We live our lives by two stories. There’s the one we present at an interview, when we want to impress people; and there’s the other one we tell only to a counselor, a confessor or the most trusted friend. The church also lives its life by two stories. There’s the story of faith, and courage, and martyrdom, and sacrifice, and perfect love. That’s the story we call All Saints. And then there’s the story of fragility, and fear, and failure, and foolishness, and forgiveness. That’s the story we call All Souls.
Every Christian makes the same mistake. We all think God wants our posh story, our All Saints’ story. But the truth is God wants the real story, the All Souls story.
Being a Christian means longing to be a saint – but, in the meantime, offering to God the reality of our soul.
The title of Kate Atkinson’s 1995 novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, gives a clue to its theme. The novel’s setting is a museum, because it’s full of memories, mostly about four generations of women in the family of the narrator, Ruby.
But it’s behind the scenes, because, one by one, elements are reintroduced into the story they’ve forgotten, denied or suppressed. The plot rattles along through post-war British history on a hilarious rollercoaster course, and you’re never sure if the intention is simply to evoke rib-tickling laughter. But that leaves you wholly undefended for the moment when suddenly, very near the end, the savage twist clasps you like a stomach cramp, and you’re gasping for air.
By this time Ruby’s a young adult. Piecing together stray remarks and inexplicable anomalies, she’s driven to rummage through the shoebox that contains the family’s most precious treasures. In the shoebox Ruby discovers the buried key to her whole existence. She comes upon a birth certificate, and realizes she had a sister, Pearl. Not just a sister – a twin, born on the very same day as she, Ruby.
She was born a twin. Ruby and Pearl. And there, to prove it, a locket, with a photo of the two sisters, one on each side. But then, a death certificate, dated four years later. Cause of death: drowning. The precious Pearl had drowned, aged just 4. Ruby seeks out her mother. In dismay she yells, ‘You can’t just blot someone out like that. … You can’t pretend someone never existed, not talk about them, not look at photographs.’
Her mother replies, defensively, “There were photographs. And we did talk about her. It was you who blotted her out, not us.” But Ruby’s outburst has unlocked a chamber in her mother’s soul. They open up the locket with the photos of the twins and look at it for a long time in silence. Ruby demands to know, “Which one? Which one is Pearl?” Her mother points to the one on the left, and says, “My Pearl. My Pearl,” and begins to weep.
Think of that locket for a moment. On the right is a picture of Ruby – the story Ruby thinks she knows, the story it’s easier for everyone to tell. And on the left is a picture of Pearl – the story full of grief, and sadness – the story no one really wants to tell except Pearl, perhaps. And, deep down Ruby and her mother, desperately, achingly, wrenchingly – Ruby and her mother, who can’t truly tell any kind of story to one another until they’ve gone back and told a truthful story about Pearl; the fact that she lived, and the way she died.
Think of that locket as the two stories of the church. On the right All Saints, the story we want to tell, and on the left All Souls, the story of what took place behind the scenes, the story we’ve forgotten, have denied – but the story God knows, the story God remembers. It’s the truth that God loves, the truth about us, about each other. In each face we see on the screen there‘s the public face and the private face.
Why are such voices integral to our worship? Because when we stand before the throne of grace, as a person, or a church, we can only ask God to redeem that which we bring with us. If we show God just the right hand side of the locket, if we try to tell God just an All Saints story, God will either laugh, or cry.
At the Last Supper Jesus took bread, and broke it, to represent the breaking of his body. And he said, “Do this, and remember me.” Do this, he said, and re-member. That’s our hope. Not that our lives and memories and lockets aren’t broken. We know they are. But that we’ll be re-membered in God. That’s what resurrection is – God putting all our members back together, going behind the scenes, and literally re-membering us. And so to open our lives to the suppressed, the forgotten, and the denied members of our society and our church is to anticipate heaven, by the same process of re-membering. The last chapter of Behind the Scenes at the Museum is called ‘Redemption.’ Ruby’s talking to her surviving sister, Patricia.
Patricia’s trying to encourage her sister to move on. She says, “The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby.” Ruby’s having none of it. “Nonsense, Patricia,” she retorts. “The past is what you take with you.” And that’s the gospel. We’re on the left-hand side of God’s locket; but God doesn’t suppress us, deny us, forget us, or leave us behind. Broken as we are, God re-members us, and embraces us, and says, “I’m taking you with me.”