Memorial Service Address

Very often in Church life, we get bogged down with worries about buildings and about money, perhaps with all too public squabbling about internal problems – very often we lose sight of what is really important – and that is Jesus.

In our service this evening we have a chance to remember loved ones we no longer see, and also to reflect on the hope that Jesus can and does bring…

When I was about 14 (not so very long ago) I was away on a Christian camp. While I was there one of my friends, whose parents were actually running the camp, learned that his grandmother had died. I knew he was very close to her, and was very surprised to find he was not really upset – instead he talked about eternal life and the fact that he knew she was now safe with Jesus.

I was very impressed with what he said, and impressed by the faith displayed. It is wonderful to think of a person returning home to a place with no tears, no mourning, no crying, no pain, war or suffering. However the reality is that most of us will be sad, we will grieve, we will miss the human presence of someone we care about – and there is nothing wrong with that.

I often include in funeral addresses the account of Jesus returning to his disciples after the resurrection – he doesn’t hide the terrible wounds that he suffered – the pierced hands and feet – he shows those wounds as signs of his love for his disciples and for us today. In the same way, grief is a wound that we suffer as a result of our love, and it is a wound that should not be hidden away.

But in our wound, we are reminded again of Jesus – wounded, but alive. More than that we are reminded of his resurrection and the fact that he had once and for all defeated the great enemy that is death.

There’s a beautiful word picture which says, ‘I have seen death too often to believe in death. It is not an ending but a withdrawal. As one who finished a long journey, stills the motor, turns off the lights, steps from his car and walks up the path, to the home that awaits him.’

Through Jesus we find our true home and through Jesus we find our peace.

Some of you will have heard this story before but I used to belong to a choir and for one concert we began practising a song called ‘All will be well’. Quite frankly after a number of practices it was clear that all was indeed not at all well. The piece was very difficult with a huge scope for mistakes, and I tend to make mistakes all too easily.

And when I was thinking about that song I realised that this is often the sort of situation that arises after the loss of someone we love. There are many people that offer the consoling words of ‘it’ll be ok in time’, ‘time will heal’, or even ‘maybe it’s for the best because they were suffering so much’. All of these things are a kind of equivalent of ‘All will be well’.

But sometimes it really doesn’t feel like that – those things may all be true, but we still miss the person we love but no longer see.

Today we’ve come together not to say that everything is ok, but to remember those who we still think about and care about, those who we still love.

And it’s clear that Jesus in his life never tried to trivialise death – as a man he offered compassion to all who were in any kind of need – he offered support and comfort – he was certainly a shoulder to cry on. And he offered his own grief – when he was told of the death of his friend Lazarus, he wept. It is the shortest verse in the whole Bible – Jesus wept… (John 11:35)

So Jesus understood grief, and he understood pain – he accepted the cruelty and torture of the Roman soldiers as he was prepared for execution – and he died in agony on the cross…

And if that was the end of the story then death would indeed be hopeless – death would be just an end, but Jesus offered more.

John writes in the letter we heard earlier, ‘How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God ! And that is what we are !’… We are children of God, brothers and sisters in one family.

As we recall loved ones that we no longer see, we recall the good memories that we are left with, and we trust them to God’s love, a love that has no limits, and a love that never dies. AMEN