Introduction

This is a homily I prepared for a funeral held at Fox Funeral Home, Beatrice, Neb., on Tuesday, March 16, 2010.

Readings

Lamentations 3:22–26, 31–33
Psalm 46:1–7
Romans 8:31–39
John 11:21–27

Message

In a way, it seems fitting that Paula marked her last days
on the road, traveling, camping, spending time with family.
Because, when her loved ones speak with fondness
of the ways she touched their lives,
words of action are what come to mind and stir their voices.

Paula loved fishing, camping, boating, horseback riding,
and just living in the country and enjoying its calm beauty.
She did not take the easy path in her work.
Instead she mastered an enviable array of skills:
mechanical engineering, road construction,
truck driving, and serving as a paramedic.

But most of all, she reveled in the love she shared with her family.
When they recall the ways she touched their lives
as daughter, sister, wife, and mother,
they tell how she could always find the good in others,
how she consistently spoke well of all who touched her life,
and how, as she faced her own death, said with conviction,
“Don’t pray for me. Pray for my family.”

Well, today, we honor half of her request.
We all raise our voices in prayer for Paula’s family,
asking God to keep the promises He spoke
through his faithful servant in the book of Lamentations:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22–23, NRSV)

In our prayers, we turn to God and ask Him
to pour out that steadfast love on all of us,
to refresh us with His mercy,
even as we find ourselves worried and worn down
by the news of Paula’s death, by the grief that rises up in us,
by the echoes and memories of all the other deaths that have touched us.

The other half of Paula’s request, we respectfully set aside,
because today we do pray for her.
We turn to God and place her into His loving arms.
We trust that our Father in heaven,
who bore the weight of His own Son’s body
as it was lowered, lifeless, from the cross,
knows and understands and sympathizes with us
as we feel the ache in our now empty arms and saddened hearts.

We commend Paula to our Father’s care,
just as we have commended all who died before her,
and just as each of us, will in turn, be placed into His strong arms
by those who live to mourn our dying.

Paula’s daughter, Jaylyn, was moved to express her loss and her love
after entrusting her mother to God’s care. She wrote,
“Mom you have gone home
I just feel so alone
I know you would not want us to
grieve for you have found relief
You left so fast with no
time for goodbye. We can not
live in the past but look
forward to our future hi.”

In the end, each us does say farewell for now,
but we look with longing to the day when we will greet one another again.
This is not a time of defeat, even though we face death.
It is not a time of unremitting sadness, even though we mourn.
Because, in the end, this is a time to celebrate— quietly and tearfully—
the final victory that the Father has won for us by raising His Son from death
by the power of their Holy and life-giving Spirit.

That’s why St. Paul’s message to the Church at Rome
sounds so hopeful, so powerful, so confident:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will hard, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Romans 8:35, 37–39, NRSV)