Life not Judgment
Funeral for Ojuida
Robinson Bradford
9 February 2018
11:00 a.m.
Trinity Parish
Church, Ashland Oregon
The Very Rev. Fr.
Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
Isaiah 25:6-9;
Psalm 91; Romans 8:14-19, 34-35, 37-39; John 5:24-27
Give
us grace, Loving One, to look forward with hope to our life in Jesus Christ,
the Risen One. Amen
Just
before Christmas, I went up to visit Ojuida at her new apartment in
Skylark. She was her usual gracious
self, decked out in Southern Lady style and primly sitting in the sun beams
pouring into her room onto her easy chair.
“I am 97 years old and ready to die” she said, but then added her plans
to perhaps change into a slightly larger suite.
Then, in fashion typical of Ojuida, she asked me how I was doing, and
about my wife Elena and her illness. “You
take care of her,” she counseled, “our chance to be with the one we love is
taken away far too soon.” In her instructions
for her funeral, Ojuida left a message for family and friends from a couple of
years ago, a message now from beyond the grave:
“I have always had faith in God and thought of Jesus as my holy Friend
[and then later in life as] my Holy prayer partner… My faith was childlike
until my college years caused me to question and cease being as faithful in
church worship. My father was a strict
Methodist. I think that’s why after
college I was drawn to the Episcopal Church with its beautiful liturgy and its
broader view of all people. I tried to
practice that more and more as I had children, met more people, and moved many
times. I love my family and many friends, but most of all, God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I’m
much older and I can feel it; there are physical changes. I don’t know how I will accept death when it
comes. It seems unreal for me right
now.”
In
today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus say, “anyone who hears my word and believes in
the one who sent me has eternal life and does not come under judgment, but has
passed from death to life. … the hour is
coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and
those who hear will live.” This
optimistic word seems to be contradicted by what follows: “[T]he Father … has
given [the Son] authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of
Man.” We must remember, though that the
Biblical idea of judgment is not primarily a scene in a court of Law, but
rather the setting right of all that is wrong.
The Book of Judges is not about people in wigs with gavels: it is about
military heroes who rescue the oppressed.
So
what the Gospel is saying is that faith, what we call trust, in Jesus saves us
from being on the bad receiving end of such a setting of things right: we are rescued, not punished. Trusting Jesus
brings us life, and makes us pass through death. Jesus sets things right because he is not
only the Son God, but also the Son of Man, one of us. I hope in my heart of hearts that this will
be for all people. Jesus wants us all to
have joy and peace.
Just
before his death, Jesus says, “Don’t let
your hearts be troubled. Trust God.
Trust me.” Trust in the love behind,
beneath, and driving the universe. Trust
in the God who once suffered on a cross and himself died. Trust in the God who himself wept at his
friend Lazarus’ death. Trust.
Trust is a matter of
relationship. And so is our hope for the
dead. As we get older, we gradually
realize that more and more of those we love have passed on to death, what Shakespeare
called that “undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveler returns.” And we can either give up hope and joy
forever, or give our hearts over to the power of love, of relationship, and
God. The great doctrine of the communion
of the saints is all about this: those
who have gone on before are still here, but unseen, like Ojuida and Larry. For them life is changed, not ended. And so we pray for them and ask them to pray
for us. Our relationships go on, though
they are changed. And it is all in the
warm embrace of an all nurturing God who loves us and wills joy and salvation
for all.
I thank God for having known Ojuida,
and for the confidence I have that for here, and for us all, in the end, all
will be well, all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well.
In the name of Christ, Amen
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