And something of our relationship with them does change the way things are in this world. Every week, we confess that we believe in the communion of saints. By that we certainly do not deny that death is real, that somehow death simply moves a person from one plane of existence to another. The pain of loss is too sharp and jagged to believe that something absolutely unalterable doesn t occur when those we love stop breathing. When someone we love dies, a hole opens up in our lives that is not easily or sometimes ever filled.
Death is really death.
Bodies stop breathing. We never get to hold our loved ones again in this world. Yet somehow their memory hold us. And so with the church on earth and the host of heaven, we join the unending hymn. As each Sunday morning dawns, the celebrated day of Christ s resurrection, all those who have gone before and those who gather at tables around the world somehow, mysteriously join together to sing in praise of the one who conquers death.