Hi Friends,

Thank you to each one who stops by this spot looking for sermons and seeking to follow along in the life and work of the St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church. I am slow in updating consistently and apologize to those who have waited since October for new words and thoughts. I will also confess—I am finding it even more challenging to create fresh, new content each and every Sunday. I’m amazed as I think back to the pastor of my childhood and teen years, Dr. James F. Walters, who preached Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. I am confident he leaned heavily on the brilliant work of others as well as his own past writing, and I have done a fair amount of both in recent months. Credit is always given where it is due, though I have not linked footnotes from my manuscripts to the website. I’m glad to provide source details upon request.

On October 25, we joined other Alliance of Baptists’ congregations in welcoming the Rev. Dr. James Forbes for a virtual sermon on Reformation Sunday. I do not have a transcript of that sermon to share. The following Sunday, November 1, was All Saints’ Day. In New Orleans, it was also the Sunday after a hurricane, and many of our congregation were still without power and/or wifi. We honestly weren’t even sure we could have a virtual worship service until the last minute, so there was not a traditional homily that day. However, I shared some of my favorite funeral poetry as part of our All Saints’ remembrance, and those are posted below.

Grace + Peace,

Pastor Elizabeth

—

“Death is Nothing at All”
by Henry Scott-Holland

Death is nothing at all. 
It does not count. 
I have only slipped away into the next room. 
Nothing has happened. 

Everything remains exactly as it was. 
I am I, and you are you, 
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. 
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. 

Call me by the old familiar name. 
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. 
Put no difference into your tone. 
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. 

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. 
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. 
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. 

Life means all that it ever meant. 
It is the same as it ever was. 
There is absolute and unbroken continuity. 
What is this death but a negligible accident? 

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? 
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, 
somewhere very near, 
just round the corner. 

All is well. 
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. 
One brief moment and all will be as it was before. 
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

“When Death Comes”
by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox 

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

 I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence, 

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real. 

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument. 

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.