Do you know where or why the custom of “trick or treating”, the custom of going door to door began? In the northern European countries, there were two seasons, Summer and Winter, the season of light and the season of dark. When the days grew longer, members of the village would look for the first flowers on the trees and from the ground. When they were spotted, it became the custom for the messengers to cut them and run door to door with the flowers as proof of the good news; “Spring is here! Soon will be time to plant. The time of winter hunger is soon over.” These messengers were considered to be sacred, messengers of the Divine and they were given treats… The same was true for the oncoming winter. The messengers would run door to door, with apples, cut wheat and other symbols of the harvest just past, and announce the on-coming darkness, announce the coming of the winter. These messengers, too, were given treats. Now, of course, the first tradition is no longer practiced and is largely forgotten, just a footnote in history.
Such is the power of this Fall season, though, that even though we no longer live our lives on the farm, we still feel the darkness and marvel at the falling of autumn’s leaves. There is a stark and disquieting beauty that enchants us this time of year, so we continue to celebrate; Halloween, Dia de la Muertos, Samhain. For millennia, this time of year has been a time of slowing down, physically and mentally, after the harvests were over. Traditionally, 3 harvests are recognized by Reconstructionist historians; wheat/corn harvest end of August, the apple harvest at the end of September, the blood harvest at the end of October… I can hear you now, the WHAT harvest? The blood harvest… After the wheat and the apple harvests were gathered in, the farmers had to take stock. They had to ask; do we have enough food and resources to last the family through the winter? Do we have enough food and resources to last the livestock through the winter? Very often, the answer was; we have enough food to last for only half of our livestock. The rest of the herd was slaughtered and the meat preserved, to last the family through winter. Thus, the term “blood harvest”.
With the darkness and cold descending, the leaves dying and falling off the trees, the animals fleeing into hibernation and the gruesome blood harvest – it’s not hard to see why our ancestors would find this to be the time for taking an inner inventory as well, they found this time of the year to be the perfect time for our version of “lent”. They would reflect on their behavior and achievements of the year past, choose bad habits to drop and good habits to develop, making goals for themselves in the up-coming year… We can read some of these goals in the “Havamal”, an ancient book of European wisdom.
We would read;
”Feed your animals before you eat.”
Or this exhortation to practice hospitality;
” Fire is needed by the newcomer
Whose knees are frozen numb;
Meat and clean linen a man needs
Who has fared across the icy fells,”
Or this exhortation to avoid drunkenness;
” Less good than belief would have it
Is mead for the sons of men:
A man knows less the more he drinks,
He becomes a befuddled fool,”
What do any of these pagan practices and pagan scriptures have to do with Jesus? What do they have to do with the “Faithful Departed?” Our history, both European and Guatemalan both, have come down to us with stories about some of our ancestors refusing to abandon their heritage, refusing to accept forced Christian conversions. Stories about our cultures being in conflict with Christianity, one side being good and the other being depicted as evil. But it didn’t have to be that way.
We are Christians now, that is why we are here, but… I don’t know about you, but I can’t leave my pre-Christian ancestors behind. I can’t say; “those people were evil, they belong to the Devil and we should forget everything they’ve ever said and done.”… They were not evil, they don’t belong to the Devil. God must be faithful, God must be just and God must be love – he is the fount of all wisdom, and since my ancestors and your ancestors
obviously held wisdom in their oral and written traditions, God must have been speaking to them in some way. Romans chapter 1 tells us that God has made himself clearly known through the things he has made, and Ecclesiastes says that God has set eternity in our hearts.
So, I have to stop and look at the question; “Who are the Faithful Departed”? Can I trust God, can I put my hope in him, without denying who I am, ancestral memories, ancestral inheritance and all? After all, I love and treasure each one of my relations. If I ask the question: Who are the Faithful Departed, what would God say?
let’s start with the words of Jesus, from the gospel of luke: you will know them by their fruit. A good person brings good out of the treasure of good things in his heart: a bad person brings bad out of his treasure of bad things… It really is that simple.
Jesus brings this lesson home in one of my favorite parables, in Matthew 21:28-32, which reads:
28 “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’
29 “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
30 “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did, they repented. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”
In this parable we see that Jesus looks past what people say, past what they profess, and looks to what they do. For Jesus, actions speak louder than words, actions tell us the state of a person’s heart.
Our reading from Galatians goes a step further and really spells out what we’re to look for. The fruits of the spirit are: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
Finally, if we still have any doubts, 1 Colossians reads; “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
The Faithful Departed, my friends, are those who have led righteous lives of love and compassion, doing the very best they could with the resources they had. We can feel free to honor all of our ancestors, Christian and pre-Christian, with all of the love in our hearts and with clear consciences. Thanks be to God!
Because we can trust God with our past, we can trust him with our future.
We, too, can live lives manifesting the fruits of the spirit, we can be God’s eyes and God’s healing hands, looking forward to that day that Isaiah told us about: the day when God “will prepare a banquet for all the nations of the world, when he will suddenly remove the cloud of sorrow that has been hanging over all the nations.” All the nations, all peoples, no exceptions.
And now let us follow in the Psalmist’s example and bring a wine offering to the lord, to thank him for his goodness to us.
