Day 180: 6/29/13- Gram's Funeral

Day 180: 6/29/13- Gram's Funeral
New Thing- The Celebration of Gram's Life         
Inspiration: Gram                   
Time: About an hour     
Bottom Line: We love you, Gram. May you rest in peace. 

  Reflection: 

Sermon for the Funeral Of Jean F. Filliettaz

June 29 @ St. Peter’s Tunkhannock

Isaiah 61:1-3

Psalm 23

1 Cor 15:20-26,35-38,42-44,53-58

John 14:1-6

Today is a hard and beautiful for us. It is the day that we have come together to say goodbye to Jean—mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend and foe if she had to be. (And God help you if she was yours—finger gesture) We come together to give thanks for her life, and to our God. We come to mourn and we come to rejoice. We come to the cross and we come to the empty tomb. We come because of the love that we have known—Gram’s love and God’s love displayed to us in the promise of eternal life.

Gram has always been a dominant figure in my life—and to say that I have and will miss her dearly is an understatement. She taught me so very much about life, and more about faith then I think she even knew.

Her life showed me that faith and a rootedness in Christ do not depend on the world. That the only thing a person needs to have a deeply rooted life in God is God himself. That it is more important to stake in claim in this life and own it than to be wishy-washy. And that a feisty and daring spirit matches Jesus’ trump over the grave.

Allow me to elaborate: As Aunt Dee said in her beautiful reflection, Gram moved around—a lot. I bet it would really take us a great deal of counting to add up all the places she lived. She never had a truly permanent home even in her retirement. Yet, this did not discourage Gram. She was always happy to find peace where she landed and was a master at making the temporary places where she lived feel like a place of history and rootedness. Some of my happiest memories are of her cottage in Connecticut and at Tree Tops where she lived in joy and comfort—knowing peace, even if was not permanent. This constant movement inspired me to chose the Gospel reading for her funeral.

“Jesus said, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many mansions. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’"

Those words have given me much comfort thinking about Gram. She knew the place where she was going—a home that was prepared for her, prepared for us. A true home that can never be taken away—never. And it is everlasting, and it is holy, and it is home. Truly home.

In her death, she has found her true home—a place that has been prepared for her and for us by Jesus himself.  A place that she can dwell eternally in peace. She knew the way to that place in her earthly existence and she knows it now as her perpetual reality. Home at last.

This woman—this fierce woman—also taught me about determination of the will as a mark of the belief in the resurrection. Gram looked at the world and didn’t see the limitations that many people see--trapped as we can often be in the “if onlys” or “I can’t” or an excuse for misery. But the gospel message—the message that in Christ, God has taken all the brokenness, the pain, the death of this world and turned it on its head. The message that he has saved us from the graves and tombs that keep us in death—both in this life and the next—that message is one of joy and straight up defiance in what the world says is possible. Declaring that in Christ—all things are possible!

Well, Gram lived that way.

For example, when I was a little girl, Gram would always give Ali and I her special “homemade” oatmeal cookies. We loved these and ate them in ravenous quantities. Yet, one day, I happened to find a package in the trash that had once contained a sleeve of Archway brand oatmeal cookies and I put two and to together.

“Gram!” I said, “what is this?” I thought you made these cookies. She looked straight at me and said,

“Hillary, its time I told you the truth. Those bastards at Archway stole my cookie recipe.”

The woman never even missed a beat. That is a defiance and a determination that is unwavering. You only had to be next to her when the finger came out—the one that would twist with an air that made the person it was directed at certain that she was in fact plugging into God Himself—to know that this was a woman who put no stock in the limitations of this world. She had gumption, and moxy, and defiance that was genuinely Christ like.

In the 1 Corinthian reading, talking about the glory and power of the resurrection Paul writes: “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised?’ Fool!...’Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’”

Where indeed?

You see, this is the kind of mentality and true gumption that Gram naturally embodied and that we are called to have as a people who believe in this hope filled, powerful, life-changing, and life-saving God of ours. We are not called to be wishy-washy. No, we are called to be, like Gram, strong in our faith and convictions. We should believe that we can plug into God and not believe that the powers of this world—not even death—have the final say in anything. No, that power is reserved for our mighty God alone.

So, what indeed can hurt us?

What can sting us?

Being without a permanent home? No this will not hurt us. For, Jesus has already prepared for us our true home.

What about the pain, the brokenness, the hurting in this world? No these can only temporarily hurt us. For we have a God that has given us the promise of everlasting life.

But death? Surly death will be the end to joy, the end of our hope, right? Ha. As Gram would say, “I don’t think so.” No in Jesus, we have been given such a sure foundation, that nothing—not even death will be the end of the love that God will have for us. We can be as confident about that love as Gram was—and is—see it as she now does face to face.

And so today we join with Gram, and all those who we love but see no more. Yes, we will miss her—but we can let our hearts be untroubled knowing that she has a place prepared for her, prepared for us—a place of rest and repose. A true home. We can let our hearts be untroubled knowing that we have a God who’s love for us stretched beyond the limits of this world—stretched beyond even death. We can let our hearts be untroubled knowing that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is a hope that we can built a sure foundation on.

We love you Gram, we thank God for you, and we Thank God for the gift of his son, Jesus Christ—the resurrection and the life.