Take baptisms like they're life and death. Take funerals like they're death and life.

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Exodus 16:2-4, 9-13, Psalm 78; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35

Funerals have become a defining part of St Margaret’s work in the last year. They vary enormously and the pandemic has exacerbated this. I took a funeral last year where no one attended. The only local mourners, a brother and son, were shielding due to age and health.  I visited them before the service and gave them an order of service through their flat window. They died recently within a week of each other and had their funeral together this week. Then there was a burial in the winter of a woman recently become a great, great, great grandmother; It was a celebration of 6 generations of mainly women. There have been those who were unhappy enough to end their own lives – with the terrible, palpable anger that is left behind.

Taking funerals keeps you honest. To be in regular touch with the reality of death is a reminder of the character of life: Brief, complicated, with an all too often abrupt ending. Not many of us get the word of the Lord as it came to Hezekiah: ‘Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.’ None of us make it out alive. We instinctively believe in last minute reprieves. We are the heroes of our own stories and, dutifully taught by the movies, we believe we may be the exception and spared the inevitable tragedy and premature closure that is the reality of most lives. Rare are the deaths of our ancestors: ‘and he died old, fat and sated with life’. Sated with life.

I did some research on resilience in the army and learned of a strategy called premeditatio malorum the premeditation of evil. It’s basically thinking forwards through any scenario and imagining the worst that could happen. I’ve actually always done this – so on trains or planes, or when Rhiannon’s driving – I imagine some dreadful accident and what I would do. I was pleased to learn this was an ancient practice of preparedness endorsed by psychologists, not just neurosis. But I suppose the slightly unrealistic thing is that in any of these thought experiments you always end up surviving and winning through. Again, like the movies, by a whisker and nerve you get through, win the girl and are back in time for tea and medals. Taking funerals is an urgent reminder that this is not everyone’s story.

The borderline of death puts our lives in context. If you were given 2 weeks to live, what would you be doing? Would you still be in church? Would you be in church more often?! What if it were a year? And if you would radically alter your life, cut short to a year, is it worth starting to make some of those changes now? On the other hand, if your first thought is, “no, I’d probably just go on as I am” then that should be very reassuring.

I’ve mentioned my ridiculous youtube yoga teacher before who loves a banal expression. They’re often repeated in the vicarage: “you are exactly where you need to be.” There is a truth to that phrase though. Part of the point of yoga or any form of exercise, and prayer – is to be just in the moment. And if you live in a house with dogs and housework, and admin and babies – there’s usually some little hand trying to pull you away. But if you’re doing something which is enjoyable and good for you; That is at harmony with your values and sense of self; Then that gives us the best chance of that feeling we are in the right place.

It’s a truth of all religions that human beings are most themselves, most self-aware and closest to God when they are engaged in the present moment. It’s when we’re at our best, and there’s a sense in which any activity if done with 100% presence of mind, without distraction, is prayerful. So if right now you’re fully engaged with this sermon, and you’d be happy to be here even if the world is about to end – which between the weather and the pandemic is not unlikely – then you’re in the right place.

In today’s letter to the Ephesians Paul starts by begging the church ‘to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called’.  For the early church the threat of persecution and violence kept the church honest. You were staking your life on your faith. There’s nothing wishy, washy; they’re no agnostics, in churches under fire.

We’re not persecuted but we have been living with a sense of threat over the last 18 months. Everyone has learned a lesson in dependence.  We are better connected now. But do we still feel strong in our own self-dependence? St Paul reminds us that we are only called ‘with humility and gentleness’. We cannot learn dependence on God until our self-dependence is crushed by the wheel of life. It’s a question for each of us, having gone through this pandemic, has the threat of weakness and death made us more prayerful; Or have we just drawn up our defences tighter? Or do we still believe we are invincible?

I’m not wishing for the church to be under any more threat; More often than not it seems to be a threat to itself; but affluence and security make everything less important. For the last hundred years church attendance has suffered against leisure activities. The bicycle, amateur sports, shopping on Sunday, Netflix, all chipping away at numbers in church. If Church deals with the most serious of subjects: eternity, meaning, good and evil, community, births, marriages, deaths; It has fallen prey to the lightest of subjects: entertainment.

Not that church is boring.  We have a pipe organ, the body of Christ, and we can even sing and drink coffee together now. It’s an interesting thought experiment. To say to a twenty-year-old: “The world is ending. There is one day remaining, what will you do with it?” Would he come to church with you?  Or think that’s perfect for one more season of Jack Bauer before we all go.

And I wonder whether the effect of the pandemic will be to make people more aware of their mortality? I suspect that having missed out on so much entertainment, it’s not moral seriousness but our social life we’ll be drawn back to. Spanish Flu was followed by the Roaring 20s. Still, God save us from all that Jazz.

I came across a wonderful expression this week concerning the seriousness of ministry: That we are to baptise, like it’s life and death, And to take funerals, like it’s death and life. Being reminded of our mortality is not necessarily to be gloomy and fatalistic.  It’s just a reminder to be engaged with our lives in their finitude; To not just drift through seasons of entertainment, but to engage with the seriousness of life in its sadness and its beauty. As Billy Joel sings in ‘All about Soul’: “it’s all about joy that comes out of sorrow.” What is the resurrection if it’s not bringing joy out of sorrow?

So Paul writes from prison to the church in Ephesus, reminding them of the seriousness of their calling; Asking them to lead lives worthy of this calling; The call is to be the church. To be this ‘body, in one spirit, with one hope, one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of all’. We are called ‘to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ’ ‘building [ourselves] up in love’. 

I had a glance through the service register this week and was astonished to find that over the last three months adult Sunday attendance, despite the pandemic, has been higher this year than the same period in any year in the last decade.  And that’s before we count those who join us faithfully online each week. This has been a hard year. All of our lives have been touched by death, If only hearing the dreadful figures each day, the national memento mori. As a church, as people of the resurrection, we are here to proclaim that every day is a death and life matter. We are here following a calling to build up the body of Christ in love. So let us stay with the most serious things of life. Let us find the present moment, where we can. And let us now find that vocation, to bring something to church, to build one another up in love. To bring joy out of sorrow. Amen.