My funeral address evolves...

Given my incumbent’s knowledge of funeral ministry, (see Heaven’s Morning Breaks) my address at my early funerals tended to follow his words on John 14, including a brief explanation of what it means for Jesus to be “the way, the truth and the life” in the context of the journey we all have to take at the end of our earthly existence.  My second year of ministry has included the funerals of two of the spouses of those whose funerals I took last year, people I had accompanied through their own grieving process with the inevitable deep discussions.  On a practical level, this meant that I couldn’t just repeat the same sermon, and on a personal level, also offered the opportunity to tailor it for these people.

For the couple who enjoyed sailing, the way or journey became a “voyage” and the need for a vessel to carry us, a reliable navigator to guide us and a port to call home lent itself as a suitable metaphor for Jesus help in our journey through death.  So, how could this sermon evolve?

The popular poem “What is Dying” - Attributed to Bishop Brent, suggests the positive metaphor of a ship vanishing over the horizon for the departure of a loved one:

A ship sails and I stand watching till she fades on the horizon

and someone at my side says, ’She is gone!’

Gone where?

Gone from my sight, that is all.

She is just as large now as when I last saw her.

Her diminished size and total loss from my sight is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,

’She is gone’, there are others who are watching her coming over their horizon,

and other voices take up a glad shout,

’There she comes!’

That is what dying is.

An horizon and just the limit of our sight.

Lift us up, Oh Lord, that we may see further

The famous "Flat Earth" Flammarion engraving 1888

But, this falls short of the Christian message of hope.  Jesus didn’t just sail off over the horizon out of sight.  He came back!

A better metaphor for a sailor would be the proof that the first circumnavigation of the world would have offered.  I was going to use Magellan as my example, but apparently he died on the journey leaving Elcano to finish the voyage, along with just 17 others.  But the point is they came back.  By the middle ages, few believed that the Earth was flat, and so they knew in their hearts that they wouldn’t just fall off the edge.  But it remained a theoretical hope that they could sail off into the east and return from the west, until someone actually did it.

And so it was the same for the disciples.  The hope of resurrection was held by the Pharisees, and Jesus corrected the Sadducees who argued against it.  But it would remain a hope until Jesus returned from the dead.  For some, this would be proof.  But, as Jesus predicted, even that proof wouldn’t be enough for others (at the end of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus).

But a funeral is not really the place for apologetics, so the sermon included just this: “Jesus doesn’t leave us with a vague hope of life after death.  He has gone ahead to show us that resurrection is real, that there is a new land over the horizon.  Jesus has explored beyond the edge of our known world and tells us what lies beyond.  Seafarers no longer fear that they might sail off and fall over the edge of the world, because someone sailed right round and came back again.  That is what Jesus has done with death, so we too can face that journey with hope.”