We Will Remember
The title of this sermon is “We Will Remember.” We remember through our naming and acknowledging of our reality. We do that in part by how we frame our grief and name God. As church goers, I have found that more often than not we have a hard time with sorrow, sadness, and grief. We often times wish it away, stuff it down, or use spiritual catch phrases that we think are appropriate. I have caught myself putting on a mask to hide the cracks behind. When asked how I’m doing, it is all to easy to reply “Good, how are you?” We have a hard time acknowledging our grief in this space because we feel like we should have it all together as Christians. We feel like it is against our spirituality to grieve or to mourn. But for a moment today, I want us to feel what we are feeling. I want us as a community to name our grief, to name our loss, and to acknowledge where we are. If that means a spirit of celebration, celebrate. If that means you don a spirit of mourning, mourn. Today and every day I want to invite us to feel how we feel and to acknowledge the reality of our being.
One of my undergraduate professors often tells the story about a funeral he presided over. A fellow pastor and his son passed away in a tragic car accident. The community was in tatters over the loss of their friend, loved one, and leader. At the funeral, the pastor’s wife was in a strangely euphoric mood. She greeted everyone with a huge smile and hug. She repeatedly said, “Praise God!” And yet, it was apparent to my professor that all this energy, all the smiles, and all the praises were but a façade. She was doing her very best to maintain the appearance that everything is alright. She desperately clung to the hope that “God has a plan,” but you could see the reality of her situation eating at her. She, like many of us, have not been given the tools to explore our faith beyond the joys we experience in worship. We have not been given the permission to experience the relief of lament. Our faith is not only for the good times but is meant to be all encompassing. It is meant to give voice to all areas of our human experience. God is with us in good and in ill, and we are given permission in our liturgy to experience all of that in worship. The Christian life is not the transaction of our justification before God, it's not so much about the destination of heaven, but it is the continual process of restoration and reconciliation with God and one another. It is a way of salvation that is meant to permeate all areas of our life, faith is meant to grow in us as we experience light, darkness, rain, and snow. This way of salvation is a journey that begins with our naming of God.
Our naming of God reveals what we believe about God. It betrays the hope we find in God. When we say that God is our Lord we might imagine that God is watching over all things and sustaining us. When we say that God is Creation’s good architect, we might imagine God’s overarching plan and act of creating. When we say that God is our Father, Mother, or Parent we imagine the loving influence of a guardian watching over us, caring for us, and nurturing us. A love like the love of a parental figure, but far exceeding it in kind and in magnitude. Each of these names expands our understanding of who God is and the shape of God’s saving work. These names serve as metaphors because they get us in the ballpark of describing God. None of these terms alone can describe the vastness of God, but they do widen our understanding of God’s saving work. We shall see that when we name God Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, we acknowledge and see God’s grace before us, ahead of us, and sustaining us.
God is our Creator. God did not create out of a need or a sense of being incomplete. Out of the fullness of God’s love God created. It was God’s will to be in a genuine and loving relationship with creation. God’s love is not one of manipulation, coercion, or force. God desired that we would freely come to love God through our own free will. The garden of Eden paints the picture of humanity dwelling in covenant with God as we care for the rest of creation. The option to choose love also gave us the option to choose ill. It brought about death and evil as we know it today, but God did not leave us without a witness. God our Creator did not leave us without a witness. When we say that God is Creator, we acknowledge God’s grace which has come before us. We acknowledge that God was at work in us before we became Christians. We notice this work in our appreciation for beauty, in our inklings for justice, and in our search for meaning. When we name God Creator we should think of Prevenient grace. Prevenient grace shows that it is God’s grace which create the conditions whereby humanity may have right relationship with God. Prevenient grace describes a God that enables us to respond and cooperate in God’s saving work. Prevenient grace is the in-breaking of God’s activity in the world. That grace convicts us so that we might recognize that we are sinners and a desire to be restored to wholeness.
God is also our redeemer. God is the one who freely became human for us and for our salvation. Jesus who is fully God, became human so that we might be reconciled to God. God acts in the grace of Jesus Christ through the power of Spirit to make us one with God again by faith. While we were still sinners, Jesus came to earth to proclaim good news to the poor, the powerless, the hungry, and the sick. Jesus the Messiah experienced the fullness of humanity through the power of the Holy Spirit. He wept, he sang, he broke bread with his friends, experienced the intimacy of family, he lived, and he died. Jesus, who is God, was fully human. He experienced all these things. He wept at the death of his friend. He turned water into wine at the celebration of a wedding. He came so that we might experience life to the fullest. He came so that we might experience the full breadth of humanity. He redeems our humanity, but he does not tell us to leave it behind. He redeems our sinfulness but does not say that any emotion is bad or wrong. We might think of justifying grace. By God’s redeeming action we are forgiven our sin, freed from guilt, and assured in our relationship with God. We are given freedom not from grief or struggle, but we are given freedom to see that death and grief and loss has an end. God came so that we would not be caught in the hopeless web of death, but that we might have life as we give and receive love.
We have looked at yesterday and today, but God’s character reaches into tomorrow. It reaches into our future hopes and longing. God desires that we not only experience the first fruits of reconciliation, that we would not only experience forgiveness, but that we would grow in our relationship with God and with our neighbor. The Holy Spirit, one with God and Jesus, dwells with us in our hearts. The Holy Spirit is the divine presence in our midst that prays on our behalf and sustains us in our faith. The Christian life is not just an ideal that we adopt, but a process and reality that we live into. The Holy Spirit invites us to imagine new areas of growth even us our hearts mature in love. We look forward to our love of God, neighbor, and ourselves budding in the intimacy that grows with time, commitment, and intentionality. God invites us to experience more than just forgiveness of sin but experience the graces and glories of a life with God. God our Redeemer has in mind our holiness by which we realize our love perfected, where we experience the mercies of God anew, where we taste and see in part the love of God everlasting. God our Redeemer gets us into the house of God, but the sustaining grace of God invites us to explore and experience the rest of the house. We are invited into an experience that is fuller and deeper than we can imagine. We are invited to experience faith in the bright lights of the morning sunrise and experience faith under the dim lights of the stars. We are invited to experience everything in God’s health by the love of God our sustainer.
We speak of naming God because God’s love is everlasting. It was with us before we were Christians, when we became Christians, and will be with us until the end of time. As we enter in this way of salvation which we call the Christian life we do not leave behind a single part of ourselves. We do not forget our past, we do not forget the people who brought us into faith. We do not leave behind emotions and we certainly don’t rank them best-to-worst. We are invited to experience God’s grace anew. Today we enter the room of remembrance. We remember the saints of our church who have passed over the last year. It’s a room for some of us that brings weeping, others celebration. Some are somber and some may celebrate life. It’s a room that we are all in today, but it is not our end. Death is not our final destination nor was it the final destination of our friends and loved ones. It is a room in God’s house which has no beginning or end. Even as we sit here to mourn and to celebrate, our loved one’s have the delight of seeing God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer face-to-face. What we experience as a reflection in a mirror, our loved one’s experience in fullness. We will remember this room, this feeling, and this day because God has willed that we would experience the fullness of life. For all the rooms like these and for all of those to come, we name God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer because God willed that we would be in loving relationship with each other and with God. We will remember because one day, we will find ourselves in the same room as these loved ones again.