“Abide with me”

I was not expecting to officiate at two funerals this week. But my return from vacation coincided with the deaths of two pillars of St. Paul’s. Whether or not you know Woody Litz and Rick Adams, they and their families have done much to shape the parish community you experience. Their time at St. Paul’s is measured not by years but by decades and generations. Woody was Rick’s uncle. Rick was baptized here in 1952 and confirmed in 1963.

I can’t begin to count how many funerals I’ve officiated since my ordination in 1992. Some of these funerals have been for people I hardly know. Others have been for people I deeply love. While each funeral has been unique, they’ve all shared at least two things in common.

First, they do not sentimentalize death. In the Episcopal Church we do not use phrases which trivialize grief and loss. “God needed another angel in heaven” is not a phrase you’ll find in the Prayer Book. Instead, we face our mortality. We stand at the open grave in the cemetery or the open niche in the columbarium and speak the truth. We commit the “body to the ground: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

As Frederick Buechner wrote about funerals in his book Whistling in the Dark: “Celebrate the life by all means, but face up to the death of that life. Weep all the tears you have in you to weep, because whatever may happen next, if anything does, this has happened. Something precious and irreplaceable has come to an end and something in you has come to an end with it. Funerals put a period after the sentence's last word. They close a door.”

But here is the second thing all of these funerals have in common. They take the next faithful step toward hope and joy. As Buechner continues, “But if death is the closing of one door, [Jesus] seems to say, it is the opening of another one.” As we pray in the Commendation, “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

How can we possibly shout alleluia in the face of death? As we read in the Prayer Book: “The liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy. It finds all its meaning in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised. The liturgy, therefore, is characterized by joy. … This joy, however, does not make human grief unchristian. The very love we have for each other in Christ brings deep sorrow when we are parted by death. … So, while we rejoice that one we love has entered into the nearer presence of our Lord, we sorrow in sympathy with those who mourn.”

If I had my choice, I would not be officiating these funerals this week. I’d much rather visit Woody or chat with Rick in Burrows Commons. But one of the paradoxical gifts of priesthood is the invitation to stand with the Adams and Litz families as we simultaneously shed our tears and raise our voices in song. I believe Henry Francis Lyte may capture this paradox of sorrow and joy most fully in the fourth stanza of his great hymn, “Abide with Me”:

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;

shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies;

heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;

in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.