Funeral Homily

 

27 March 2013

NRSV JOHN 14.1-6

Jesus said: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.  In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.  And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

**

Warmest thanks to the family and to Fr L for the tribute to V

the sharing of memories.

I can add my own, of course.

I remember V as someone who loved Den and her family (and her cat),

and who loved her Church family (at St Michael’s and St Mary’s).

I remember V as someone proud of her roots,

and who longed to travel, both inland and abroad.

I remember V as a lover of grace,

the grace of God in word and sacrament,

and also the grace of at least some dancers in Strictly Come Dancing.

And, perhaps above all, I remember V as

a great lover of the giving of feedback, of commentary!

She would comment, almost every time, on my sermons.

Typically thus:

“Your sermon was long.

It was very interesting,

but it was long.”

 

V was, like me, a wordsmith,

a lover of words, their origins, their sounds, their flexibility.

In that, she knew that words work best when words are few.

 

So how fitting that we hear at her funeral words from the Gospel of John. John’s Gospel, where every word counts.

John’s Gospel, where the language is simple (simple in Greek as in English),

but deceptively so. The simple words bear deep meaning.

John’s Gospel, which you might read or hear over and over and over, throughout your life, and still find something new.  

 

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places”.

(“Many mansions” in the old translation, which V will have known.)

There is space.

 

We know very little about heaven,

but here we are promised that there is spaciousness.

There is room enough and more than enough for everybody.

There is room enough and more than enough for V.

Room for all her tastes, preferences, interests, and passions.

She need lose nothing of what made her who she was.

Whatever heaven is, it is not a place where you have to fit in.

 

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places…

I go to prepare a place for you”.

 

I want to say that these are words so simple we may miss their meaning.

We hear them - many of us hear them, for sure - often enough,

often enough to take them for granted.

But there is nothing here to take for granted.

 

Christ goes to prepare a place for you.

 

The “you” in the Greek is plural, referring to the disciples in front of him.

But we only need many dwelling places if we have different dwelling places.

So it also implies that Christ prepares a place

for you, singular.

This is a personal matter.

 

Christ sets about the task of preparing a place that will be fitting,

be proper, for you.

A place that will be properly yours.

 

I say again that we don’t know much about heaven,

but we know that it is a place of spaciousness,

and (hear this) a place where

the Sovereign Lord, the Very Word of Gd, who is from Gd and who is Gd performs the task of getting things ready for you.

How can we let these words just wash over us?

 

This is the wrong way round.

According to natural human reasoning and our own piety,

we might just about, on our better days,

hope to hear that Christ prepares us for a place.

We can have a place in heaven,

and we might even learn to be at home there,

if we work at it, if we strive to be worthy of it.

Instead of that, instead of hearing that Christ prepares us for a place,

we hear that Christ prepares a place for us.

 

There is of course wisdom in

“a place for everything and everything in its place”,

and perhaps V was of that school.

But!

But she also knew that the Christian story is topsy-turvy.

·        The Eternal Gd comes to us as a baby;

·        the King comes to serve;

·        Christ shows his power
in his passion, in his passivity, in having things done to him;

·        the one who dies gives life.

You see how topsy-turvy it all is?

And here I want to insist that the topsy-turviness continues into heaven.

The one we are duty bound to worship

is the one who serves us by preparing a place for us, a place properly for us.

 

Every act of hospitality

which V gave (and she gave many)

and every act of hospitality she received (and she welcomed many)

was in a sense preparing her for heaven,

preparing her for her welcome by the true host, Gd,

Gd, who, as a good host, shows her to the place prepared for her.

 

Brothers and sisters, this is the faith of the Church.

And we know (do we not?) that this was V’s faith.

V knew pain. She knew disability and dislocation of different kinds.

She knew that dying itself can be hard.

But heaven is not hard.

V was well prepared for heaven,

for her welcome by the true host,

Gd, who, as a good host, shows her to the place prepared for her.

 

My dear V, sorry (as always) if this homily is too long.

But I really wanted to say all of this.

 

We don’t say “Alleluia” in Lent or Passiontide.

But funerals are outside of liturgical time.

So I for one will say, if softly,

to Gd who has prepared a place for V, “Alleluia”!

Amen.