Fully Alive, to Joy and Grief

Dear People of Christ Church,
This week, of course, I’m still reeling a little after Bishop Tom’s funeral on Saturday, which was just marvelous. You can find the text of Brother Geoffrey’s sermon here. One of the things that I have long loved about being an Anglican is that our worship is actually intended to accomplish something—at Holy Week I always talk about how we do the last week of Jesus’ life, with foot washing and prayers at the cross and celebration of the resurrection. It’s not an abstraction. The funeral on Saturday, too, did what it was supposed to do.

We laughed at stories like Tom telling a visitor to the monastery who asked about it that he was the only one wearing a cross because he was “monk of the month.” We cried when we sang “King of Glory, King of Peace,” Tom’s favorite hymn. We cried when the silence seemed to stretch forever when Brother James, who was to begin the Prayers of the People, just couldn’t speak.

We shared in the Eucharist that is the Body and Blood of Christ who unites us and in whom we find our peace, in whom, the dead are not dead and we all rise to life again. We cried—again—when the brothers sang the Song of Simeon—“ Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised/ For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see.”

And so he is set free, and so are we.
There’s a really important tension to hold when we stand in the middle of life and death. We can say that Tom is set free, along with all of those names we printed in the bulletin on Sunday for All Saints Day, and believe that he is free and sees the glory of God face to face. We hold that reality in one hand. We treasure that promise that Jesus Christ has gone before us and by the grace and miracle of God defeated the power of death. In our other hand, we hold the reality that life is a wonderful, astonishing, and precious gift. In its messiness and mud as well as in its joy and laughter, life is a gift. To welcome death as also a gift is not to diminish the importance of our course on earth—holy as the dying was, the living was holy, too.

Brother Geoffrey quoted the second century bishop Irenaeus of Lyon—“the glory of God is the human person fully alive.” Fully alive includes grief as well as joy. For now, I’m trying to take my time for both.

Blessings,
Sara+