Funeral 1 Corinthians 13:11-13: difficult relationship with deceased
Intro: Please sit down. Welcome everyone. My name
is Guy and I am a curate at Christchurch in Old Town. On behalf of the family, I'd like to thank you for coming to this
special service today. We've come here
to do three important things. We've
come to say good bye to Jim, and to grieve his loss. It's right and natural that when we lose someone we feel all sorts
of things, so please don't feel you have to put on an act in this service. We've also come to say thank you for Jim,
and to celebrate who he has been. We
all know that Jim's life had hardship, and have been upset at his dying, but at
the same time we must remember the good things that Jim brought into the world
by his presence - the gifts he shared.
And finally we come to offer our love and support to Nicole, Mark, Jim's
brothers and sisters and the rest of the family as they face this testing time of
bereavement.
Sermon:
I would like to thank you again or coming to this
service today. As I said at the
beginning this is a service in which it is important for us to celebrate Jim's
life, to remember him with gratitude.
It is true that Jim had a lot of heartache in his life. Especially in the last ten years of his life
Jim faced a lot of difficulty and became someone whose suffering made him, in
some ways, withdraw from life. It is
also true that the manner of his death was a difficult one for him and for you
to witness. But while we acknowledge
the pain of these things it is also important that we remember the full picture
of who Jim has been, the things his presence has brought into our lives.
So what is the picture of Jim's life? He had so many aspects to his career-as the
delivery boy for Wilson's in his home town, as the miner for ten years, as the
soldier in the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers.
He moved around, living in Germany as well as in different parts of
Britain. He was a man of skill, as a
lathe turner, someone who was good at woodwork, making models - hippos for Nicole, a miniature cricket bat
for Mark. And in these projects he was
a perfectionist-everything had to be right.
Once he had to make an axe for Nicole in a play and he was determined it
was going to be the best axe on the stage.
As a character you have described him as someone who
was hard on the outside but soft in the middle. He got angry, but he did not hold things against you for
long. He was at firm father, but he
loved his kids very much and would cry when watching soppy films. He knew how to have fun, he enjoyed swimming
and skating. And he knew how to treat
people-such as when Mark thought he wasn't going to get to the game between
Swindon Town and Sunderland at Wembley in 1970, and arrived at breakfast on the
morning of the game to find two tickets on the table.
You will remember him for different things, but maybe
one thing in common you will all have in your minds is his cigarette and a cup
of strong sweet tea in his hand. So it
is good to give thanks for his life.
And the words we used today to say goodbye and thank you also tell us
that it's good to hope for his future.
Because while it's true that in this life we don't understand everything
that happens - why people get ill, why bad things happen, why we have to die,
God promises us that one day what is complete will come. We will understand fully, and we will be
fully understood. At the moment we see
things hazily, through a darkened glass, but one day God promises us that we
will see him face to face.
In the last years of his life in some ways Jim may
have seemed to see things dimly, or to know things in part, but now he sees
with absolute clarity. The love of God
has understood him where we have not been able to, the strength of God carries
him where we cannot. He sees God face
to face, and he understands that God has always known and understood the true
Jim.
The best way we can honour him today is by bearing in
mind one of Jim's favourite expressions "Tempus fugit" - time
flies. We can't take the time we have
for granted. "I know I've got to
die," says Woody Allen, "I just don't want to be there when it
happens!" But to not face up to
the reality of what death means to us who are living is to remain stuck in
childish ways. We also know that life
can throw us many challenges and difficulties, we cannot take our health and
our lives for granted, and so this is a time for us to face with courage the
questions of why we are here in the first place. We can be determined that the pain we face will not deter us from
wanting to share life and love with others.
We only ever knew Jim in part, but to be finally face
to face with God, to be fully known and understood at last, is to live in a way
that is more real than anything we know now.
The things that remain of us after death, things like faith, hope, and
love, are the things that really matter.
And we can have this hope for Jim, and for ourselves, because Jesus,
through his own agony, fought and won the battle over death and suffering,
making possible a new world and existence in our future in which there is no
more pain, suffering, or tears. Let
Jim's life give us the courage to fight and to live in the knowledge that we
ourselves are fully known and loved, and that one day we will see fully, just
as he sees now.