Isaiah 25:6-9

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the LORD has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the LORD for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation

I remember the day when word came that my father had died.

He was 86 and had been sick off and on for over a year. Then, for reasons not fully understood by his physician, he began to bleed internally. The next thing I knew my sister was calling to let me know things had gotten more serious, and I was booking a flight to Atlanta. The day before my flight I was in a meeting at the factory at Tom’s of Maine when the factory receptionist came into the room and asked me to come out into the hall. That’s I heard that my father had died. Stunned, I went back into the meeting, let the two men know what had happened and then tried to go on with our agenda.

The men looked at each other and then back at me, their faces shocked and serious. “Melissa, we have to stop,” one of them said while the other nodded. “We can reschedule the meeting. Go home. Your father has just died.”

It was then and only then that I heard my own voice, inside me saying “My father is dead.”

I’ve often heard it said that death is a part of life, that death is something natural that we are to accept and even embrace if we are to live healthy, accepting lives, lives that can move on from loss. I’m not sure who told me that exactly, but my impression is that it was a therapist or a church person or someone who was not in the middle of grief.

And I have to admit, whoever said it to me had a point. Death is a fact of life. In the way it limits our time with each other, death does make our time with others precious. Finding a way to live in the face of loss is important.

But for me, the experience of losing the ones we love and the felt sense on some level of the wrongness of it leads me not to believe that death is “natural” in the way we sometimes use that word to mean “right.” No, instead, at least for me, death feels unnatural, an intrusion into and a break within a greater reality of connection and relationship that should not be broken, or should I say, cannot be broken.

Our reading from the Book of Isaiah appointed for tonight describes a feast with God and with each other that is all about connectedness and relationship. The feast is an unusual one. First this is not just any feast—it’s an Herb Farm or a Canlis feast—one with unimaginably delectable foods and well-aged wines, not the kind of feast that would’ve been possible for Isaiah’s original audiences.

The next unusual thing about this feast is that all the nations are at the table. This is not, then, a feast just for those closest to us, those we get along with, those hand-picked few we would invite. This feast is for all of us, and I would say, for all of us bringing everything we have been and are to the table. To put it another way, this is a meal in which no one and nothing is lost, left out or excluded. Everyone and everything is at the table.

But I’ve saved the most unusual part of this feast for last. For while all of us, and everything about us is at the table eating the best food and drinking the best wines, God is feasting on something else. Isaiah tells us that God is “swallowing up” the shroud of mourning that covers us when we experience loss and that God is “swallowing up” death itself, making an end forever to the thing that cuts short our lives and our connection to those we love.

What a picture. While we’re eating roast lamb and sipping pinot noir, God is wolfing down (read that as overwhelming and destroying) some of the most dreaded experiences we know—loss and death. God is taking these things out of the world.

So what is this telling us tonight? What is this telling us that we can hear as we gather a stone’s throw from the ashes of many beloved people of this parish and as we remember those we love?
 
I have to believe that Isaiah is not just describing a feast that will happen someday, but is describing a feast that we are already experiencing here in this place. It is a feast of rich bread and sweet wine, a feast to which all are invited and to which you and I can bring all of who we are. It is a feast with God and with those we can see and with those we love but see no longer, for they too stand before our table with outstretched hands.

They, like we, want to draw near to the one who is serving us this feast, the only one who can serve us this feast: the one who overwhelmed loss and death by taking these things into himself, and in doing so, destroyed the power they have over us. And so as excruciating as loss and death are to us, as unbelievable as unnatural, as wrong as they feel to us, in Christ and through Christ we trust that we have access to the power of God to renew our lives even as we lose those people and things that are our lives.

And so tonight as you come to receive the bread and the wine, bring all of yourself: all your memories and hopes, your wishes and disappointments, all the unsolved questions of your heart, for they are welcome at this table. Bring these things and come ready to be joined with those you love: with grandparents, with mothers and fathers, with aunts and uncles, with brothers and sisters, with children and beloved friends. For here at the table bidding you and them to come is the One through whom all things were made, the One in whom all broken bonds are reconnected and the One with whom all feasts are celebrated.

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