Enfolded into God

A Reflection for a Funeral

Perhaps facing death is the most difficult thing that we do as humans. Death reminds us of our mortality; of the frailty and fragility of our existence; of the transient nature of God’s created order.

Even when we can celebrate the well-lived life of a close friend or a dear relative, we are confronted with the impermanence of that person and of ourselves. “Remember we are dust and to dust we shall return.”

Surely, then we are tempted to cry out and ask, “Why?” Why is it that we are born, we live, we endure joy and pain, we die? Why is it that God created such a world of fluctuation and impermanence?

Perhaps we may be angry at a God who could concoct such a cruel equation of life and death. “How could you do this to us God?” “We loved her. How could you take her from us?”

Certainly, it takes a little time to settle in. We may lift the phone to ring or find that we are still including the deceased in our routine plans for today. We can’t initially believe that someone whom we knew, whom we loved, whom we cared for is just no longer with us in the same way.

The Christian tradition does not offer easy answers to our predicament. It is not content with platitudes about everything being in God’s plan, about God’s appointed time, or even about lives well-lived.

The Christian tradition reminds us that God created us to be in relationship with God and with one another; and that God’s creation is both good and demanding. Relationships are demanding. Living is demanding. Change is demanding. Death is demanding. Life is demanding. For our world is a dynamic world, it revolves around our interactions with one another, with our environment and with God. A dynamic, relational world is a demanding one.
But the Christian tradition also does not leave us in our shock, in our pain, in our grief, in our disbelief, in our anger, in our questioning, in our confusion on our own. It says that because our world is a dynamic and relational one, it is in and through our relationships that we endure and survive and indeed may live well our transitory lives.

So we gather today to share with one another our grief, our pain, our joy, our celebration, our hope, our confusion. So we gather today to pour it all out together to God. Because the Christian tradition, says that God knows it all, God hears it all, God experiences it all, God understands it all and God stands in utter solidarity with us as we experience so much in life and in death. God waits and watches as a loving parent waits and watches the throes of adolescence and the discoveries of each new stage of life. And always God is ready to embrace us, God’s children, whatever state we are in.

The Christian tradition also offers the hope that nothing and no-one is lost in God. That death is an end and a beginning. And that all things are finally caught up into God’s reign in a way that is beyond our understanding, but not outside our imagination.

So then, today we have come to grieve and to celebrate, to cry and to sing, to rail against God and to praise God for a life well-lived, a life taken away and a life that is now enfolded into the very life of God.