The tender bridge in Christ

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

The tender bridge in Christ

31 October 2010 All Souls

The Revd Jenny Wilkens

• Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9
• Psalm 23
• John 6:37-40

http://wellingtoncathedral.org.nz/index.php/Sermons

While on retreat recently, I was reading my journal which I've kept over the years and came across something I'd written as part of a group training day, when we had to work at preparing our own funeral service, and write our own eulogy for the service or obituary for the paper. I’m not sure if that’s something you’ve ever tried doing – but writing your own obituary is quite a challenging exercise! I think what I found most interesting is all the people I wanted to mention who have been part of my life, and of making me the person I am, and am becoming as I grow through my life and on to death, and beyond.

Many of you here tonight have had to prepare a funeral service for a loved one who has died, perhaps this year, and we as clergy want to thank you for the privilege of walking with you on that hard journey at such a painful time in your lives. We are constantly impressed, more than that awed, by your courage and love and faith seen as we walk with you, so thank you from our hearts. I pray that I will have that same courage and faith as I face bereavements and goodbyes still to come in my life.

For some of you we know that the funeral for your loved one has come after days, weeks, months, even years maybe of dedicated caring for your loved one, watching over them as they cope with increasing frailty, weakness and pain, beginning that hard grief work of letting go of independence, and then the letting go's of relationships, the goodbyes and finally letting go of earthly life itself.

For others of you we know there has been the shock of sudden death of a loved one, totally unexpected, something for which you could never be prepared, plunging you into grief, having to cope with no possibility of goodbyes or things you’d like to have said or put right, the 'might have been's, and 'if only's. Tonight we want to honour you all as we’ve seen you gather as families and church family, supporting each other, shedding tears and laughing together, as precious memories are shared and family stories retold.

One of the prayers we will use later in this service talks of greeting those who’ve died, across the tender bridge in Christ. On days like this, we feel the separation from our loved ones most keenly. We grieve its permanence, that we won’t see them again in this life or talk and hear their voice, share coffee or Sunday lunch together. We feel acutely aware of that great gulf fixed… and yet our Christian faith tells us that Jesus alone is the tender bridge between us.

Jesus is the only God who knows what it is like to live on this earth, to suffer and to die here. And then Jesus is the only one who has come out the other side of death, whom God has vindicated in raising to new life, a quality of life that we cannot even grasp in all its enormity, but that somehow is eternal and no longer subject to the power of death.

That same quality of resurrection life, Jesus promises to us too and to those whom we love. That is the promise of resurrection life that sustains us as we commit those we love into God’s care and keeping, trusting God to give them life, trusting God that we will one day be reunited in God’s presence.

That is the living hope that we can hold onto too as we face our future and the reality of our own aging and mortality. There’s so much more we would like to know about it, but for now our trust must be in the promise that as Christ now lives, so we will live also.

In Jesus the bridge, we glimpse the possibility of a love that survives the onslaughts of suffering and death, and comes out the other side not less but more, a love that will never let us go, or lose hold of us or of those we love and see no longer.

Part of our grieving is asking God to comfort us as we mourn the death of part of ourselves. So often we hear people say: It feels like part of me has died, there’s just such a huge hole, a huge gap in my life. That is how it feels, that is how it is.

As we’ve journeyed with you, some of you over weeks and months since the funeral of your loved one, I wonder if you can see that yes, part of you has died, but also part of you has grown – that you have found within yourself unknown resources of courage, fortitude, faith, love, compassion. Even that somehow the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our grief, has enabled you to offer others in their sorrows, the comfort that you yourself have received from God. (2 Cor. 1:3)

I wonder if in some way we can see that growth in us as the last precious gift of the one who has died, a gift they have given to us in love.

Of course we’d all want to say very quickly that we would give anything for there to have been some other way we could have learned these things, and still have the person we love and have lost.

But if this is the way things had to happen, then that last gift to us from those who have died is all the more precious – the gift of growth in us in ways we could not have dreamt or imagined. A gift hard won through tears and sadness and just getting through each day, through families pulling together, through accepting gestures of love and care, however clumsily or inadequately offered or expressed.

This of course doesn’t mean we have all the answers, it doesn’t mean that we don’t still have questions and doubts, really hard days and nights. But it does mean we have enough to sustain our faith and hope for the future, and our love for those we are called to live with and among here and now, while keeping that special place in our hearts for those we love and see no longer.

Jesus says I am the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). Jesus says I am the tender bridge, who bridges this life and the life to come. Jesus is already experiencing the life to come, and speaks from there saying to us, 'I am he who lives, who lives and was dead, behold I am alive forever more.' (Rev 1:18) This resurrection life he will give to all who ask him. That is God’s promise to us, and to us for those we entrust afresh to God’s care and keeping this night.

So to this place we have come, a familiar and loved place to many, but also a place that is now bittersweet for those of you who have had to come here to say your goodbyes. I pray that as shortly we light candles to remember our loved ones, this will be another step in your journey of grief and of healing.

But I pray too that you will always know this place as a place you can come to, perhaps to light a candle at the Chapel without Walls, or to share in a quiet midweek eucharist or evensong. I pray that you will find here that you are encouraged in Christian hope, strengthened in Christian faith, and inspired by the love you experience here, to walk with confidence into God’s resurrection future.

In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Giver of Resurrection life. Amen.