‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’ Those are words first spoken by one who was in his thirties and who would die aged 33. He lived a short life as an obscure itinerant preacher in an obscure part of the Roman Empire, yet his words are remembered today, millions have followed in his footsteps, and his actions have opened relationship with God to all who do so.
Lives don’t need to be long to have impact when those who die young have been those that have loved family, friends and life itself deeply in the time that they have been with us.
X is one of those whose life has been short yet whose impact on our lives has been deep and wide and therefore will be long lasting. That is because of three reasons. The first of those was character. He was central to his group of friends and to his family because of the love that was apparent in his character. We have all experienced that and have heard examples of it in the tributes and eulogy given today. The Beatitudes is a reading about character; about those who practice meekness, righteousness, mercy, purity, peacemaking, and endurance in the face of suffering. Those who do so practice love and live love because their focus is on others, rather than themselves.
The second reason was his endurance in the face of suffering. Like all those with sickle cell he experienced periods of excruciating pain; pain of which those of us who are not sicklers do not know. He rode out the periods of pain that he suffered just like those who endure persecution for righteousness’ sake. They could do so because they knew that there was a better future – the kingdom of heaven – ahead. He knew that he could look forward to pain-free periods in which to enjoy and appreciate life to the full if he could ride out the periods of pain.
The third reason was his appreciation of life’s changes and his determination to live life deeply and fully in the periods when he was free of pain. That is the attitude that we see set out in the passage read from Ecclesiastes. Life is bittersweet in its mix of joys and traumas. We need to accept and understand that that is so in order to appreciate the times of laughter, dancing, embracing, healing, planting and keeping.
We can honour his memory best by following in his footsteps, adopting his attitudes, and mirroring his character. Lives don’t need to be long to have impact when those who die young have been those that have loved family, friends and life itself deeply in the time that they have been with us. We will have honoured X’s memory best if those things are what is said about us after we have died, however long or short our lives.
What does it mean to live well? Life can’t be measured in years alone, although X lived a long life, but perhaps life is measured by the legacy we leave for others; primarily the love we have shown and shared.
St Paul’s classic description of love is often shared at weddings and therefore serves often as a foundation to the forming of family life which is the principal forum in which love is learnt, shared, tested and developed. This description of love is one that it is very appropriate to use as we look back on a long life well lived. It's often only as we look back that we appreciate with fresh insight the love we received at an earlier stage in our lives as at that earlier stage such love was simply what normal life felt like. So, children can now say that they appreciate just how lucky they were to grow up with their parents.
St Paul’s description of love is somewhat generic but we have heard today stories of love expressed in specific ways. We can therefore rewrite 1 Corinthians 13 for your actual experience of family life together. Love is the sharing of interests and enthusiasms - of cycling, ballet and opera, love is the memory of a first kiss, love is dawn bike rides as a family to time trials, love is being taught to swim, pitch a tent and play chess, love is gifts of sticky buds, catkins and pussy willow, love is whole house renovations, love is unblocking drains, maintaining boilers, cleaning and repairing a local church, love is leading the project to redevelop and renovate that church building. Love is also the devotion and care shown by one partner to the other that meant they were able to spend their remaining years of marriage at home together.
There are many stories about X because of his caring character and because he had a long life in which to express that care. Methuselah is a well-known Bible character because of the length of his life. Interestingly those, like Methuselah, who are listed in Genesis as having lived long lives are listed there because their lives were shorter than those supposed to have been lived by kings of the tribes surrounding them. Long lives were claimed for those kings as a signs of their supposed divinity. So the lists included in Genesis were to demonstrate that Israel’s ancestors were ordinary working people like shepherds and not semi-divine kings. From what I know of X he would have been happy to stand with the likes of Methuselah on that basis.
Memories and stories are what we need to tell today because they remind us of all the ways in which X impacted our lives. As we do so, we realize that our lives have been richer for knowing him and that it is only because he was part of our lives and brought so much into our lives that we mourn him as much as we do today. And so it is that, as we remember all the good that we received from him, we focus on giving thanks that he was a part of our lives.
Our Bible reading also speaks of another way in which X lives today, as it speaks of the Christian hope for the future. Life is like looking through a grubby pane of glass. That’s essentially what St Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13. When we look out through a dirty window we can see but we can’t see clearly. That, he says, is our experience in this life.
Why? Because none of us are perfect and therefore we don’t love others as we should. We don’t fully love in the way that he describes in this passage. Are we always long-suffering, kind, unenvying, unself-seeking, not puffed up and not easily provoked? Do we always think no evil, bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things? The short and honest answer is no. We do not experience perfection in this world and therefore do not see love perfected.
But, as we have reflected, we do see love in part; particularly in our close family relationships. As we reflect on X’s life today, we are remembering the ways in which he loved and in which we received love from him. He knew love and gave love in his life. But whatever he knew and gave of love in this life has now been exceeded in the next. Now he sees love perfected because he sees Jesus face to face. What was partial has been left behind and what is perfect is now his experience.
More than this, Paul says that faith, hope and love abide or remain. He seems to be saying that we can take something with us when we die. That all our acts of faith, hope and love from this life continue and are perfected in our future life. And this means that funerals are important times for us to reflect on our own lives. Are we modelling our lives on what we know of Jesus? Are our lives characterised by acts that are full of faith, hope and love? If not, then we will enter eternity with very little. But what a joy there is when someone can take much that was of love into their future life together with God.
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Sufjan Stevens - Mystery Of Love.
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