Sermon on May 10, 2020: Easter 5
Illustration of All Souls’ Day from Enid Chadwick’s My Book of the Church’s Year
The Easter season is the ideal time for funerals. I admit that this is a rather strange thing to say, and I usually get strange looks when I say it. Is there such a thing as an ideal time for a funeral? They are occasions of grief and mourning and loss. Someone who was once alive has since departed this mortal life. There can never be a right time for death and sorrow, so how can there be an ideal time for a funeral?
It’s easy to forget what funerals are for. But when we do forget, we can learn once again with the help of The Book of Common Prayer. In fact, there is a lot of buried treasure in the Prayer Book, if we know where to look. In the very back of the burial liturgy (on page 507), there is a statement that isn’t found within the funeral liturgy, and it tells us exactly what funerals are for. It begins with the word Note in bold. Here is what it says:
The liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy. It finds all its meaning in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised.
The statement goes on, and it is worth your time to read the rest of it. But that first sentence says it all. Funerals are for proclaiming the Good News: that, in Christ, God brings life out of death. “Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised.”
Funerals remind us of the truth that death is not the end. And what better time to hear this truth than Eastertide? The solace, the comfort, the hope that we long for amidst the death of a loved one we have already glimpsed on Easter Day, when Jesus rose from the dead—and it gives us hope that we, too, shall be raised.
The Prayer Book suggests a number of Scripture readings to be used at funerals, one of which is today’s lesson from the Gospel of John. Jesus tells his disciples about the many rooms in his Father’s house, where he will go to prepare a place for them. This is by far the most popular Gospel lesson for funerals. Last year in Eastertide, I performed three funerals; and this very Gospel lesson was read at each one. There is something so comforting in knowing that Jesus has prepared a place for each one of us. Last Sunday, we heard how Jesus is the Good Shepherd of the sheep and the gate to the sheepfold, and today we go one step further: Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, who leads us to a place in his Father’s house.
These are comforting words, and it is right to be comforted by them, but we must be careful to keep them in their context. Because if we don’t, we will be lulled into a kind of sentimentality that drains them of their power. These are not feel-good words. They are not meme-worthy. They do not fit on a Hallmark card. Rather, they are spoken in the shadow of death.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says. The scene is the last supper, and they are in the upper room sharing a meal. Judas departs so he can betray Jesus, and Jesus predicts that Peter will deny ever knowing him. Jesus perceives his own suffering and death, and announces that he goes to prepare a place even for those who would deny him. He doesn’t offer them false hope, and tell them that everything is going to be okay. He offers them the promise that life is found in him beyond the grave.
Likewise, Christians today do not celebrate Easter in a vacuum. We can talk all day long about how God brings life out of death, but that is not the reality we see with our earthly eyes. What we see is the reign of death. We can see it in large format, as in the death toll from the coronavirus, which yesterday surpassed 80,000 in this country and more than 280,000 worldwide. These numbers are only going to keep on climbing.
And we are also confronted with death up close, on screen, as in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a young man from Georgia who was killed in February for the crime of jogging-while-black. A modern-day lynching. It was only after a video of his killing surfaced that his killers, a father and son, were charged on Thursday only after a massive public outcry—months after it took place. Ahmaud’s story casts light on the systemic, institutional racism in this country, which can be just as invisible as the spread of COVID-19. We see the legacy of white supremacy, transmitted from generation to generation. Christians, and especially white Christians, cannot remain silent about this. We must speak out. And we must remember that what we see today we find already in Scripture. Look no further than today’s lesson from the book of Acts, the story of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Church, who himself was lynched for his faith in Jesus.
How do we celebrate Easter in the face of evil and death?
Ever since the first Easter Day, Christians have lived in two different worlds: the world of the future, under the reign of God; and the world of the present, under the reign of sin and death. To paraphrase St. Paul, we live between the now and the not yet. We can sing with joy about the victory of God because we have seen the future, even while we mourn the fruit of death’s dominion in the present. We cannot close our eyes to it. The Christian faith is not about escapism—far from it. We do not believe in a God who offers an escape from death; we believe in a God who brings the dead to life again. A God who prepares a place for us, and a God who will show us the way. Who is himself the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. We have seen the salvation of our God. Let us sing our song with gladness, now and even at the hour of our death. Through all the days that God has given us, till the day he gathers all things into one. Christ prepares a place for us. Let us follow his steps in the way that leads to everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.