This sermon was preached for the funeral of Wendy B. on Friday, February 2, 2024. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 116, 2 Corinthians 4:7-11, 16, and John 13:31-36.
When Bryan and Brett told me about Wendy on Sunday, the word that kept coming up was strength: the strength of her love and the strength of her character. Wendy was so determined and so strong. Even when her body was failing her, Wendy’s inner nature shone through. She gave you all one last happy Christmas, full of fresh baked cookies and carols and a pageant. As St. Paul writes, we are afflicted, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair. Wendy chose strength, and she chose love.
My son has a beautiful book called, “Will it be okay?” by Crescent Dragonwagon, illustrated by Jessica Love. It’s a simple conversation between a mother and a daughter who asks her again and again, “Will it be okay?” with various “but what if…” When I listened to Bryan and Brett speak of how deeply and fully Wendy loved her children, I thought of that book and the page when the daughter asks the mother, “But what if you die?” “My loving doesn’t die.” the mother replies to her daughter. “It stays with you as warm as two pairs of mittens one on top of the other. When you remember you and me you say, what can I do with so much love? I will have to give some away.”
In our burial liturgy, we will pray today, “For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended.” We may be “struck down,” St. Paul writes, “but not destroyed.” This is the great Easter proclamation that we proclaim again today: It is death itself that has been destroyed. I was deeply touched by the psalm Wendy’s daughter selected, Psalm 116, for us to read this morning, and the strength it gave her on the morning of her mother’s death. Indeed, we hear in the psalm how the psalmist suffered in distress and anguish until his soul was returned into God’s rest. “You have delivered my soul from death…I walk in the land of the living…you have loosed my bonds.” This is not the end of Wendy’s life, only the end of her suffering. This is not a denial of what has happened - Wendy’s life, though profoundly changed, continues on in God - and we know this, we can feel this, because love continues on. Loving doesn’t die.
What can we do with all this love? All of the love we feel for Wendy…All the love that Wendy poured into each of you, into this community, into everyone she cared for as a nurse and everyone she volunteered alongside? Here’s what Jesus would say, what he did say, to the beloved friends that he was about to leave behind: love one another as I have loved you. Give the love away. That’s how everyone will know you are my disciples.
Bryan told me on Sunday that Wendy hoped that her illness and death would not have a negative impact on anyone. She didn’t want to be a burden; she didn’t want her death to change or derail the success of her children and the amazing young people they are becoming.
Wendy may not have wanted her death to change anything, and it will, of course - how could it not? There is a hole, a rending in the fabric of our lives - an aching absence even as we strain to feel her presence, mysteriously with us. But here is my prayer: my prayer is that above all else, you let Wendy’s life change you. Let how Wendy lived change how you choose to live - most especially, how Wendy loved. Give your love away, freely, gratefully, and in her memory. Love each other through this, these next days and weeks and months and years. Take the love that Wendy gave to you and pour it back on Bryan, on Brianne, on Brett, on everyone Wendy would have turned to help and serve and care for. This is how the world will know we were Wendy’s and Wendy was ours.
This is the promise of our faith: Loving doesn’t die. Wendy’s loving hasn’t died. It goes on, carrying us forward, forward until it really will be okay again. “Where I am going you cannot follow me now,” Jesus says to his beloved friends. “But you will follow afterwards.” We follow Jesus into death, yes, but we follow him beyond that, too, into his resurrection, into new and unending life in God. Into the last day, when love will be all in all.
I think the other reason I thought of my son’s book was because of its last pages. When something like this happens, when a loved one dies far too young, when a death happens to someone so good, so kind, and it all seems so unfair, when life is upended in an instant or in a slow-moving but unstoppable unfolding of pain, there is a small voice inside that asks, “Will it ever be okay again?” “So,” the daughter asks the mother at the end of the book, “So it will be okay?” And the mother says, “Yes, my love, it will. It will be okay.” The final image is the two of them dancing together in the falling leaves, all bright smiles and outstretched arms. This is the promise of our faith at its simplest: an answer to the small, worried question. It will be okay again, not today, but someday. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end. Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear not. We are journeying toward an end better than any of us can imagine - and Wendy is already there, waiting for us. We will sit together once again at a great feast, a banquet prepared for all. We will dance again together, all smiles and arms outstretched.
Love will be all in all. Amen.
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| "Will it be okay?" by Crescent Dragonwagon, illustrated by Jessica Love |
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