Homily for All Souls’ Day, Nashotah House

By Elisabeth Rain Kincaid, Ph.D.

“Bodies,” says the sleazy poet Mybug, portrayed by actor Stephen Fry, as he attempts to seduce the prim Miss Flora Post, played by Kate Beckinsdale, in the screwball British comedy Cold Comfort Farm, “Bodies, Miss Post, are so much more interesting than souls.” 

Now, while I would never advocate this approach as orthodox theological doctrine nor would I present it to you as an example of a successful “pick-up” line, I do think, on this Feast of All Souls’, it is important and (I hope) even interesting for us to begin by talking about bodies.

In this tumultuous year of our Lord 2020, bodies are something which I believe all of us are acutely aware of – more aware, perhaps, than at any other time in our recent collective consciousness. Specifically, we are aware of bodies in the reality of their frailty and decay.

As we compulsively scan our news feeds for new updates on COVID-19 and the panoply of symptoms which could (or could not) accompany the disease, we are forced to confront our own mortality and the limits of scientific knowledge to face and defeat our body’s inevitable failures.  As COVID-19 requires us to live at a distance and hide our faces from each other, bringing extreme physical separation even within such a tight-knit community as the one here at Nashotah House, we are forced to confront the frailty of our communal bodies – to see how easily even those as committed to intentional community as we are here can, at times, be separated. Finally, on the eve of Election Day, we are forced to take an honest look at the decaying state of our body politic – to confront the hard reality that just as human bodies get sick and old, political bodies do too. We have begun to realize that civic virtue and strength can fall away and that one day (and I pray not tomorrow) even the United States of America, will join all other fallen empires in dust and memory.

Given this somber appraisal of the failure of the bodies upon which we depend in this mortal life, what comforting words might the Apostle Paul offer about our own existential anxiety? And what on earth does all this talk of bodies have to do with the fact that we have come together this All Souls’ Day to pray for the souls of the dead?

First, I believe that Paul would find our new awareness about the frailness and eventual failure of our earthly bodies spiritually salutary. Entering into the mystery which he seeks for us to understand, today’s epistle reading begins by fully embracing the knowledge that our physical bodies are perishable and, most likely, will perish. Perhaps the gift for us of 2020 is that providentially ordained circumstances, along with ignorant or sinful human failures, have stripped back the illusions which modernity permitted us regarding our own strength and our own power and have forced all of us to actually confront the fact that being perishable is an essential aspect of our mode of existence in the world and that corruption is within us and not just without. Until we truly realize we are corrupt and finite, we cannot desire the true completion of our nature, but rather will too easily sink into the complacency St. Paul defines earlier in the chapter, referencing the approach to life attributed to Epicurean philosophers:

“‘Let us eat and drink,
 for tomorrow we die.’”

The circumstances of 2020 have forced this first realization upon us. The gift of All Souls’ is to remind us of St. Paul’s second point: bodies still do matter. Where exactly the souls we are praying for on All Souls’ Day are right now: in purgatory or in the presence of God, is a tricky question for Anglicans, and one outside my area of expertise. If you want to discuss it further, I happily refer you to many of my colleagues on our faculty. However, regardless of where the souls are right now, we remember in our prayers on All Souls’ Day that, either way, the existence of the souls of the faithful departed is incomplete as well. Bodies matter, and we pray, for ourselves and for the souls of dead, that the day comes quickly when all of us, dead and alive, put on the perfect banquet garments which our Lord and Savior has designed for us, when, existing in our new resurrection bodies – unspotted and unsoiled by death, disease, and sin – we are at last found fully in the likeness of Christ and can truly declaim:

Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting? (1 Cor. 15:55)

Despite the sonorous tones, in the end this is not a day of mourning, but rather a day in which we celebrate because the darkest hour always leads to the dawn, and we worship a God who is the resurrection and the life and will return to call all of us, just like his friend Lazarus, out of the tomb.

So, on November 2, we rejoice even in the midst of our sorrow and brokenness. But what do we do on November 3? Assuming, of course, that Jesus doesn’t appear tomorrow: which would be just as unexpected as he promised us, so maybe . . .

I think St. Paul also has a day like November 3 in mind for the Corinthians as he closes this chapter. Given what we know (and have been reminded of) about our bodily nature, what should we do right now? In the last verse from today’s epistle reading, he writes: “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” “Therefore . . .” Given what you have now learned about the relationship of body and soul, what do you do now? Today? In the corruptible and perishing human body?

Even in this body, we can still do the work of the Lord, and be sure that, while our bodies will pass away, our labor is never in vain. And what is this labor? In the following verse, 16:1, he tells us where to begin: “Now concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to the churches of Galatia.” We begin with the care of the saints, both soul and body. Because bodies are important. We begin with making sure that our use of our bodies – in serving and caring for others – has eternal significance even though those bodies are passing away.  

Contemplating our eventual spiritual bodies doesn’t mean that we give up on our earthly bodies – individual, communal, or political (because what is the church but a communal spiritual body?).  Rather, we are set free to use our physical bodies to do God’s labor in the world – without fear of what will eventually happen to them – whether from COVID-19, from political chaos, or from inevitable old age or illness and death.

The practice of observing a feast in which Christians prayed for the souls of the faithful departed on November 2 was established by St. Odilo (962-1049), the fifth abbot of the great Benedictine monastery of Cluny in France. St. Odilo lived at the height, or low point, of the vicious political conflict between the great feudal lords which decimated Europe in the early Middle Ages. The political conflict which marked his life and his tenure at Cluny made the political turmoil we are experiencing look like a playground scuffle.  

Along with establishing the November 2 observance of All Souls’, St. Odilo is known for another significant accomplishment: the establishment and propagation throughout France and Italy of a practice known as the Truce of God. Under the Truce of God, armed hostilities ceased across Europe on many holy days, and those either worshipping, living, or seeking sanctuary on church property were sacrosanct from secular attack. According to secular historians, the Truce of God provided a vital cessation in hostility which ensured the survival of countless lives across Europe and allowed the survival and even development of some type of stable economic system and culture.  

St. Odilo was able to accomplish this not with the sword, but through compellingly preaching the gospel. He confronted those claiming the power of the sword, with the confidence that came with understanding both his body’s frailty and its ultimate transformation. He also understood that bodies matter, and he knew that the power of the gospel was strong enough to protect the bodies of all of the weak and defenseless who sought the church’s protection and care. We spend a lot of time here talking about Pax Nashotah, which I believe is an incredibly important part of our charism here – a community reflecting much of the diversity of contemporary Anglicanism.  

Our next step is to ask how we, like St. Odilo, transform our formation in the Pax Nashotah to help us be part of bringing the Truce of God to a broken world.

So what do you do tomorrow? Well, first you vote if you haven’t already, because bodies matter – even corrupt and broken political bodies. But then, and more importantly, you discern how God is calling you, beloved, to be “steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord” on November 3, and on every day which comes after that – until “the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable.” Amen.

Elisabeth Rain Kincaid is assistant professor of Christian ethics and moral theology at Nashotah House Theological Seminary. Dr. Kincaid’s publications include articles in the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, The Journal of Moral Theology, and Political Theology. She serves as the vice-president for the Board of Trustees of the Anglican Theological Review and as a board member of the Fellowship for Protestant Ethicists.