Sermon: Hallowing Hallowe’en

 It comes as no surprise to us (I hope), but it does to this crowd composed of the ancient equivalents of Daily Mail journalists, that a man like Zacchaeus is absolutely fascinated by Jesus.  Worse still for them (just imagine the pernicious headlines), Jesus is quite clearly fascinated by Zacchaeus.  Gasp!

    What they are finding very difficult to grasp is the way the Gospel is coming to make its home at a particular time, in a particular place, with particular people: worst of all, it is starting with the people upon whom the chattering classes impose all their cultural neuroses.  They were not unique.  The same assumptions have been made in every age.  The Church herself, the Body of Christ himself, has done the same thing often enough.

    Having said that, she has more often done exactly the opposite, and the world has been better for it.  At her best she has lived out the Incarnation of Christ by unfolding its consequences into every part of life, hallowing not just the people who are made in the image and likeness of God, but also the time in which we live, marking its hours with her prayers and its days with her feasts, and the places where we find ourselves with solid symbols of the closeness and the greatness of God.

    Christ’s urgent desire to come and stay at our house today has found thoroughly imaginative expression in Mother Church’s life.  From the earliest times, the timing of Christian feasts was made to coincide with existing times of popular celebration. Little wonder that the process of our leaving behind rituals expressing only a partial understanding things and immersing ourselves in the truth of Christ was expedited.

    Christmas taking the place of a variety of celebrations at the winter solstice is the most famous example.  That St Gregory the Great instructed Augustine to celebrate Christian feasts on same days as pagan ones and to build churches on their holy sites is well known to us thanks to dear St Bede.  But what is not generally know is that just fifty years after St Augustine of Canterbury’s mission began here in 596, Pope Gregory III moved the Solemnity of All Saints, which let us call by its lovely old name ‘Hallowmas Day’, from 13^th May to 1^st November.

    He did this because of the placement of Hallowmas Eve.  What we call Hallowe’en the pagan world knew as Samhain, the last day of the lighter half of year, the eve of the darker half.  They believed of it what I remember a wise Irish Roman Catholic priest say of this time of the year—that it is a ‘thin’ time: a time when the division between worlds is much less absolute.

    For paganism it was a time when spirits could cross over, both good and ill, hence the custom of dressing up as ghosts and ghouls to frighten the nasty ones away (although anyone watching Strictly Come Dancing last night will have seen this given the camp treatment to the point where one couldn’t possibly have any fear at all!).  Gregory sees here cultural resonance with those who are still anticipating the life of heaven, the holy souls of the Church Expectant, whose goal after their purification is the Beatific Vision the saints enjoy; the vision of Jesus, anagogically speaking, which Zacchaeus sought to see.  And so the darker half of the year begins with the saints in light.

    People used to go out ‘souling’ on Hallowe’en.  They would carry lamps made from hollowed-out turnips as they went from house offering to pray for each household’s departed; soul cakes (spiced buns with crosses on the top) would be offered to them in gratitude.  This act of Christian charity has become what we now know as trick-or-treating.  Poor Hallowe’en.  Just as Christmas all too often looks like it has more to do with commercial excess, so Hallowe’en looks the same, but with horribly negative connotations.  It seems to have gone into reverse.

    There lies an opportunity here of the kind that St Augustine would have seized.  One might even say that, like a jack-o-lantern, it is leering us in the face.  Hallowe’en represents something universal amongst human beings: fear of darkness and the unknown.  We have something to say to this.  The psalms, at the heart of the Church’s prayer, give voice to this terror.  The high mass of requiem that we will celebrate on All Souls two days hence is also about expressing our fears: our own and for those whom we love but see no longer.

    But we not only have something to say, we do something about these fears which places them within the infinite embrace of the Resurrection.  Our worship holds together our morbid fears and our living hopes: the heart of the requiem is Easter.  In turn, we need to take a faithful expression of the life-giving truth that comes to us from the apostles out into a fearful world, so that we can bring that fearful world to know the same faith, hope and charity.

    Christianity requires our imagination for its faithful handing on.  Jesus clearly caught Zacchaeus’s imagination.  Current Hallowe’en customs capture the national imagination and we should be asking why and how we can we make the Gospel speak to this.  And it’s not hard.

    Amongst the most popular services one finds in parish churches and in this cathedral are memorial services.  When the Church shows loving concern for people’s hopes and fears people respond.  Like Zacchaeus they are receptive to our ministry and, in my experience, receptive to the first, gentle steps of our teaching because they can discern more truth in it than most of the nonsense that is talked about death in our contemporary culture.

    Now, imagine a group from a church, perhaps soberly dressed, carrying lanterns, perhaps of hollowed out pumpkins with enigmatic expressions, who call at each house in a street.  If the door be answered they ask if they might have a piece of paper bearing the names of the household’s departed loved ones to take to church so that they might pray for them, telling the person at the door when this will happen and that he will be most welcome to join them.  If there be no answer they will post a dignified card through the letterbox saying the same thing.

    Whatever happen, Jesus would have been out in the streets that night seeking to save the lost.  He will have made the first move as he always does.  Yes, he will make further demands: there are things Zacchaeus must give up and put right; so must we with our commercialism and self-indulgence, both culturally and individually.  But Christ will show us that it will be enriching in ways we never imagined, and not impoverishing in ways we might fear.  We can begin to re-hallow Hallowe’en by holding our dead on our hearts in Christ.  And, in praying that they may rest in peace and rise in glory, in one way among the many the Christian imagination sets before us we will know that salvation is coming to our houses: today.