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"He is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive." (Lk 20:38)

  There is a well-known quotation; "Two men looked out of their prison window. They first saw darkness in the mud as he looked down.  The second man saw the stars above in the night light of the sky as he looked up."   I always attributed this quote to a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, a doctor, a psychiatrist, a Jewish man who survived, a man named Victor Frankl. Victor saw hundreds of fellow inmates, knew the prisoners that were murdered, those fearing death each hour, languishing in a human hell.  He thought of, studied the health, the negative disposition of many and the positive outlook of others.  He saw them physically and mentally.  Victor especially focussed on the way the optimistic men and women displayed hope in such circumstances. They had the will to live into the future.

 Victor recorded in his writings these words about a very young woman facing certain execution, a woman who shared her utter loneliness.  She told him how she looked out upon a tree, a tree that became her only friend, her confidant, to whom she spoke her most inner thoughts.  Victor asked, "Did the tree speak to her?"  She said, “It said to me I AM HERE, I AM HERE, I AM LIFE, I AM LIFE ETERNAL." 

In the world of today we are somewhat insulated from the horrors of World War Two.  We are even further removed from recollections of World War One.  It is the lingering threads of those wars that connect us to our Canadian history, of how we have been shaped as a nation.  It gets hazy, somewhat taken for granted.  Then apathy easily settles in upon society that forgets.  In the forgetting the circumstances, the unfolding moods of hate and dehumanization, philosophies of Fascism and Nazism, of the narrow view of who are the chosen ones and who are not-these attributes that created the Great Wars and continue to stoke the flames of the smaller wars of today-we gloss over again the story of the reality of death and destruction of several millions of lives.  Lest we forget!  History tells over and over again the story of human depravity that destroys dreams and hopes, buries joy and love.

In these last two or three decades the world has seemingly let down the guards of freedom and peace, the need for life to be shared in humanitarian generosity.  Society, in all parts of the world, unwittingly has accepted the apathetic, the eat, drink and enjoy for self way of life that consumes our daily affairs.  We have trouble imagining the danger of forgetting.  This is not new, not new to our time. This is found in ancient and recent history.

In a little thin book within the Old Testament, almost hidden in the library of the Hebrew Scripture, there is the little work of Haggai.  Haggai was a prophet of God.  He is set in the time of 520 BC, that is 2500 years ago.  The Israelites had been in captivity for over seventy years when in about 550 BC the Babylonian king set them free, sent them to the homeland.  The Captures had let them go and instructed them to rebuild Jerusalem, to once again build the Temple of God.

Haggai's words are addressed to the new king of Israel, addressed to the high priest, and addressed to the people.  He is speaking to the facts that the dream, the vision, the glory of that had initially begun the building of the Temple, after two decades had faded.  The joyous energy that had started the rebuild had now lapsed.  Hagai says," Who is left that has seen the former splendour?"  The rebuild had slowed to a snail's pace and the work now done was not so grand.

Haggai proclaims the word of God, Yet now take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord, and work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt; Once again I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations."

The shaking by God, the shaking of God in all Creation, the shaking by God to reinvigorate the people.  The shaking of them 2500 years ago.  The shaking of God now, in 2025, in our time, in our need.

Our world was apathetic during the early 1900s (Common Era).  Yes, there was a relaxed spirit of having a good time-the speakeasy life, the lazy times, the taking for granted that life was always this good, lazy times.  Then it ended.  On October 28th to be exact.  The stock market crashed.  The world was turned inside out.  The Depression Years settled in leaving millions of people, the ordinary folk, down hearted and, yes, depressed.  And in that mood, that atmosphere of hopelessness, the rise of terror quietly took form, quietly rising with Hitler in the lead.

World War Two is a shaking of the worst of human tragedy, and the best of human triumph.   And the legacy is ours.  We can look out and see the darkness and the mud of the current world affairs, or we can look out upon the bright stars in the heavenly night sky.  God has shaken the past.  God is shaking the present.

 Jesus, shortly to be arrested, to be interrogated, to be tortured, and executed, now in Jerusalem, confronted by opposition of Sadducees and Pharisees, is speaking out against the forces that have gathered to destroy him.  And Jesus, in our short reading today, shakes his listeners, and shakes us as we contemplate our satisfying life…

Jesus says, "Indeed they cannot die anymore because they are like angels and children of God, being children of the resurrection.  And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the Gd of Isaac, and the God of Jacob...Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of then are alive."

I think of the 6 or more million Jews, and many others, executed before and during World War Two. I think of the men and women in uniform killed in battles.  I think of the innocent men and women and children killed in our days, right now.  I could give into the gloom and the defeat and death, the darkening of the human vision.  But, I believe, I know, that death is not the end nor is it the answer.

Those who stood for justice and peace, stood for human dignity and purpose, they did not die in vain.  The soldiers we remember this week, whom we recall into the presence of today, they give inspiration for us to look, to look hard into the goodness of the human soul.  The vision we will see is what Haggai saw.  It is what Jesus proclaims.  It is what we, the Church, the people of God, must live into today for the sake of the peoples of the world right now.

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.

"Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word." 

May we indeed get to work, living in the word…AMEN

 

Remembrance Sunday Sermon from Father Art