Grounds for Hope (Charles Leaf funeral)

Grounds for Hope
Funeral for Charles Ansel Leaf

11 March 2016 Burial Office with Holy Eucharist 2 p.m.

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

 God, give us grace to feel and love. 

Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In Katherine Patterson’s beautiful novel The Bridge to Terabithia, a young boy named Jesse Aarons becomes close friends with a newcomer in his school, Leslie Burke.  Jesse is artistic and at loose ends, bullied at school and under pressure at home to step up and be the kind of young man his father wants him to be.  Leslie shows her friend Jesse the importance of imagination and boldness. At one point, he invites her to church with him.  After a morning of bible-thumping evangelical fervor, Jesse expresses his embarrassment at it all to Leslie.  She, in her East-coast and very secular way, says, “Here you have to believe all this and you hate it.  I don’t have to believe in it and I think it’s all so beautiful!”  Later, Jesse’s little sister, parroting lines she has heard in Sunday School, says with naïve conviction, “If Leslie doesn’t belief in the Bible and Jesus, God will send her to Hell!”  This later becomes a real crisis for Jesse when Leslie is killed in an accident.  Jesse’s father tries to comfort him:

Jesse: [crying] Is it like bible says? Is she going to hell?

Jack Aarons: [shaking head] I don’t know much about God. But I do know he’s not goanna sent that little girl to hell.

Jesse: [sobbing] Then I'm going to hell because it's all my fault!

When we face death, we always want to try to make sense of it.  We may try to blame someone or something: an earlier cigarette habit, feckless healthcare professional, or a punishing God.  Accident and random illness and death seem unsatisfactory explanations. 

When Jesus was among us, he healed the sick, made the mute speak, the lame walk, the mad whole again.  He taught that God above all was compassionate:  He makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall equally upon the just and the wicked.  He takes delight in creation, clothing the ephemeral grass and flowers of the fields with beautiful blossoms, better than the best array King Solomon ever donned!  He counts the hairs on our head and notes little sparrows when they fall from the sky.  God is like a loving father who runs to welcome wayward children home and then comfort their siblings who feel slighted by the grace shown their siblings who deserve PUNISHMENT.  God is like a crazy old woman who loses a coin, spends a day looking for it, and then spends a large sum for a party to celebrate finding it.  Uncleanliness and impurity for Jesus did not contaminate the pure and clean as taught in his religion, rather, purity and loving grace were contagious and overcame the hurt they touch.  Jesus describes God not so much as a king, despot or judge; rather he is abba, or our papa. 

When we face death and illness, we want to make sense of it.  But maybe there is no sense to it at all, except for the fact that, as Jesus taught, it will end.  Speaking of his own certitude that his preaching the reign of God and taking this to Jerusalem was going to get him killed, he quotes an expression of hope in the book of Hosea, “[the Lord] has struck us, but he will bind our wounds. He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence” (6:1-2). 

“The reign of God has arrived, and is in your midst,” Jesus says, “So act like you’re part of it!  Pray ‘your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven!’  Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit prisoners, the sick, and widows and orphans.”

We face death and illness, but if we trust Jesus, and if we truly hear those stories about Good Friday and Easter, we have grounds for hope.  Death and illness will end.  As Paul taught, “the last enemy to be destroyed is death” and “Where, O death, is your sting?”  “There is symmetry in all this: in Adam, all die, but in Christ, all are made alive!”   

Charles was a faithful member of this parish as long as he lived here.  He reached out to others and told me of his prayers for us, the members of this parish.  He took the Gospel seriously, and heard God speaking in Sacrament and the Word.  When he learned that his throat cancer had returned, he decided to not let the physicians extend his suffering and lower his quality of life piece by piece as they excised and burned to death with radiation and chemicals the growing rebellion of his cells.  I am grateful for him that his suffering was not prolonged.  I grateful that we had the chance to help live the kingdom by visiting him and giving him care.  I am blessed to have gotten to know him.  I am confident that he is part of that great cloud of witnesses, the communion of saints, who now cheer us on from the unseen grandstands. 

There is not a lot I know about God.  But I do know that God is loving and holds all things.  There is no place, no matter how bad or painful, where God cannot do surprising and wonderful things, where God cannot help us in some way.  Death and illness remain a great mystery for me.  But I have confidence that they will end.  Death itself will die.  Illness will be no more.  Sin, evil, and rottenness will all surrender to love.  Jesus will greet us and wipe away any tears remaining on our faces, and bind up the wounds and scars in our bodies, minds, and hearts with his own scarred and wounded hands. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.