Reading: from Wisdom of Solomon 3.

This reading comes from the Apocrypha, written between the Old and New Testaments. It is not generally considered to have the same status as the rest of the Bible, but does reflect Jewish thinking of the time.

Message.

Some years ago, when I was in London, I received a call from the local Catholic priest. He was looking for help as a Funeral Company had asked him if he could put on a service for everyone they’d dealt with who’d lost loved ones during the previous year. The priest wasn’t sure if he wanted to do this, as it seemed a bit “commercial”, but realised that it might give some comfort to people who were still feeling their loss; so he agreed. He felt quite strongly that the service, which would take place on a Sunday afternoon, should be ecumenical; so he invited an Anglican vicar and myself, as a nonconformist, to help him out.

Lots of people came to the service and it went well. At its climax the names of everyone who had died was read out and a family member brought forward a tealight. This was lit and placed on a tray, set on a table in front of the altar. The idea was a good one, but it went badly wrong as the tray was far too small; more and more tealights were crammed onto it when, suddenly, the combined heat of the flames ignited them all and sent a flame shooting up towards the ceiling. Someone rushed to get a fire extinguisher while someone else grabbed hold of a cloth to drape over the flaming tealights. In the chaos the whole tray got tipped onto the floor and set fire to the carpet. Within a few seconds things were under control – leaving a soggy, foam-covered mess on the floor, a badly scorched carpet, and a smoky stink in the church. Surprisingly few members of the congregation seemed to be aware of what had happened as most had left after bringing forward their tealight. The priest said afterwards, “Well, I didn’t think that this was a good idea but I thought I’d better agree to it. Never again!”

Today, November 2^nd, is All Souls’ Day – the third and final day of an unofficial three-day autumn festival (we can call it a “Triduum” if we want to be posh) which begins with Hallowe’en and continues with All Saints’ Day. This has been compared to the last days of Lent which bring us through the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and Jesus’ Passion on Good Friday, leading into what might be called the “empty time” – that mournful 24-hour period when Christ, apparently defeated, lay in the tomb and the world was deprived of his presence. It has also been suggested that the Christian Triduum harks back to the pagan festival of Samhain which marked the transition from autumn’s harvest to winter’s darkness. People thought of this as an in-between time when the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds was at its thinnest, when it was easiest to connect with ancestors and even to visit the land of the dead through trance.

Some of these practices seem to have crossed over into the Roman Catholic Church, although All Souls’ Day was only made an official festival in 998AD. This is often a time for visiting family graves and you may well have come across the elaborate rituals which take place in Mexico on “El dia de los muertos” when people take picnics to the cemeteries and leave food out for their dead relatives: we’d probably feel that these ceremonies have become cult-like and superstitious. More to the point, Protestant Christians such as ourselves shy away from praying for the dead or seeking to make contact with them; we also distance ourselves from the Catholic notion of Purgatory in which a dead person’s soul is cleansed to make it fit for heaven. This idea developed within the Roman Church during the early Middle Ages but only became approved doctrine in 1274.

So, although we may well wish to celebrate All Saints’ Day and its recognition of people who have made wonderful contributions to the Christian Church, our commemorations for All Souls’ are more muted or, indeed, non-existent. Nevertheless it’s natural for humans to want to maintain connections with their relatives who (as they say) have “gone before”, and of course we can do this in many ways. Some families gather for a meal or visit a favourite place on their beloved’s birthday; others will go to the cemetery to lay flowers and clean up a grave; Catholics might ask for a Requiem Mass to be said while many Anglicans mention the anniversaries of church members’ deaths in their Sunday services. In the 1920s grieving people who had lost sons or brothers in the First World War turned to spiritualism in the belief that they would be able to contact them. I most definitely wouldn’t recommend that, but I can see why folk gave it a try. One thing we can all do is consciously remember those we have lost and so keep them alive in our minds, although memories inevitably fade.

