Today’s service is a memorial service, as we gather to remember all those people from our parishes, as well as family members and loved ones from beyond our parishes, who have died in the past two years. Originally, as I planned this service, I was going to go back as far as the beginning of Covid, which here in Ireland would be March 2020. But then I decided to go back to All Saints Day two years ago, which was just a few months earlier. It is at this time of year that we remember those who have gone before us: those saints who have been exemplars in the faith, and also those unnamed faithful departed. Today we remember before God our loved ones who have died, we give thanks for their lives, and we ask for God’s blessing on us, the living. During our intercessions, I will be reading the names of those of our parishes who have died, and also the names of family members and loved ones, as I knew of them or was given their names. My apologies if anyone is left out.
Readings:
Sermon:
When I sit with a family to prepare a funeral, I am sometimes asked what the difference is between a eulogy and a funeral homily. Good question. They are both speeches at a funeral, they both can last for a little while, so what’s the difference between them? And when I am asked this question, what I say in response is that a eulogy talks about the person who has died. It is a personal statement: it gives facts about the person’s life, it says who the person was, it might tell some stories to illustrate a person’s character. I always tell family members that it is tough to do — to stand before a group of people while one is grieving and talk about a person one loves. I always encourage a person to practice the eulogy, even to read it over and over again, to lessen the likelihood of completely breaking down while delivering it. But to prepare and to deliver a eulogy is also a way to honor the dead — to remember the person who has died and to give thanks for what made the person unique.
A funeral homily, on the other hand, puts the death of the person into a larger context. It might contain some personal bits, but the main focus is to see the person’s death in the larger context of God, the Christian faith, and eternal life. It looks beyond this immediate life and our daily concerns to larger questions. When someone we love has died, often all the little things that we concern ourselves with, day after day, pale in significance in comparison with the larger questions of life and death that can then arise, such as, Why did this happen?, and What is next for me?, and Are they at peace? When someone we love has died, suddenly we become more aware, even if we cannot say it, of something that is always true: that somehow our life is connected with God, who created us and gave us life and who is always present, even though we may not be aware of it. When we go about our normal lives, we may not give much thought to God and to eternal questions, as though a veil, a screen, is between us and God. But when we are grieving, that veil is a lot more permeable.
These past 20 months of the Covid pandemic have brought lots of grief, to all of us, even though we may not be aware of it. Our lives have changed in many ways, and we have seen and experienced massive changes in our society. We have not been able do the things we had been so used to doing, from travel to visiting to working with other people, and lots, lots more. And just the sheer numbers of people who have gotten sick and who have died is hard to comprehend. It brings a grief that rumbles around within us, perhaps beneath the level of consciousness.
But two changes, I believe, have been especially hard. One has been the way we have had to do funerals, especially here in Ireland. As I have repeatedly heard people say, the Irish do funerals very well — and I agree. People visit the bereaved in their homes and at funeral parlors. Well-wishers and mourners flock to the funeral and to the graveside.
And suddenly that had to stop, because of restrictions from Covid-19. It has been terribly hard.
So when we first started having funerals after the pandemic began, when many expected this new disease to run its course in perhaps a few months, many families said that they would have a small funeral, as required, and then later would have a large memorial service. But now almost two years have passed, and the pandemic is still not over. It is still possible to have a memorial service for each person, but I think there is less enthusiasm for that idea. We would be spending our lives doing memorial services. So today we remember them all.
The second change, and what I think is perhaps the hardest of all, has been not being able to be with our loved ones as they die. In the Gospel lesson, we heard Mary say to Jesus about her brother Lazarus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And it makes me think of all the people I have heard say how hard it was not to be able to be with their loved one in hospital or a nursing home, until the very end, until just before the person died. We cannot say, we cannot believe, that if we had been able to be present with someone, that the person would not have died. That’s a way to torture oneself, and it is not true. But not to be with them in their waning days is a huge loss for many — for many of the living, for those who grieve.
For those who died, we have to know that in the end, they were in the hands of God.
“But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them,”
the Book of Wisdom says.
In our eyes “they seem to have died,
and their departure was thought to be a disaster,
and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace.”
The bedrock of the Christian faith is that through all things, life and death, health and illness, joy and mourning — through it all, we are held in the hands of God and offered guidance and comfort. We may forget that God is with us in and through all things. We may even rant and rail against God. That’s okay; God can take it. We may even turn our backs on God. But God does not turn a back on us.
For the bedrock of the Christian faith is that God came among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth to show us God’s steadfast love and care in this life, and the path to eternal life in the next. When Lazarus died, and his sisters Mary and Martha mourned, we hear that Jesus wept, greatly moved by the grief of the sisters and all those who mourned. He grieved with them in this life. He grieves with us.
And through his life and his own death and resurrection, Jesus pointed the way to a new heaven and a new earth. There death is no more, and “mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” There all our questions are answered, or just do not matter anymore, for the veil, the screen, between us and God has disappeared and we live in the midst of eternity.
And so we pray and we believe that such is the case for all the faithful departed from our churches these past two years, and for all our family members and loved ones. May God hold them in his hand in the company of all the saints.
And may God also continue to hold us, as we make our way through this life, with all our questions and wonderings and wanderings. For the message of eternal life is for this life also, that we might know God’s presence as we gather together in prayer and worship, and as we help one another and live in fellowship together. May God heal our griefs, give us new life, and guide us in all things.