A sermon for the friends of Hope Marie

A few weeks ago a beautiful friend of mine named Hope Marie passed away. Below is a sermon I wrote for her memorial service.

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I was Hope’s youth pastor for her highschool years and like many teens they were very challenging for her, however there were a few beautiful things that stuck out to me about Hope.

(As others have said) First, she was incredibly focused, hard-working and determined to get where she wanted to get in life. She had a clear plan and she was willing to put in the work to get there. I found that a rarity for someone her age, and I appreciated her tenacity.

But second, her tenacity was balanced by a deep focus on the relationships in her life. I think she realized that what really matters most is people, and so she loved all of you very much. I could go on about her life, but others before me have done a far better job of that than I ever could so instead I want to offer answers to, two questions.

The first question is this: where is God in our suffering?

Most of us believe in a God who is “out there” and in control of the universe. We envision the world as a big machine and so God is the person pulling the strings and adjusting the levers of the universe – keeping it all running. At times this idea of God can be very comforting to us, because it offers the idea that someone is in control: nothing is happening without a purpose, so within the craziness of life there is some sense of order.

This can be very comforting until tragedy strikes because then all of the questions come flooding over us. If God is “in control” then why didn’t he stop this? If God is really pulling the levers of the universe then did he in fact, cause tragedy to happen and if that’s the case, how can we really call him good? These are important and extremely difficult questions for people of faith to answer but I think we may have some insight in the Christian tradition by looking to Jesus. If we embrace the idea that Jesus, was in some mysterious way God among us, then this entire view of God as “out there” in the “heavens” somewhere is perhaps, not a very Christian way of thinking about God. Perhaps the problem isn’t our questions, which are all spot on, but actually the way we view God.  In Jesus we have a view of God that offers the following answer to the question, where is God in the midst of our suffering, “he’s right here, suffering alongside us.” In the Christian tradition God dies on the cross, God loses, God undergoes suffering. Obviously, this isn’t a rational argument that explains away suffering but is a way of viewing God that may bring us some comfort.

The second question I wanted to turn our thoughts toward today is: How can we better embrace the beauty of life here and now?

I think too often we fail to embrace the beauty and fragility of life and it’s not until we’re sitting here that we’re forced to admit to ourselves that there will come a time when it will end. This is why death, especially of a young person can be so traumatic because it catches us off our guard, it blindsides us and at least for a moment it forces us to confront the idea of our own mortality. We don’t like to think about our own mortality. Which is why, we spend our lives suppressing and running away from the reality of death. It represents our greatest anxiety – something literally unimaginable. That’s scary and it makes sense why we avoid it. But here’s the trick, it’s not until we face that reality head on, that we’re able to fully embrace our life here and now.

What’s interesting is that Christian tradition which I embrace, has at our worst, been guilty of this as well, but in a different way. At times we’ve been part of the problem by saying something like, “This life is just practice, a warmup, or a dress-rehearsal for the one to come – life begins at death.” But the trick here is that by turning this life into a waiting room, we again drained it of it’s meaning and beauty.

So I want to reject both of the options above: the first being a refusal to embrace life because we’re pretending that it will go on forever, or in the second example, a refusal to embrace life because we’re saying life doesn’t begin until we die.

You see, I think we’ve approached the Bible, our religious traditions, and perhaps even this memorial service with the wrong question, we came asking, “Is there life after death?” when what we should have been asking is this, “IS THERE LIFE BEFORE DEATH?” To me that is the key question and I believe that in Jesus we see the answer, and it is a resounding “Yes!” Jesus said, I have come that you may have life and life to the fullest. So what might this life look like?

Perhaps it’s a bit simplistic and old fashioned, but I’d say life and God are best experienced in the act of love. When we turn to the people on our right and our left and say you are beautiful. It’s the times we spend lingering over a meal with the people that mean everything to us. It’s the moments when we take a stand for justice and peace and goodness in this world. At it’s best, the Christian tradition gives us hope in the face of death and the courage to embrace life.

Let us pray.