memorial Service

In the month of November as the year begins to die there is a long tradition that we remember those who have died whom we have loved and lost. As we remember so those memories both bless us and burn us. We are blessed by the love we have shared. The lives we have shared and the good times yes and even the difficult times we have shared together. But we also sense the absence of the loves of our lives. But by now we have learned that love and loss go together. If you love you are sure to suffer loss. But if you don’t love - well you suffer even more. And so most of us in the fine resilience of the human soul are willing to try loving again and again. Even though we understand how vulnerable that makes us to loss. For we know that we can’t live without love and loss. It is as they say part of our DNA.

Love and loss are part of what it is to be human. Built into the very nature of life itself. The darkening days of November remind us that one way or another the shadow of  loss forever darkens the light of our lives. The more we love and the more attached we are to our hopes and our dreams shared with those we love so the more deeply we feel their loss. Each of us here today has our own story to tell. Our own memories to evoke. That one person whose presence we miss so much, and all the memories that remembering them brings back and makes alive again. Those memories are scored into our soul. At first they are raw. In time they will mellow into  the warmth of loving recall. November is the month for remembering. That is why we have invited you here today on this the first Sunday of November.

Next Sunday is Remembrance Sunday. On that day we remember those who have given their lives and those who have died as a result of war. Last Tuesday was All Saints Day. On that  day we remember the saints whose lives were good and holy and pointed us towards the goodness and the holiness of God. Last Wednesday was All Souls Day. On that day we remember own dear loved ones who have left this life to be with God and rest in the peace of his nearer presence and his safe keeping. Yes and even yesterday we remembered:

‘Remember remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot!’

So November is the month of remembrance. And for Christians remembrance is a very positive thing. Remembering can have the effect of making the past and its people live again. Let me recount a story to explain what I mean. A couple discover that a baby is on the way. In their joy and excitement they rush around to tell the wife’s family including of course her mother the good news. Sadly and very suddenly, three days later that mother dies. The baby is born nine months later in early December. The first thing that the new parent s do when mum and baby emerge from the maternity ward is to visit the grave of her mother. The baby grows through childhood and adolescence into a young woman and although she has never known her grandmother yet in a way she does. For her parents have always told her of her. They have  shared their memories of her. She lives in their hearts and to some extent she also lives even in the heart of a grandchild who never met her. Those whom we have loved and lost live on in our memories as we recall them, speak of them and remember them. And as we pass our memories on to our children and our grandchildren. Someone passed onto me a poem about loss and remembering the other day. I’ll read part of it:

‘They are not dead who live in hearts they leave behind

 In those whom they have blessed they live a life again

 And shall live through the years – Eternal life,

And grow each day more beautiful

As time declares their good,

Forgets the rest, and proves their immortality’.

Yes their living in our memories is I believe a sign of a much more fundamental living. A sign of immortality. You see because we have more than memories – treasured and precious though they undoubtedly are. We have hope. And we have hope because God our loving Father remembers us. There are so many ways in which God remembers us his children in our need. Just as any loving father has his children always on his mind attentive to their needs so God our great father remembers us in our need. I want to concentrate on just two but very fundamental needs – which all of us have and which are met by God. And these needs are met by Jesus Christ the beloved Son Of God.

First our need for hope in the face of death. We shall all die. What hope do we have? God remembered us in our need. He gave us his Son born of Mary. Jesus of Nazareth a human being and yet one with God. As a human being he died the death that all of will die. If that had been the end of him that would have been the end of the story and the end of our hope. But it wasn’t the end of him, God raised him from death. His tomb was empty. But much more importantly he lives in us and in God. And if by faith we cling to him then we too shall live even though death will come our way. Death did not have the last word over Jesus. If we are joined to him death will not have the last word over us. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the words of Jesus friend St Peter:

‘Blessed be the God and father of Our Lord Jesus Christ who in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’

That is our great hope for ourselves and for those who have died. But what of us and our loss? What about the agony of grief? Well here God remembers us too. God the Beloved Father of Jesus saw his Son in painful death upon the cross. There is the pain of grief etched upon the very heart of God. He knows what we feel in our loss. He feels what we feel in our loss. At the heart of all things at the heart of the universe on the throne of heaven there is a heart that aches with grief. They say don’t they that only those who have suffered what you have suffered really know how you feel. God knows the grief in our hearts. When we take it to him or cry our to him he knows how we feel. You can pray to a God who understands and who remembers you because he remembers the grief in his own heart. And there is our hope .

For our loved ones who have died and for ourselves in our grieving for them, as the shadows fall on this November evening and the darkness comes. Yet the light of hope that comes from God shines out into the darkness of death and of loss with the hope of a new dawn and a new day.