One thing I haven’t done so far is define what a “soul” actually is (and no, it’s neither the bottom part of a shoe nor a type of flat fish; anyway those are spelled differently!). When I was studying at Bible College many years ago I recall reading books which debated whether humans are “tripartite”, with body, soul and spirit; or “bipartite”, with soul and spirit as a single entity. I can’t now remember the discussions, except that proponents of both views quoted Bible verses to support their position! More to the point, I honestly don’t think this really matters: what we really want to do is affirm is our belief that there is not only something “physical” about humans, in other words the cells which make up our bodies; but also something which is immaterial or even spiritual. That’s what I’d call the soul; and Christian theology believes that that is the bit of us which lives on after our mortal body dies.

Back in 1901 an American doctor called Duncan Macdougall decided to find out the weight of the human soul. He identified six people in nursing homes who were close to death and had their beds placed on sensitive scales. Believing that humans have souls but that animals do not, he also carried out a “control” experiment on fifteen dogs. You won’t be surprised to hear that the results were inconclusive, although one person did appear to lose 21 grams (about ¾ oz) of weight at the moment of death. Macdougall published the details of his experiment in the journal “American Medicine”, it was also splashed in the “New York Times”. The scientific community soon found many flaws in Macdougall’s work – the small sample size was a particular problem – and declared that it had no merit. Nevertheless, the notion that the human soul weighs 21 grams has become an unquestionable fact for many people, indeed it later became the title of a film. I’d say – and I think you’ll agree – that Macdougall was trying to discover the wrong thing. Psychologists who identify the soul as “the real me” are surely much closer to the mark.

I’m aware that, up to this point, I haven’t actually made many links to the Bible. We might think of the creation story where the King James Bible says, “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” – however the sense of the word “soul” here is simply the contrast between a set of body parts and a living person. We also recall the first commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength”. There’s Psalm 97: “He preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked” – another King James Bible rendition which isn’t followed in newer versions. Something closer to our understanding of the word comes in Jeremiah 6: “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths where the good way lies; walk in it, and find rest for your souls”. I wonder if Jesus had this verse in mind when he spoke his familiar and well-loved words: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls”.

I have to wonder what Jesus’ hearers understood when he talked about “souls”, especially when (as Matthew records) he said: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather be afraid of God, who can destroy both body and soul in hell”. I say this is because Jewish thinking had only recently developed notions of the afterlife. In Old Testament times, life basically ended with death; at best, the dead merely existed in an indeterminate state, separated from God. However things changed in the century or so before Jesus, which is why we could read that passage from the Apocrypha, which comes between the two Testaments: this was when Jewish thinkers started to wonder what happens to us after we die, and began to develop ideas about the Last Judgement after which the just (or righteous) will join God in heaven, and the unjust (or wicked) will be punished. I don’t know what current Jewish thinking on this says; but these themes, found throughout the New Testament, are certainly familiar to Christians – although Paul perhaps muddies the waters a bit when he expounds his beliefs about the “resurrection body” in 1 Corinthians 15.

Of course, everything that I’ve said this morning is a matter of faith. No-one has ever seen a human soul and Dr Macdougall’s attempt to weigh one was futile. We read the Bible and its glorious promises about life after physical death, but they cannot be proved and have to be taken on trust. As Christians, we believe that, through his death and resurrection, Jesus has shown us what lies ahead or paved the way; to quote a mysterious verse in Hebrews 6, he has gone before us “through the curtain” into the inner sanctuary of the heavenly temple. Yet again, this is the language of faith although we believe it to be true – and that belief gives us hope that we, too, will join the company of the redeemed praising God around Christ’s throne in glory.

There may – in fact there will – be times when our faith wavers and the light of hope grows dim, times when we say to ourselves, “Is this really true or am I deluding myself?” – I think we’ve all been there. So perhaps this commemoration of All Souls’ Day will damp down our doubts, will still our fears, and will encourage to believe that, in some way we cannot yet understand, we will live on after our bodies perish, that our souls will indeed be in the safety of God’s loving hands.