Death is in the air we breathe.

Death in our time has been massive. Entire cities have been destroyed in a single night. In the span of 100 days in 1994, more than 800,000 were massacred in Rwanda. A week ago, EgyptAir Flight 990 dropped out of the sky into the waters off Nantucket Island, killing all 217 on board.

Death in our time is also intimate. Death: The very word causes the heart to grow faint and throb. There is hardly anyone in this congregation who does not recall some loved one, some close and dear friend who is no longer with us. What anguish there is in that separation. It leaves a vast emptiness in the heart.

Once a year in the autumn, after the leaves have fallen and the days begin to get shorter, we stop to remember the dead. The Christian Church has done that around All Saints Day in November for more than a thousand years. So today with this glorious requiem of light, we confront death.

That's important. Most of us keep a good distance between ourselves and the reality of our mortality. Most of us live as if there is no end to this mortal life.

I've been retired and away from this pulpit for four and a half years and I am honored to be back. In retirement, I've had a little time to get some of my personal business in better shape. The other day, I said to my wife, Mary, "If anything ever happens to me, here is where these important papers are." It stunned me to realize what I had said. "If anything ever happens to me." What utter nonsense! This fragile, transitory, limited mortal -- at some level intent on disowning his own death.

I'm not alone. Most of us have a fierce loyalty to life. I'm not enthusiastic about death. I doubt I'll ever want to die. Not that I fear the reality of death -- but I just love life and those with whom I share it.

My father used to caution me in my beginning years behind the driving wheel of a car when he was in the car with me: "Son, be careful. Heaven is my home, but I'm not homesick!"

I would say that is a healthy, robust Christian life as it faces death. But my father did die. He was 64 and I was 21. And my mother died when she was only 30 and I was a child of 5.

You and I have but a moment to love. Life can be gone tonight. Some of your know that devastating reality -- living happily and healthily and wondrously with a person, and then death snatches your loved one from your arms.

I believe great living comes to those who find the courage to walk honestly toward death. To embrace courageously this reality in the deep places of the heart is to make passionate, wonderful living possible.

Let's talk about courage.

It takes a strong, genuine, authentic faith for people to face their death with courage.

I wonder what you thought of Jesse Ventura's Playboy, interview? Not that All Saints membership is necessarily avid Playboy readers! But surely you've heard about Ventura, the once professional wrestler and now Governor of Minnesota, taking on us religious folks.

This is what he said: "Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers." Can you believe it? It's ironic beyond words that a professional wrestler is calling religion a sham, as if his former profession is a model of integrity.

Here is a man who made his living and his notoriety prancing around, pretending to wrestle in what is the most fake sport in the universe and just a crude form of entertainment -- calling what we do here today a sham. He doesn't have a clue about what goes on here -- how deep it reaches and how profound its impact.

In the spring of 1991 we closed this church for six months for a major renovation and seismic strengthening and we worshiped in the Forum during that period. This worship space would be substantially improved and enriched -- but it would be different. The Sunday night before all the work was to start the next morning, I came into this church late at night and sat alone in the pew. I prayed for a while, giving thanks for all this church had meant in my life. I then let my mind roam and move throughout the building. In my many years as the Rector, what were the most memorable times in this old church, the greatest moments, those that lodge themselves in my mind forever?

There have been so many magnificent events and a large number of you have shared them with me. But the images that kept returning during my reflections were the funerals that I had conducted during my ministry. Some of those celebrations of life in the midst of death I will remember forever.

When life was bleak, when the lights of the world had gone out, when the dearest ones had been taken from us, when life looked absurd and love seemed mocked and all existence appeared futile, when tragedy had drained every ounce of joy from our hearts and filled them with unbearable grief, and when God seemed so distant, we gathered in this church for the funeral to hear the promises of God.

In that poignant tale of African life by Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country, there is a scene I keep going back to. Kumalo, a village priest who has suffered so much and is in agony says to Father Vincent: "It seems that God has turned from me." To which Father Vincent replies: "That may seem to happen but it does not happen. Never, never does it happen." God is faithful.

That's the promise we proclaim in the presence of death. If the Jewish-Christian faith has no word at such desolate moments, it is worthless.

A sociologist of religion has written these persuasive words: "The power of religion depends, in the last resort, upon the credibility of the banners it puts into the hands of people as they stand before death, or, more accurately, as they walk inevitably toward it."

That night alone in this church I remembered those funerals when people with broken hearts gathered around this altar to hear the promises of God, to grab hold of those banners where God's covenant of love is proclaimed -- a love that never ends. And hear again those words of scripture: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me... The Lord God will swallow up death forever... and they who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength... they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."

Hearing those words and being in a faith community of loving support, courage to go on living was reawakened.

Trusting God's limitless love brings courage. My failures, my mistakes, my disloyalties break the heart of God -- but they do not break God's love.

Some of you remember my English friend, Bishop John Robinson. He was my mentor for my graduate work at Cambridge University. He was a great New Testament scholar and radical theologian. He visited with us and spoke many times at All Saints.

One of his 17 books is a commentary on Paul's letters to the Romans. Remember those famous words from the 8th chapter of Romans? Paul says: "I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, not anything in all creation, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

In the commentary, John Robinson writes that he had come to see the 8th Chapter of Romans, in its proclamation of God's love, as the greatest chapter in the Bible. "It is the one thing," he writes, "that I would believe if everything else was stripped away."

