke through now and then from this creator to his created beings. Jonathan Sacks stops at Abraham, Moses and the Prophets, of course, but for Christians we don’t have to be content with the God who called himself I am who I will be but we can see him more directly and clearly in Jesus through the gospels.

This is profoundly important to us, especially on a day like this. Our hope for the future is that at the end of time, and at the end of our time, there is meaning and not just nothing. Let me read you again what Jesus said in John’s gospel chapter 6:

³⁸ For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.

³⁹ And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.

⁴⁰ For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

In one sense, what awaits us remains a mystery. In another sense, what Jesus promises couldn’t be clearer. I go to prepare a place for you he says later in John’s gospel. It’s a reading often given at funeral services.

² In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me. ¹¹ Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me