Sermon for Sunday 1st November 2009Time to RememberHave you noticed how stunningly beautiful the autumn colours are this year. Apparently it has been caused by very warm weather being immediately followed by a sharp frost. The landscape has been transformed into a myriad of shades of amber, yellow and brown, bathed in sunlight for most of last week. (Admittedly not as nice today). It’s wonderful that nature gives us this dramatic flourish at the end of the year. The leaves die. The trees go into hibernation for a few months. They’re at their most beautiful.
There was a sense in times past that funerals should be bleak and gloomy occasions – certainly not beautiful. Every single mourner was dressed in black. The emphasis was on the travails of life. The Book of Common Prayer burial service opened with less than uplifting words: ‘Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery.’ It went on to remind the mourners that death signalled the arrival of a day of judgement. They prayed that God might deliver them from ‘the bitter pains of eternal death’. And as the burial took place the priest would ask God that the deceased be delivered ‘out of the miseries of this sinful world’. The bleakness did not end there. Mourning often went on for years. Queen Victoria, devastated by the death of her beloved Albert, remained in mourning for the rest of her life. Wearing black for forty years.
We cannot avoid that deep sense of loss when someone we love has died. It is painful, a part of us is torn away, never to return. We have a longing, which may not go, for the time when the person we miss so much was still alive. There is sadness in our hearts. A sadness that is good for us to acknowledge and accept. A positive thing that we have a place on our hearts for that person.
Thankfully the way we cope with feelings of loss has changed over the years. So has our understanding of the hope we find in God. Funerals today still acknowledge the sadness and pain of bereavement. But they are also a time when we can give thanks for the life of the person who has died. Just as the Autumn trees give us a dramatic flourish of colour as the leaves fall and die, so we can celebrate the brightness, all that was good in someone’s life. We can cherish all that they meant to those who loved them. This mix of mourning with celebration gives us permission to be far more open and natural about what has happened. It is OK to laugh as we remember, just as it is OK for tears to flow as we grieve.
As long as we love, we cannot be shielded from the pain of loss. The words from our bible reading from Lamentations ‘My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is;’ are resonant in this poem called Adrift, by Tessa Wilkinson.
My anchor has lost its hold
Many here today will know that storm of loss. But not all of us. Sometimes death has been the natural end of life lived long and lived well. Or a blessed release from months or years of suffering. What is certain is that for each and every one of us, our experiences of death and loss will be our own, unique. It is only with great caution that we ever say the words “I know how you feel”. For so often we don’t.
Our bereavement might feel like being in a little boat tossed about in a storm. Or more like a passage through still but dark waters. But we all want to remember. It is important that we acknowledge that place in our hearts for them, as we give thanks again for the lives of everyone named at this service today. And it is important that we do this remembering here in Church.
Our love for them is part of God’s love. And we are promised that God’s love never ends. Wherever we are on the journey from that Autumn, when the leaves fell, to the spring of a new and different life. Or even if those times are long past. As long as we have love in our hearts, God is with us. Those we have loved now rest in eternal peace with God. His love for us, as with our love for those we remember today, is timeless – part of eternal life. In God we can find the deep inner peace in our hearts. Because we love, because we mourn, we are connected to God. Through God we are made complete, in life and in death. And that helps us to accept what is now past.
In a moment we will read the names of those we have come here to remember. And we will light our candles as bright prayerful symbols of those we love. It is no coincidence that Jesus is called the light of the world. Through the Holy Spirit he is here with us this afternoon, bringing light and new life into our hearts, however tired or weary they may be. As we light our candles we give thanks for love, for life and for God. And we find the peace of eternal life.
Posted: 02/11/2009
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