When Bishop Robinson was dying from cancer of the pancreas in 1983, I flew over to London to spend a week with my mentor and friend. In our wonderful talks together, he said, "I believe deeply that I belong to Christ and live in Christ's love. Nothing, nothing can sever me from that love. Not even death itself. I trust God's love."

I'm a secular, scientifically-oriented person. But, as I move toward my death, I more and more trust a God I cannot prove. Such a faith is always an act of courage -- the courage to reach across the boundaries of finitude and grasp the hand you cannot see but you trust will hold you forever.

This requiem calls you to an act of courage. Your doubts and fears and apprehensions can be creative. Honor them. But as the earth shakes and the foundations of life tremble -- reach out in the dark for that divine hand that will hold up in this slippery world -- and never, never let you go.

But courage in both hands.

As we remember the dead today, we commit ourselves to be the bearers of life. We pledge to walk in the light, and stand against all the bleak forces of death.

I read the other day about a wonderful teaching by the Hasidic Rabbi Menachem Mendel, who said that only God had the right to command us to destroy another person. However, if even the smallest angel comes forth to counter such an order, we must obey the angel. God always sides with life -- always provides a way out for those with a discerning spirit, a way to choose life over death.

The refusal of the Senate recently to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was an incredibly foolish and tragic mistake. With the end of the Cold War, we have the opportunity to move away from our dependence on nuclear weapons and our willingness to use them.

However, without a nuclear test ban treaty, countries around the world will feel pressured to create more destructive bombs. Failure to ratify the treaty opens the door for further proliferation of countries possessing nuclear weapons.

Eighty percent of the American public supports the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty because they know these monstrous weapons in the hands of friend and foe alike threaten the lives of all our children.

The nuclear bomb is the most outright evil thing that human beings have ever created. Remember, the nuclear bomb is humanity's challenge to God. We say simply, "We have the power to destroy everything you have created, God." This earth of 4.7 billion years could be destroyed in 30 minutes of nuclear bombs being exchanged. An end to life as we know it.

What does it say about the moral values of a nation that puts its security in nuclear weapons that are militarily unusable, economically disastrous, and morally outrageous. The great ethicist, Reinhold Niebahr said, "If these weapons were ever used against us, it would mean our physical annihilation, but if we ever used them against an enemy, it would mean our moral annihilation."

Such thinking had a radical effect on General George Lee Butler who was at one time the Chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, which controls all Navy and Air Force nuclear weapons. Two years ago, General Butler stated publicly that he had moral questions and profound doubts about America's possession of nuclear weapons. He has now committed himself to working for a nuclear-free world. He refuses to condemn humankind to live under the cloud of perpetual anxiety. "This is not a legacy worthy of the human race. This is not the world I want to bequeath to my children and grandchildren. It is simply intolerable."

Fifty Republicans in the Senate refused to support the Test Ban Treaty -- so it failed to gain a two-thirds majority. That was a colossal mistake. The 80% of Americans who favor a halt to nuclear testing need to get involved in the political process and say no to this madness -- and keep on saying it. Keep on till the world has destroyed all those nuclear weapons.

Unquestionably, the peace activism in the 1980's had a determining impact on nations across the globe. By 1983, four out of five Americans favored a world-wide elimination of these bombs that threaten the very life of the world. Significant treaties reducing the stockpiles of these lethal weapons were signed by the United States and Russia. The peace movement is one of the great achievements of the 20th century and I rejoice that this movement was central to the ministry of All Saints Church.

Courage in both hands. Courage to face death boldly trusting God to be there and lift you into the eternal light. And courage to be advocates of life and to stand before the colossus of the military establishment and boldly call for a nuclear-free world. That's my aspiration.

A woman I know well in Cleveland, Ohio, who was once a member of All Saints, lost a three-year-old child. The child had suffered for a year with a malignant brain tumor. My friend was devastated and paralyzed by that horrible loss. I'll never forget her words to me: "The single death of our precious daughter is so tragic, George. How can we imagine the death of the world? I feel God is calling me to a ministry of peace making. I hope I have the strength to carry on."

I wish Jesse Ventura could meet my friend in Cleveland. Maybe someone could tell him about Martin Luther King, Jr., and Desmond Tutu and Dorothy Day and the Berrigan Brothers and Mother Theresa.

In the moral wrestling match of life -- they would all slam you, Jesse, for a three count.

And come to Pasadena, Jesse, and watch these Christians who feed the hungry and comfort those with AIDS and tutor the kids and visit the prisons and care for the lonely and work for peace in our world. I doubt looking at these Christians with courage in both hands, that you would call them weak-minded and their lives a sham.

There is great power in this church at 132 N. Euclid, Pasadena, California. Not to use it to preserve the planet is a sin. I truly believe God expects this great church to use its power and resources to change the very course of history. Few institutions in America are better positioned for that mission.

O Blessed Light -- fill the inmost heart with hope.

Hold on to hope. During those Rock Mass days during the 70's, we used to sing often "Last night I had the strangest dream... I dreamed the world had put an end to war."

I still believe in that dream. I still believe it is possible to abolish nuclear weapons and end violence between nations and within nations. I still believe it is possible to eradicate the cesspools of despair and poverty and oppression.

I believe it is possible to bridge the chasms that divide us and transform the hostilities and suspicions that corrupt us.

I believe it is possible to tame the savagery in humanity and make gentle the life of the earth.

A better and more glorious world is possible that treasures life. I want to sing that to my grandchildren. No gift to our children can compare to that hope -- that we haven't given up on the future.

I'm so glad we've been companions in that struggle to bring light to this world.

Amen.