Less than a week before her death Frida Kahlo painted a still life of watermelons. Some are whole. Some have one slice taken out. One is halved, seeds and pink flesh exposed. And one is cut at sharp angles, points jagged and meeting at the center. It leaves you wondering which melons represent her in that moment. Written across the slice on the bottom of the composition is the declaration Viva La Vida. She had written in her diary a few days before her death – I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope never to return.
Viva La Vida is the declaration “Long live life”. It is a celebration of the love and spirit that transcend death, the essence at our core that won’t let death have the final victory. You hear it a lot around All Saints and All Souls, around dia de los muertos. It’s a declaration that the power of life on the move in our lives is boundless in the power of love.
Today on the feast of All Saints and all souls, we proclaim with Jesus and the family at Bethany – Viva la Vida!
Our Gospel today is a story of the triumph of love and the power of God over death. It is a foretaste of Jesus’ own resurrection. But significantly, it is a story that doesn’t start in triumph. It starts in sorrow. It starts in our own human experience of death.
As we hear today, Jesus is so moved by the death of his friend that God in human flesh weeps.
It is important to me that Jesus weeps in grief for his friend. Because Jesus weeping shows us that God is profoundly moved and disturbed by the pain of the human experience – an experience that is profoundly shaped by the inevitability of death. Through Jesus God experiences our sorrow, our pain, and ultimately even God chooses to taste death in submitting to the cross. In Jesus, the Christ, God is not far removed from our pain and suffering, but God knows it intimately and personally. And from that experience God declares, “See, I am making all things new”, Viva la vida.
Sin made new in Redemption.
Death made new in Resurrection.
Faith made new by Grace.
Humanity made new by Jesus’ gift of new life.
Each of us a creation in progress, being renewed day by day through the Goodness of God.
For us who know Jesus crucified and resurrected, we experience the freedom that comes in God’s transformation of death. We are able through our sorrow to say Viva la Vida. It doesn’t make our grief unchristian. Instead we have a different perspective on death and our own grief. We grieve for ourselves. We grieve for the loss of intimate community with those we love but see no longer. But we do not grieve for the dead. Instead we pray for the dead, knowing that in the presence of God they are continuing to be made new. In the presence of God they are at peace in that communion of all saints and all souls who are gathered around the throne of the lamb. In the presence of God they experience the fullness of life everlasting.
That communion of saints surrounds us, because in death life is not ended but changed. We meet them here at this table each week to share in that mystical body and blood that unites us through space and through time with all believers. Those we love but see no longer are here, sharing with us in this communion that knits together in one body – the body of Christ.
That unity and community is a comfort in times that can be isolating. The world around us can often feel so hopeless, so broken, so hurting. There are times in our life when it seems as if pain and death do indeed have the final word. People we love suffer from addiction and wither before our eyes. Loved ones suffer illnesses or have their future stolen by premature death. Job loss or financial trouble stunt our sense of purpose. Sin alienates us from God and from one another.
Yet into this human experience of the hurting world, into this experience of grief and sorrow, God breathes viva la vida. God declares, See I am making all things new.
That progressive tense is everything. It
