The Eucharist of Christian Burial
Romans 8:14–39, Psalm 23, Saint John 14:1–6
We have gathered together today to give thanks to God for every remembrance we have of Marjorie, who lives now, as she always has, in the hands of a loving and merciful Creator.
We can say this because of the strength of the Gospel just proclaimed. Jesus orders his disciples to believe in God and in him. Believing is in their power; believing is their choice to make. Jesus tells them that he goes to prepare a place for them that where he is, there they may be also. It all sounds to them too good to be true. And Saint Thomas objects. “How can we know the way?”[1]
What Thomas will learn in time is that God’s specialty is bringing good out of bad whether it is drawing water out of a rock, or joy out of sadness, or sight out of blindness, or comfort out of the valley of the shadow of death, or faith out of doubt, or life out of death. God’s way is to make the future better than the past. He does this over and over again. We have only to believe in order to see.
And believe we do. We believe that when we commend Marjorie to God, we are handing her on to a loving and merciful Creator, the one who made her for good and brought so much good out of her. We believe that God made her to enjoy God’s presence and life in this life and in the next. We believe that when we commend Marjorie to God, we are joining with Marjorie and with God in God’s loving purposes for her. And we believe that when we commend Marjorie to God, we ourselves are enjoying God’s life and presence even as we are coming a little closer to God’s loving purposes for us.
And so, let us stand and proclaim our faith and our assurance in God’s loving purposes. Let us proclaim our faith in the Apostles’ Creed found on page 496 of your Prayer Books.
[1] Saint John 14:5.
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