Walt Whitman
Sometimes we need to sing about death. Usually the hardest parts of funerals for me are the hymns, which make grief and faith both seem raw and immediate to me. I don’t imagine that death was much on the minds of Mary and Joseph when they carried the baby Jesus into the Temple to comply with the Jewish law and present their child there to God. But death was much on Simeon’s mind, since it had been revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.
Growing old was no easier back then than it is now, and was probably a fair bit harder. And you could wonder whether on some days Simeon considered his long and expectant waiting more of a curse than a blessing. Hadn’t most of his friends already died? Wasn’t it harder to get up out of bed every morning? Didn’t he sleep through much of the day? While he waited, did he dream? What did he dream of? Could he even remember? Did he have any idea what he would say when at last the promise was realized and he laid eyes on the Messiah? Did he have any inkling that he would be among the very few to whom it would be disclosed who this child was? Other than a few shepherds, some sages, and the boy’s parents, who else knew? What did Mary and Joseph think when the old man took their son into his arms, and the first thing out of his mouth was the exclamation that at last the man could die in peace?
Sometimes we need to sing about death.
In his great elegy for Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman imagined walking in the company of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
There, on the path by the swamp in the dimness, to the solemn, shadowy cedars, and ghostly pines so still, the poet hears a gray-brown bird singing its song. The song, he tells us, is “the carol of death.” It begins like this:
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death….
To all, to each, sooner or later, delicate death.
One of the reasons we light candles on this day is because of the proximity of death, which comes, sooner or later, to all, to each. Death is close at hand, waiting for Simeon, who sings a carol of his own death: Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. Sometimes we need to sing about death
We are so deeply confused about death. We allow that death is the cost of doing business, on the one hand; while, on the other hand, death-defying medical treatment is often our fondest wish, our proudest accomplishment, and the thing for which we would stop at nothing.
We are haunted by the memory that we were barred from returning to the garden where the tree of life is guarded by cherubim wielding a flaming sword. And so death became our natural enemy.
But what unfolded in the Temple on that day in front of Simeon and Anna was the first sure sign that death’s power was losing its grip, and that even death could be sanctified by the One whom it would not be able to hold in its grasp.
When Simeon sings, it is about a holy death, now possible because of the salvation prepared for all people by the One he held in his arms. And the light that lightens the Gentiles, and the glory of Israel about which he sings are a light and a glory meant not merely for the streets of Jerusalem, or Constantinople, or Philadelphia, but to shine beyond the grave, toward the promise of a new and holier life in a new and holier city, visible at that the moment only to the cloudy eyes of an old man and an old woman, but promised to all. St. Luke tells us that the response of Simeon and Anna to this sight was to say something, but I think we can be confident that each of them actually sang something. Sometimes we need to sing about death.
Listen to another stanza or two of the carol of death sung by Whitman’s gray-brown bird, and notice the absence of fear.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly….
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,
Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.*
On the feast of Candlemas, bidden by Simeon and Anna, we travel for a short while with the knowledge of death as walking one side of us; and the thought of death close-walking the other side of us. And we in the middle, as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions.
Sometimes we need to sing about death as an antidote to the burdensome memory of the angel and the flaming sword that guards the gates of paradise, and the tree of life that grows there. For a new gate has been opened to us, to a new life in a new paradise. And there is nothing left to fear, if we have put our trust in the One whom Simeon held in his arms.
At the end of Whitman’s poem, he recalls the carol of death, and describes “the song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird” as an “echo arous’d in my soul.” If I could name that gray-brown bird, I would name him Simeon, and I would thank God for the echo of his song, aroused in my soul, because sometimes we need to sing about death, especially when both faith and grief are raw and immediate.
Yes, thank God for that echo aroused in my soul:
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people.
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles,
and to be the glory of thy people Israel.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, 2020
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street
* All non-scriptural quotations are from “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” by Walt Whitman, 1865