Funeral Service: Step-Up

The spiritual step-up is increasing one’s faith and prayer life and service to God when a tragedy or trial hits you, like the death of a loved one.

Admittedly, when life gets too heavy, it's hard to step up, so Jesus invites us to lighten our load so we can take a step in faith.

And, Anna, Andrew, and the family and friends of Cary, you are all here to help each other. “If one member suffers in the body of Christ which is the Church, all the members suffer with that member” (1 Corinthians12:26). When a member dies, the faithful are called to a ministry of consolation to those who suffered the loss of one whom they love.

Anna, I want to tell you about a another Anna in the Bible, in Luke 2:36, who was a widow for eighty-four (84) years. She lost her husband after just seven years of marriage. Yet, Anna stepped-up and was at the temple every time the doors opened and she stayed there all day until the evening. She blessed others and witnessed to Christ when he entered the temple as a baby.

A more recent example is another Anna—Elizabeth Ann Seton, who was widowed at 30 with six children. In 1808, she moved to Baltimore establishing both a school for girls and the beginnings of the Sisters of Charity group of religious sisters. She stepped up: her growing community of sisters staffed schools and orphanages and she also served as a writer, teacher, nurse and administrator.

A contemporary example of stepping up in faith, as a response to grief and loss, is one of my favorite Christian artists, Danny Gokey, who lost his first wife to a congenital heart disease. During that time, Danny admits he was disappointed with God.

He found it hard to step-up, sharing, “When I was praying for my first wife, who was going through a heart condition and when she passed away, I was living an opposite reality to what I thought His word said….

But, Danny also said,

“Had I given up in that season of the loss of my first wife, had I given up and thrown [away] [God’s] strength and just started to living into addictions and living into my feelings and going out and living how I wanted to, I would not be living in the promises that I’m living today.”

Danny stepped-up by not stepping down; stepping down when life does not turn out the way you planned is to receive Satan’s miserable comfort in sin, and by leaving God and the Church because of one’s disappointments.

Danny wrote a very popular Christian song about his experience that still gets plenty of airtime today, the main lyrics go:

“It's like the brightest sunrise waiting on the other side of the darkest night. Don't ever lose hope, hold on and believe.

Maybe you just haven't seen it, just haven't seen it yet. You're closer than you think you are

Only moments from the break of dawn

All His promises are just up ahead

Maybe you just haven't seen it, just haven't seen it yet.”

I was part of the group texts that Cary sent out when he was going through his chemo the last few years.

He never stopped asking for prayers and hoping for a miracle of healing, I think he got his answer by an illumination; a divine enlightenment of his security of his salvation through Jesus Christ, without any presumption, and I belief that Cary died as if passing from one star lit chamber to another on the threshold of eternal glory.

Christ is the one who stepped-up for us all. His is the one suffering that carried us all by his lifting-up on the Cross.

Father Richard Rohr noted that “some mystics even go so far as to say that individual suffering doesn’t exist at all—and that there is only one suffering, it is all the same, and it is all the suffering of God. The image of Jesus on the cross somehow communicates that to the willing soul. A Crucified God is the dramatic symbol of the one suffering that God fully enters into with us” and others…

“When we carry our small suffering in solidarity with the one universal longing of all humanity, it helps keep us from self-pity or self-preoccupation. We know that we are all in this together, and it is just as hard for everybody else.”

Romans 8:24 says that we are saved by hope.

We are here today to give praise and thanks to God for Christ’s victory over sin and death, and to commend Cary to God’s tender mercy and compassion, and for us to seek strength to step-up grow in faith, love and service for the rest of our lives until God calls us home like he did to Cary.

Amen.