"Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise.
O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For your dew is a radiant dew,
Come, my people, enter your chambers,
and shut your doors behind you;
hide yourselves for a little while
until the wrath is past.
For the Lord comes out from his place
to punish the inhabitants of the
earth for their iniquity;
the earth will disclose the blood shed on it,
and will no longer cover its slain."
-Isaiah 26:19-21
In my opinion, this is the quintessential Halloween scripture. After all, the image Isaiah paints here is an image of zombies clawing up from their graves, and ghosts coming to haunt the living. Meanwhile, we flee to the safety of our homes, locking our doors behind us and asking ourselves, "Who're you gonna call?"
I love Halloween. It is my favorite Christian holiday. (And it is a Christian holiday--even its name screams Christianity: all HALLOW's EvEN, or the Eve of All Saint's Day.) I love Halloween because I love that feeling of fear that comes from watching a scary movie or reading ghost stories or seeing a host of scary costumes roam about the streets at dusk. Halloween is a time when we can be scared and still feel safe. Just as a roller-coaster brings us safely to the brink of our fears of speed or falling in an enjoyable way, in the same way Halloween allows us to face other fears in our soul without falling into total terror or despair.
Yes, I think Halloween is a time when we can externalize all of the fears that haunt us the rest of the year. For example, the fear of evil. Even if we don't believe in demons or ghosts, we might all agree that evil exists and that we are vulnerable to evil things happening in our lives--the thief in the night, the attacker in the dark alley, the angry dog in our neighborhood, or the bully at school. The figures of Halloween exaggerate these dark figures, and yet at the same time help us to feel bold before them. Halloween gives us a catharsis for our fears.
Perhaps the biggest fear that Halloween allows us to face is death. Skeletons, ghosts, monsters, vampires, zombies, demons...the common fear in all of these is death. (I will let you make your own analysis of Justin Bieber, Hannah Montana and Superman costumes, though the first two in this list are just as frightening to me--the death of culture, maybe?)
The thing humans fear most, at least in our culture, is death.
We fear dying. We fear losing a loved one in death. And on Halloween, we surround ourselves with images of death in such a way that they no longer hold power over us. This, friends, taps right into the heart of the Good News.
All Saint's Day is when we remember all those who have gone before us, who now rest in God. It is a day on which Christians celebrate the lives of the saints. And it is a day on which we celebrate God's mightiest deed--for we trust that God has gathered the saints in eternal life, just as God has promised. All Saint's Day is about celebrating the victory that God has won over our Old Enemy, Death.
Ancient Christians believed that the light and power of goodness on All Saint's Day made All Hallow's Eve a dangerous time--because all of those demons and monsters and evil spirits knew that their power would be gone on All Saint's Day. And so, these malevolent forces would freak out and do as much damage as they could. People started dressing up in costume, either as saints or as demons in order to protect themselves. If you dressed as a demon, then you could walk amongst the evil spirits safely--you were incognito...and since you were one of them they wouldn't harm you. Or if you dressed as a saint or an angel, the demons would steer clear of you, because they knew they couldn't beat you.
We have left behind these superstitions. And yet the message remains. Halloween and All Saint's Day are like the story of our baptismal life. While we are in the world we walk through dark valleys, and we wait for the day when all will be light. If you have died, you are with God and protected in God's Kingdom--you have reached All Saint's Day. But if you are still alive and on earth, then there is still darkness and strife and temptation and evil--you are still only in All Hallow's Eve, waiting for daybreak. And yet, "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness--on them light has shined" (Isaiah 9:2). On Halloween we remember that when Jesus Christ is with us, we have nothing--absolutely nothing--to fear, not even the Grim Reaper himself. Christ is our light in the darkness. Christ is our shield and portion. Christ is our guardian and guide.
So let's go back and read Isaiah again, now that the light of Christ is shed on the scriptures for us. All of a sudden, those zombies aren't zombies at all. Isaiah says: "O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!" In the light, the people coming up from their graves are not zombies, but the people of God who are resurrected on the last day! We, friends, are the dwellers in the dust. Ash Wednesday teaches us that we will all die, and to dust we shall return. And here Isaiah is telling us that on that day, we will rise and sing for joy--because God will restore our lives and we will live eternally.
The Cross was scary (understatement). But the darkness of death and hell was vanquished when dawn broke on Easter Sunday.
On Halloween, we are reminded of God's action on Good Friday and Easter--especially how it applies to each of God's saints, that is, to each of us. As the earth dies back and cold winter approaches, as the days get shorter and the nights darker, we need to be reminded of God's promise of warmth, light and life. That reminder, for those with ears to hear and eyes to see, is Halloween. Halloween, the most wonderful time of the year, when the whole gospel is given to us in one fell swoop!
O, may you taste the delight of fright this All Hallow's Eve. And as you get spooked by all the things that go bump in the night, call to mind the One that is always by your side, the One who can overcome every evil, the One who can change death into life--Jesus Christ. He is the light of the world. The light no darkness can overcome.
Thanks be to God!
P.S.--Another good Bible story to share with your family on Halloween is the story of the Gerasene Demoniac (see Mark 5:1-20). [Note: Read the story like you would a ghost story around the campfire, complete with voices (and yell loud when it calls for it, to startle your audience!).]
It is a story in which Jesus has command over evil, and he uses his power to restore a man to life. Possible questions:
1. Why were the people afraid of Jesus, so afraid of him that they asked him to leave their neighborhood?
2. What happened to the demon-possessed man after Jesus healed him?
3. What are we called to do when God helps us through scary times in our lives?
And for further Discussion:
- Have you ever felt scared? What made you frightened?
- Think of a time when you were scared. What or who made you feel better? Why? How, then, can God help us when we are scared?
One of the best, most perfect ways of interpreting Halloween! You are so intuitive.. thank you for sharing that with us.
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