Halloween has always fascinated me. Growing up, I knew plenty of families who abstained from the holiday on principle. They did not think it was proper for Christians to participate in a holiday that appeared to celebrate evil.

But in my home, I came to associate the holiday with my mother’s whimsy and creativity. She would keep a large pot of hot cider simmering on the stove all day, while preparing our house for little visitors in costumes. She carefully spread synthetic web on the hedge in front of our house, and always managed to come up with the most creative costumes for her own children.

It was a day for absurdity, imagination, and yes, even some thrill. I remember the feeling of my heart pounding in my chest, whenever I would approach a house that leaned hard into Halloween horror. Skeletons, goblins, mummies, zombies ... anything and everything that goes bump in the night. I would whisper to myself, “It’s not real! It can’t hurt me!” while reaching out to grab a fistful of candy, and then I would squeal with delight as I raced back to the safety of my mother’s side.

Now as an adult, I experience familiar elation when the cool, crisp air of late October falls upon us, and Halloween decorations appear in our neighborhood. But I have also come to ponder the phenomena involved with this strange holiday.

A Holy Day—Allhallowtide

And it is just that, a holiday—a holy day. Halloween is part of the triduum of Allhallowtide: a three-day Christian observance that includes Halloween (or All Saints’ Eve), All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day.

These three days in the liturgical calendar are devoted to remembering our dead, the saints, and faithful forebears who precede us in death and surround us perpetually in the great cloud of witnesses. It is a time to reflect on the lives they led and to pray for them.

Historically and still to this day, some faith communities honor these holy days by visiting cemeteries to fellowship with the dead, and some prepare lavish meals to eat with friends and loved ones while sharing memories of the dead.

Square Off with Death

Now, obviously that is not how most people in our modern contexts observe Halloween. Many theories abound about how Halloween came to be so horror-centric. Yet, regardless of how the holiday evolved over time, one thread of the day remains consistent throughout its history: this is a holiday where we square off with death—and all its harbingers. I think that the way we approach the holiday indicates a lot about how we feel about death.

Here is my theory about the way Americans, specifically, celebrate Halloween. We spend most of our lives in this society trying to forget, ignore, outrun, and cheat death. Where it used to be common, and decidedly not spooky, for people to take casual strolls through cemeteries, most people today would rather avoid them.

Two-hundred years ago, it was more common for family members to handle their own dead—to wash the body, to wrap it, and bury it. But nowadays, we expect professionals to handle every part of the dying process. We remove ourselves from direct involvement.

We have sanitized our lives of any reminders of death. We buy anti-aging creams and dye our hair, and do everything in our power to keep up the illusion of youth. We suppress death from our minds as much as possible, because we do not want to be confronted with our mortality. Memento mori? No thank you.

But all that suppression builds up! It needs an outlet. So once a year, we go wild. All the monsters that we push out of our minds, the nightmarish specters of danger and decay, come bursting out all at once. And what’s more, we celebrate them! We take hold of them! We reclaim some power over them, when we ourselves become the monsters. We play dress-up with death.

I’m not sure if my theory has any real credence, but it certainly helps me make sense of the oddity that surrounds this holiday. And it also helps me imagine how this holiday might be reclaimed as a powerful expression of Christian belief.

Because it actually makes a lot of sense for Christians to lead the way in playing with death.

Playing with Death

At the core of the gospel is the Christian belief that God incarnate overthrew the power of death, setting us free from our fear of it. Hebrews 2:14-15 says, “Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.” In vanquishing death, God liberates us to live as though we are not dying—not for selfish ambition, but for the blessing of others.

It was the absence of the fear of death that made it possible for Jesus and his disciples to care for those who were contagiously ill, living in abject poverty, or in dangerous circumstances. It was the absence of fear that made it possible for them to preach boldly, though it would cost them their lives. It was this absence of fear that empowered the early church to live out their counter-cultural witness of love and care for the vulnerable. And it was the absence of fear that bolstered our most prophetic gospel preachers throughout history, those who laid down their lives for the good news and justice of God.

St. Athanasius of the fourth century affirmed in his most influential work, On the Incarnation, that Christians might possess a natural fear of death. We would confirm this idea today in our scientific awareness of the human nervous system, and our autonomic survival instincts. Indeed, some fear is natural. But he went on to argue,

That death has been dissolved, and the cross has become victory over it, and it is no longer strong but is itself truly dead, no mean proof but an evident surety is that it is despised by all Christ’s disciples, and everyone tramples on it, and no longer fears it, but with the sign of the cross and faith in Christ tread it under foot as something dead.

In essence, Christians regard death as though it is dead, itself—nothing to be mortally feared.

Later in the same work, he argued that if you saw some children playing with a lion, you would have to assume that the lion had been utterly tamed. So, too, Christians play with death as though its very fangs have been broken. Death has been completely tamed and disarmed.

So, what does it mean to trample death? What does it mean to play with death?

Halloween Sermon Ideas

Halloween provides an occasion for us to recalibrate ourselves to a rightful posture before death. On this strange day, we affirm the weird and wild ways in which Christ obscures the boundary between life and death. We honor our living continuity with those who have already died, because we believe that death does not have the final word. We proclaim that Christ’s victory over death renders our physical death to be more like a comma than a period, more like a portal than a destination. And we celebrate the expansive, growing, cloud of witnesses who have gone before us and will welcome us when we one day venture through the veil of death, ourselves.

So how might one preach a sermon for the Halloween season? Here are a few possibilities.

No Longer Enslaved

BIG IDEA: While a natural fear of death is somewhat inevitable, Hebrews 2 says that we have been enslaved by our fear of death. We are enslaved by our fear of death when that fear drives us to live selfishly and indulgently. We avoid situations that remind us of our mortality, and we distract ourselves from death through vain ambition and hollow pursuits. But when Christ overthrew death, he made it possible for us to be freed from that fear. When we are freed from our fear of death, we are able to give ourselves more fully to the work of God in our world. Preachers may find The Slavery of Death by Richard Beck to be a helpful resource.

SCRIPTURE: Hebrews 2:14-15

Death Unbound

BIG IDEA: Death is a grievous thing. When Jesus learns of his dear friend Lazarus’ death, and witnesses the deep grief of those who cared for him, he begins to weep. And yet, for all the grief we bear through loss, Christ holds sovereignty over death. Lazarus is one of three people raised from the dead who are mentioned in the Gospels. When Lazarus emerged from the tomb, still wrapped in linens (and very much resembling one of our most popular Halloween costumes), Jesus commands, “Unbind him, and let him go.” In these words, we witness not only the liberation of Lazarus, but also our own. The resurrection of Lazarus is a foretaste of our resurrection, and a visible testament to Christ’s power over the grave.

SCRIPTURE: John 11:1-44

The Living Dead

BIG IDEA: This passage from 2 Corinthians offers a peculiar vision of the Christian’s relationship to death. We carry in our very bodies the death of Jesus, which paradoxically reveals life in our bodies. There is a sense in which we are like the living dead. Yes, we will die, as all mortals do. Further, we are “being given over to death for Jesus’s sake,” as we follow him into dangerous and vulnerable spaces. Yet the incorruptible resurrected life of Christ within us makes us impervious to death. Death cannot swallow us, nor defeat us. Through Christ we obtain the status of the living dead.

SCRIPTURE: 2 Corinthians 4:10-12

Amy McLaughlin-Sheasby is an Assistant Professor in the College of Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas.