A funeral sermon for a longtime parishioner.

What happens to us when we die?

Surely this is one of the primary questions that drives our human lives in myriad ways. It steers us onto particular career paths. It urges us into all kinds of decisions related to the families we create or choose not to have. It pushes us to make meaning and to search for meaning.

What happens to us when we die? is the question that lingers under the surface, resting quietly on the river bed when the daily rhythm of life is like gently flowing water, moving smoothly over stones and with ease around meandering bends.

What happens to us when we die? is the question that surfaces when we encounter the end of life in non-upsetting ways, such as learning of the death of someone whose life was long and well-lived.

What happens to us when we die? is the question that rears its mysterious head, like a sea monster, when a once placid stream is instead churning rapids, when a sudden or unexpected death disrupts all that we know of life, makes us question the meaning of it all, makes us question what we’re doing with our lives and the precious time we have this side of heaven.

And yet this question’s answer we cannot know while we live.

“Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed,” writes the author of the first letter of John. Of course, as Christians, as resurrection people, we know that death does not have the final word, but is merely a part of our lives. But what happens to us after we die lies beyond a veil we, the living, cannot fully know or understand.

Our sacred scripture offers us some glimpses. Our reading from the prophet Isaiah speaks of the glory promised to God’s people, who wait for their Messiah: a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. Tears wiped away, great rejoicing.

Our sacred liturgy expresses our hope in the great beyond and what we imagine we might witness at that heavenly banquet. It offers us an opportunity to even practice that hope in the prayers that we offer together and sort of participate in that reality from this side of life.

What happens to us when we die, is a question that has been extraordinarily present to me these past 8 or 9 months as I spent time with Robert Browning as he approached the end of his life on earth. But, in all the times I tried to explore this question and to prepare Robert for his transition, he never really wanted to talk about his death.

Robert, in the few years that I knew him, was always too busy living his life, even from the bed he was confined to in the last month’s of his life. I started to wonder whether Robert was too afraid to wonder what happens when we die.

Well he set me straight real fast. Robert’s faith was steadfast and he wasn’t afraid at all. He told me several times he was ready to meet God face to face, whenever God was ready to call him home.

Still, he wouldn’t tell me what he wanted for his funeral. While, some time before I ever arrived, he quietly made arrangements to have his ashes interred in our columbarium, he didn’t really expect a funeral. Which means he never selected readings. So I chose them. The first I chose because it reminded me of a story Gary Alexander told me of seeing Robert at the symphony, dutifully, step by step, making his way to his seat way up in one of the higher mezzanines. Robert loved fine music and I know it was one of the things he loved most about Ascension. We bought him a radio when he was bed bound so he could listen to WFMT, which he did, every day. The glory yearned for and prophesied by Isaiah seemed fitting for what I hope Robert is now enjoying in a new way.

I chose our epistle from the first letter of John, because I wanted to reassure us that while we don’t know the answer to that question, what happens when we die, that we are already God’s beloved children.

And the Gospel reading I chose because it made me think of all of you, gathered here today and how you have indeed laid down your lives like shepherds for Robert. Not in the dramatic, stepping in front of a bullet sort of way, but in the quiet, tender, and caring sort of way. In the ordinary way that understands that this is our duty as Christians.

We care not only for the living, but also for the dead. And here you are, on a Friday late morning, gathered to do so. Setting aside the demands of your daily lives to be here. To offer a solemn requiem mass in honor of one of your own. You have handled the paperwork required by the various agencies upon death. You have provided for the hiring of musicians. You have committed to carrying a candle, to light the way for Robert as he enters and leaves this church one last time. You have kindled the coals for incense so we can cense him for a final time before laying him to rest. You have put on vestments and sung the words of scripture. You are in the loft recording this mass so that those who cannot be with us in person today can witness this blessed offering. You have shown up and given your time freely and graciously to be here.

It is what you do. Because you are the church. Because we are Christians. We are sheep, and the Lord is our shepherd, yes. But we are also shepherds, who tend to the sheep, who tend to one another. Who lay down our lives for each other in deceptively small and ordinary ways.

These past few weeks, since the death of our friend Robert, I have learned something of what happens to us when we die. I have learned that when we in the church die, someone calls to make sure the arrangements are made to collect your remains. Someone sends an email to make sure that a funeral will take place. Someone sends another email to make sure there are acolytes for that funeral. Someone hires the musicians. Someone plays the old Baptist hymn on the organ that you sang to the priest from your deathbed. Someone bakes a coffee cake and brings fresh flowers. Someone makes sure everyone knows when and where to be for this final send off.

You all have offered to me and to one another a glimpse into the meaning of resurrection.

All of these, simple, tender acts: resurrection sightings. Glimpses into God’s heavenly kingdom already at hand. Glimpses into that heavenly kingdom, where we wait in joyful hope to fully join Robert someday.