Sunday 4th November 2007

I will never forget the day I heard my mother had died. It was a Sunday morning in August 1983. She had been battling with cancer for over a year and had been in Torbay hospital for some while. My father had told us we should go on holiday. And so we did and we were in York. We had been to the Cathedral for the main morning service. It was distinguishable less for the wonderful sermon than for our one-year-old daughter’s contribution to it. Just as the Dean mounted the pulpit to preach to a packed, silent cathedral Abigail decided she had had enough. And let out an ear-piercing wail. We had made the mistake of sitting at the front. So we then had to carry a screaming wriggling child the length of the nave. Meanwhile the congregation, giving us stern looks, waited for the Dean to be able to begin his sermon.

I have a photo of a happy laughing Abigail, sitting in a pink dress in bright summer sunshine on the lawn by the Cathedral after the service. It was taken just before I went to a phone box to ring Dad and find out how Mum was. I knew straightaway that something was wrong. She had suddenly gone down hill and died late on Saturday night. We didn’t have the instant communication of mobile phones. Only my brother had had time to get down to Devon and to be there with Dad at the end.

I tell this story not because it is extraordinary or of special interest to anyone other than me. I tell it simply because it is my story, my remembering of the moment of passing. My remembering that, for me, somehow leads on to everything else I hold on to and love about my mother. Each and every one of us will have our stories. It is good for us to tell them, particularly in the weeks and months soon after a loved one has died. But, even as the years pass – my mum died 24 years ago and my then one year old daughter is now 25 – the stories are always with us and, like some of our other memories, they stay bright and clear.

My memories are not filled with deep sadness or regret. I can talk without tears welling up and without a deep yearning for the earlier times before she died. I feel I have found peace and some acceptance of the inevitability of life and death. Acceptance that has come from my being conscious of the continuity between life and death. And of being conscious that love truly does ‘never cease’. Nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God, wrote St Paul. Nothing, not even death, can separate me from the love of my mother. And nothing can separate each one of us from the love of the person or people whose names we have lovingly written on cards and to be read out this afternoon. The candles we light are a sign of unbroken love.

But we cannot pretend that simply being conscious of God’s eternal love will shield us from the pain of loss. Our reading opened with words that remind us of the heart wrenching feelings that the death of someone special brings: ‘my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is’. These are feelings that can at times take over as the reading continues ‘my soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me’. Let’s be honest. It is hard. It is painful. And things will not be the same again. As I have seen my children grow up, I can’t recall how many times I have thought how much I wish my mother could have been here to share our lives.

But what I know too is that God’s steadfast love never ceases, and is a real help in our times of sorrow and sadness. It is because of his steadfast love that we have gathered here this afternoon. Because by him and through him we receive his compassion and are comforted. You may recall the story of the two disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus after Jesus had died. They would have been desolate. The man they had given their lives to, who they had left their homes and their families to follow, had been brutally killed as a common criminal.

They would have been in shock, wrapped in grief, all their hopes for the future torn away from them. They were walking along the road talking about all that had taken place, telling their story as I have told you part of mine, when a stranger joined them. They did not recognise him. Talking to them he brought insight into all that had taken place. He explained everything and made sense of all that Jesus had taught and shown them.

When they arrived at Emmaus the disciples asked their companion to stay with them for supper. He did and it was when he broke bread and passed it to them that they suddenly recognised the stranger as the Christ, the holy one. Suddenly in the midst of their grief their loved one was present.

By turning to God in prayer. By talking to friends, or to others who come to us to show love and concern, about all that has been in the past; telling our stories and remembering our joys and our sorrows, and sensing that God is in the midst of all our remembering, we can find peace. It may take a long time. We may still be on the road like those two disciples talking to a stranger who they did not recognise. But even when unrecognised we will receive the kindness of God.

Our reading ended by reminding us that God does not willingly afflict grief on anyone – it is a part of human life that we cannot escape. But God comes to us at our time of remembering and draws us closer to him and his eternal peace. We are promised that God will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love. As we gather this afternoon we are in the midst of that steadfast love.

© Robert Jenkns 2007