2nd November 2025 

"Surrounded... by a cloud of witnesses"

I never knew my grandfather, who died about seven months before I was born. But, over thirty years later, my dad watched from the gallery as I played violin in the Christmas Day band in the service. My grandfather was also a violinist (as is my dad) and my dad was deeply moved to notice that my posture and gestures while playing the violin mirrored almost exactly those of my grandfather. "It might have been my father!" he said, after we got home.

As we move into a particularly poignant season of Remembrance this year - poignant because of the five funerals which have taken place over the last month, and because so many in our congregation are grieving recent losses -  we remember that, although death marks a moment where our relationship with our loved one is forever changed, at the same time, death is never absolute. Our loved ones remain stubbornly present - in the stories told around the dinner table, in the memories provoked by an object, a photo, a TV programme, a particular smell, in the smile or the body language of a grandchild...

The season of All Saints and All Souls invites us to ponder on our human frailty in the light of God's eternity. The psalmist writes:

"Lord, you have been our dwelling-place
in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, 
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." (Psalm 90:1-2)

For the God who is beyond time, who is eternal - more than that, for the God who raised Jesus from the dead - death cannot be absolute. For God, death also marks a moment when his relationship with the individual he loves is forever changed, a moment when that person goes from seeing "a dim reflection as in a mirror" to seeing "face to face" (1 Corinthians 13). In the resurrection of Jesus, the relationship between time and eternity is disrupted. God's eternal time breaks into our human time. Life conquers death.

In God's eternal time, those we love who have died are counted among the "great cloud of witnesses" mentioned in Hebrews 12 - those heroes of faith, those saints of old, those faithful grandparents, parents, spouses, siblings, friends who have encouraged us, formed us, shaped us. In this season, we are invited to remember that the veil separating our human time from God's eternal time is slender, and that the "company of heaven" surround us and cheer us on. And, when the road is hard, we pray, with the psalmist that God will have compassion, that God will satisfy our longing souls with his steadfast love (Psalm 90:13-14).