Homily for the Funeral of Alice Jermyn, Christ Church, Bobcaygeon, January 2014

Funerals are a time of paradox for us as Christians. We are in grief. But we are celebrating as Alice joins the other saints of God in glory, in an eternal life which remains a mystery to us.

You have heard about how this servant of Christ was much loved and appreciated during her lifetime, how she was dedicated to her family, her church and her community.

Our prayers are with the Jermyn family as they grieve. She lived a long and fall life. She will be greatly missed.

Yet as John tells us in the Gospel: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Jesus goes to prepare a place for us. It is a place we can’t really comprehend. But since we believe in Christ as the way, the truth and the life, then we can also have confidence that as Paul reminds us---nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, including death.

That message of confidence and consolation isn’t meant to say that we shouldn’t grieve.

When anyone who is near and dear to us dies, we must go through that process of grief, which must include mourning and tears. We have sustained a real loss.

The prophet Isaiah reminds us that God sustains the faint and the powerless, and will renew our strength, even in grief, so we shall be raised up with wings like eagles and shall run, and not be weary.

That is the message we have had from God from the time of creation, a message reinforced with the incarnation of Jesus, and proclaimed during this season of Epiphany . Jesus is the light of the world.

Even in times of darkness and grief, we are sustained by our faith. We know that as John’s gospel teaches us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”