She Will Rise

A Funeral Homily

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

There is nothing that I can say to make any of this right. Because it isn’t right. And do not listen to anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.

It’s different when you’re preaching a funeral for someone who’s pushing a century. We still grieve, of course; we still love them and we miss them; but there’s a certain sense of closure, of a long life come to a natural and inevitable end. But Teresa was young. Her kids are still in school. And she had so much life in her, didn’t she? She was so well-loved and loved so well.

She did everything right. What I mean by that, is that Teresa prioritized the real. She focused on people, not on things; on memories, not material possessions. Family, faith, and friends: that’s what makes for a full life, a life well-lived. And she got that, in ways that most of us typically don’t. Teresa loved her mother, loved her husband, loved her children, loved her friends.

She loved fishing and nature and camping and a good IPA. She made time to prioritize her marriage, especially on every anniversary. She made time to prioritize her friends, Friendsday Wednesday once a month. She made time to prioritize her mother, with phone calls every Monday morning. And she made time to prioritize her girls, with trips, with adventures. If anyone were keeping score, Teresa would get full marks.

When she was diagnosed, she comforted her loved ones, reassured them; all along she consoled us. You could confide in her, in her honesty, her selflessness, her sensibleness. And, yes, she was involved here at church, with youth group, with office accounting, with Confirmation. Because the way that we love God is by loving those around us, including all us sainted sinners here at St Peter’s. “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master.”

She didn’t deserve this. Humans have this instinct, this moral intuition, that bad things shouldn’t happen to good people. It isn’t right; it isn’t fair. It scares us when they do. We try to justify it, try to explain it away. “God must’ve needed another angel,” right? You ever hear that one? Or how about, “It’s all part of the greater plan.” And whose plan would that be, exactly? God’s? What kind of a monster would that then make Him?

Or worse, we play the blame game: “If only I had noticed; if only I had known; if only I had done something differently.” Teacher, who sinned, that this man was born blind? I realize that this is our attempt at a twisted sort of comfort, to try to make things make sense. But it isn’t fair to us, nor to those we love.

In a perfect world, a just world, bad things would only happen to bad people. But that’s simply not how this world works; this fallen world, this broken world. Look no further than Jesus. Him we hold to be the only perfect man, God on Earth. And look what this world did to Him, what we did to Him. He didn’t deserve it. There’s no justice there, no karma, no fate. The Wheel of Fortune grinds as it turns. In the words of William Munny: “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”

Bad things happen to good people for one reason and one reason only: because this is a broken world; a world that does not function as it ought to, as it was intended to. And everyone here knows that, today of all days. We don’t need rationalizations, or platitudes, or blame. What we need is salvation! “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Here I want to be as clear as I can be: God did not will this. God did not do this. God cannot work evil; if He could, then He wouldn’t be God. It is not our Father’s will that we endure such needless suffering, not His will that we grieve, nor that we die. So why then doesn’t He do something about it? Why doesn’t God get off His throne, to come down here in the mud and the blood, to save us, to raise us from death?

Oh, but He has. Oh, but He does! This is the Good News of Jesus Christ our Lord: that in this Man, God is with us, God is one of us; here to share our burdens and our griefs, our laughter and our tears, our sufferings and our death. God does not conquer Creation by snapping His almighty fingers and forcing the world to be good. No, He conquers sin and death and hell by taking it fully within Himself, into His wounds, there to drown all evil in the infinite ocean of His grace.

Love doesn’t force. Life doesn’t kill. But neither does He ever give us up nor let us go.

Teresa’s faith was paramount, especially in these last couple years. My old Confessions professor once said, “Do you want to improve your prayer life? Get cancer!” He said this not from flippancy but from personal experience. Where was God when Teresa endured all of what she did? Well, I can tell you this much: He wasn’t aloft and aloof on a cloud. No, God in Christ was with her every step along the way, in her wounds, in her faith, bearing the Cross alongside her.

God did not want this, did not will this, and He will not let it stand! In her Baptism, Teresa shared fully in Christ’s own death, already died for her, that she need never fear death again, and in Christ’s own eternal life already here begun. He has preceded her into the grave, smashing down the gates of hell, tearing open the road up to life: for as surely as Christ is risen, Teresa shares in His Resurrection! For when Jesus Christ has claimed you, nothing and no-one else can. That includes death. That includes the grave. The tomb can have no power over Christ.

I share with you one of the best and most terrible stories that I know. Martin Luther had a little daughter, his favorite child, Magdalena. And she died of the plague. He sat with her the entire time.

And when she finally passed, hearing her father’s promise that she was going to a better Father, they brought her little coffin into her room, and Luther couldn’t take it. That’s when he broke. He ran out of the house, out onto the lawn, but he could still hear them, still hear the strike of the hammer as they nailed shut the lid, and he whirled around and roared: “Hammer away! She will rise on Doomsday!”

That’s the Christian faith! To face the worst this world can throw at us and shout out our defiance! Because we know the God we have. We know the One who went before us to conquer death and hell. And we know that as surely as He is risen, we too shall arise! Witness the final promise of Revelation:

The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them … He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away … Behold! I make all things new!

This is all I have to give to you today: Jesus Christ. Not platitudes, not justifications, certainly not any sort of explanation. Just Jesus Christ, the God who shares in all our sorrows and raises us to life. Christ has died; Christ is risen; Teresa lives in Him. And nothing—not disease, not cancer, least of all death—nothing can ever snatch her from those loving and crucified hands. We will see Teresa again, at the great banquet of life that follows death. We shall all be reunited in our own good time.

For if Jesus has taught us anything, it’s that death can have no dominion over love.

This is the promise of God. And God does not break promises.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.