Funeral Sermon - Exalting God

Homily for Funeral for Connie Hird (ne Stockdale)

The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. Ps 46

We’re gathered to remember and celebrate and mourn the loss of Connie, Constance, Mom, Grandma. This is a very difficult time, and so we are wise to call upon the God of all comfort to be with us as we struggle through these moments.

Grief is the price we pay for love. What is grief if not love persevering?. And in truth grief is the last act of love we have to give those we have loved. Where there is deep grief, there has been and is a great love.

We gather to mourn the loss to us of Connie, and also to respect Connie’s deeply held understanding of life, and her deeply held beliefs, we are also here to acknowledge her graduation into the next phase of her life,

because to be absent from us, to be absent from the body of Christ, is to be at home with Jesus.

The psalmist in the passage that was read today uses the word “steadfast”. And steadfastness would be a good way to describe the impact on Connie’s life of having made the conscious choice to love God, to enter into the life of a disciple of Jesus.

Connie loved that passage of Scripture, Psalm 57. For Connie the words of this Psalm were both something she authentically lived in the day to day; and these words also described something she aspired to deepen in her life.

The Psalm also highlights God’s glory - His beauty, His greatness, His power and His love.

In particular, the psalmist states that God’s great love reaches to the heavens. In the book of Romans the Apostle Paul unpacks this further for us as he describes what the love of God is like. He describes what can separate us from the love of God.

Romans 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So...nothing outside of us, no external event or reality, can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Connie chose to live her life here on earth in a deep embrace of the love of God and in unity with Jesus.

She chose to walk in the light of God’s goodness and grace, and to daily renew her faith in the One she knew would love her and keep her no matter what.

As Connie placed her faith in Jesus, the same Jesus who said that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, Connie experienced being held by God, being kept safe by God.

Even in her physical pain, which was severe in her last months, she knew she was not alone.

She knew that Jesus entered into her suffering and she discovered, along with everyone who has made a point of trusting in Jesus, that the presence of Jesus in her heart and mind gave her the hope to endure that pain.

She knew that she did not suffer alone. And of course now she is completely free of her suffering.

And Connie knew and celebrated that God’s faithfulness reaches to the skies. That’s a beautiful poetic phrase that at the very least reminds us that God is always faithful and is completely faithful.

Humans fall far short of the glory and the love of God in and of ourselves. That would be a huge problem, except for Jesus

Connie knew that Jesus is the Way, and that He made a way for her to live a good life, an influential life. A life that blessed others. Connie trusted Jesus. She believed that Jesus died for her sins. She gave her life to Jesus.

Marika I and were talking the other day about the pain of mourning. The dreadful silence that now exists, when once there was all kinds of opportunity to hear Connie’s voice, to benefit from her wisdom and from her own deep listening.

That’s one of the most difficult things about losing someone you truly treasure. The silence (pause).

But there’s an important truth that believers can be encouraged by. And that is that the Jesus we love and worship on this side of the veil, this side of eternity, is also, at the same moment in time, receiving love and worship from the other side of the veil, from eternity.

So Jesus Himself is the connecting point between us and those we love who have passed into glory. Jesus Himself engaging with us as we worship here and now, and engaging with those faithful who have passed into His presence.