Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted …..
Coming to this place tonight may seem anything BUT comforting. Being here tonight brings with it a burden, one I am sure you feel right now, right here in your heart. A heavy sinking feeling. A weight. Death is like that. And we find our losses and our sense of despair can overshadow us so easily,
especially as we approach the Christmas Season.
We are all here today because we’ve lost someone special and want to honour their memory. So we all have something in common. We all love deeply,
and hurt deeply because our loved one is no longer here with us in the way to which we’d grown accustomed.
So we come here tonight to remember those who are no longer with us in their bodies.
This evening, we share something deep and meaningful and tender with others who are going through similar pain.
Grief is a very real part of our life, and one that God, our God, has experienced.
And in case you didn’t already know it, the emotions that come when somebody you love dies are not always recognizable as grief.
Sometimes you feel disbelief. You may find yourself still looking for your loved one …and sometimes even “see” him or her in a crowd, or hear that wonderful voice. Sometimes you feel irritated or depressed or guilty. Sometimes, you feel numb, or even like you might be going crazy. Sometimes you may even feel hatred, betrayal, or a sense of abandonment. Grief is like a tidal wave that picks you up and tosses you around and bumps you into unidentifiable surfaces, and then casts you out onto an unfamiliar beach, devastated. And just when you think you might be recovering, the wave sweeps over you again.
Grief is like that.
When we show signs of our grief, it is not a sign of distrust in God, or a lack of faith. It is a normal human reaction to loss.
And while we have faith that death does not end life, but only change it, we will still experience the loss of our family member, our friend. We will miss them.
We will feel sad. And our tears are part of our healing.
Sometimes you may think that no one in the whole world could ever have felt this kind of agony. And yet we’re all here tonight, together,
because we have all loved, and lost ,and are suffering. Tonight, we recognize that we are not alone, that we don’t hurt alone. Love is all around us, in the disguise of all these feelings. All of these feelings you’ve had since your loved one died are because you LOVE so deeply.
And we can cling to the assurance that as we remember our loved ones by stating again how they lived and changed our lives JUST BY BEING,
death will not have the final word.
Therein, my friends, lays our hope.
For we came here tonight because we believe that life is more than this flimsy skin and bones. We come here tonight because we believe that love extends beyond this physical being. We come here tonight because we believe that life is not just about the physical presence of our bodies on the planet earth. We come here tonight because we believe that we are spiritual beings, and that part of us is not affected by our physical death, but continues on into eternity. We come here to connect spiritually, not just with each other, but truly and really with the loved one we have come to remember. We come here today to remember that our loved one has been transfigured into an existence beyond the physical, into an eternal life. We come here because we know deep within our soul that you and I, our loved ones who have passed from this earth, and even all of creation, are connected spiritually. Always have been. Always will be.
So tonight we gather together to remember and reconnect spiritually with our loved ones. It is our belief in life everlasting,
and in our own resurrection into eternal life, that we can find the hope that will see us through these difficult times.
Our return to the God who created us, the God who loved us into existence, is a return to a place where, as we heard in the Gospel, we are indeed comforted.…
Let us pray …
We seem to give them back to you, O God, who gave them to us. Yet, as you did not lose them in giving, so we do not lose them by their return.
Life is eternal
and love is immortal
and death is but an horizon
and an horizon is nothing except the limit of our sight.
Lift us up, O Son of God, that we might see further; Cleanse our eyes that we may see more clearly; Draw us closer to yourself ..
That we might know ourselves to be nearer to our loved ones who are with you.
Amen.