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The film Coco follows the main character Miguel as he ends up accidentally traveling through the land of the dead. While he is there, he learns something particular to the world of Coco: if the stories of the dead are forgotten, they will disappear from this land of the dead Miguel finds himself in. He discovers this as he befriends someone who turns out, spoiler alert, to be his great-great-grandfather who is in grave danger of being forgotten by their family.
Now to give reassurance to everyone, all turns out well, and Miguel is able to remind his great-grandmother Coco about her father, who then shares his story, allowing him to live on through the family’s retellings from here on out. Eventually we see Miguel sharing his great-great-grandfather’s story with his younger family members as well as Coco’s story, whose spirit we see with the rest of the family ancestors not long after.
There’s something beautiful about this tradition of remembering our family members who have died. Doing so helps us with our own grief. Having times in the year to share these tales has been shown to be very healthy.
On the other hand though, the message that if we don’t continue to share these stories, those people will be forgotten and even literally disappear from the land of the dead is frightening. It’s an idea that is spooky to us all.
I know there are those in this world who find that idea scary. I’ve witnessed it. There are people who are genuinely concerned with being remembered, with their legacy in this world. There’s a sense of “who am I?” without a mark of their legacy, of proof that they were in fact here.
The good news is that being remembered doesn’t make us saints. It doesn’t make us part of Kingdom of Heaven. There is nothing we can do on our part to be made part of God’s children. There is nothing, not even ensuring our memory remains, that we can do to be made worthy in God’s eyes.
We don’t do the work to be made worthy. God does it for us. That is what we see in our reading from The Book of Revelation today. What makes us righteous and pure is being washed in the blood of the Lamb. Jesus has done the work to save us. He has our back. It doesn’t matter if no one remembers us, because Jesus has us covered.
The 1st Epistle of John shows us this too. There we hear how we have been made children of God. This has happened not because of anything we did, but simply because God loves us. We don’t do anything to receive that love. God has offered it to us freely.
Even with our reading from the Beatitudes, we see that God does not favor those who are strong, mighty, or would be deemed in any way to be worthy. Jesus reaches out to bless the lowly, humble, poor, and weak. We don’t have to be great, mighty, or anything else. It’s not our work to do. All the work is that of Jesus.
The world of the land of the dead in Coco may speak to our fears. It may even be how we see the world. We might be worried about our legacy, that people will remember us. Yet on this Sunday when we commemorate all the saints, we have to realize how little we know about many of those saints. We still have the assurance that they have a place in God’s Heavenly Kingdom. As saints, we have a place there too.
We don’t need to fear because we are not going away, even if everyone forgets us. Jesus makes sure of that.
There’s nothing we have to do to ensure this place. There’s nothing we could do to be worthy anyways. God does the work for us. God gives us the love we need to be God’s children. God washes us white in the blood of the Lamb so we can be pure and ready to be part of the saints.
Don’t worry about being remembered. You are part of the saints of God, not by your own work, but by the love, grace, and mercy of our Lord.