Funeral Joan Matthews, March 6, 2020 St. Mark’s
Today we join with family and friends to celebrate the life of Joan Matthews, the 85-year-old Canadian born matriarch of her family of four children, Boyd, Brett, Marci/a, Bobby, their spouses, as well as nine grandchildren. Joan raised this amazingly talented family after the death of her husband, Dr. Robert Matthews in 1992. Our present bishop, Larry Benfield was at St. Mark’s at that time. Dr. Matthews’ funeral was his first to preside over in Arkansas. The family will always remember the pastoral care they received from our present bishop at that time and for many years to come. Joan was a public health nurse, visiting the sick in their homes where she wiped away the tears of many of those she visited. This is part of her family heritage. As a child, she often accompanied her grandmother, Granny Stewart, who took food to the needy in a picnic basket with probably a Bible between the loaves of bread. Joan also served faithfully at this church as a eucharistic minister at this altar and a eucharistic visitor to the homebound. When she became homebound, many eucharistic visitors from this church took communion to her. We need to let them know that they were carrying Christ to someone who had done the same for so many others before them. Joan also was very proud that she was an EFM, Education for Ministry graduate from Sewanee School of Theology. But there was more to know about Joan than what she accomplished. Perhaps you will learn a little more about her/ from what her family shared with us about the day she died at home in her 85th year.
“On the day Joan died, the family had been telling her since the day before, "Marci/a (her daughter) is coming.. she'll be here tomorrow.. she'll be here in 8 hours.. she'll be here in two hours.." After Marci/a arrived all the children would drift in and out of her room, talking, singing, rubbing her feet, brushing her hair, reading from the prayer book. Finally, with every one present, all four of her children, Marci/a, Bobby, Boyd, Brett, three granddaughters, and Virginia, Bobby’s wife, they gathered around Joan’s bed reading psalms and reminiscing. Joan breathed her last breaths with all gathered around/ as Bobby felt a cold wind breeze past him.”/
This is an amazing story of a whole family midwifing the passage of the beloved matriarch of their family back to God in her own home. It is like being present and assisting at her birth into a new world, into a life in the resurrection. There is no more sacred and loving thing than being at that passage,/ the death of someone you love.
Let’s talk a little more about love. Joan’s body has died to this world but her love is still here with each of you. Love is the only thing we leave behind when we die. Remember this verse from 1 Corinthians, “Love never dies.” (1 Corinthians 13:8) Repeat
We don’t understand it. It is a mystery./ I look at pictures of my own loved ones who have died, my brother, my grandparents, I can feel their love as I send my love back to them. Frederick Buechner and Henri Nouwen tell us that our bodies die, but our mutual love somehow returns to God and is kept for all eternity.
Listen again to what St. Paul, Buechner and Nouwen are saying. Love is kept for all eternity. That means love is all we leave on this earth and love is what we take with us into eternal life with the God of love. Joan left her love to you, and also her love is now part of/ and is enlarging the love of our God of love/ in this greater life. If you are a mystic, you have no difficulty understanding this. If you are a person who comprehends mainly by rational thinking, this may be a difficult concept.
Let’s see if this conception of love is not only biblical and in the voice of our theologians/ but also in our literature. This is a closing sentence from Thornton Wilder’s fictional book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey( Sand louise ray), where five people die on a bridge in South American. The passage was read by British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the memorial service in New York for British victims of the attack on the World Trade Center.// “There is a land of the living/ and a land of the dead/ and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” (Repeat) —Thornton Wilder in The Bridge of San Luis Rey (HarperCollins, 1927), p. 107.
I know in my heart that the love that Joan had for each of you will always endure. Your love for Joan who has died/ is ongoing, as is her love for you. You will never be lonely. Her Love is always there inside of you. St. Paul, Nouwen, Buechner, and now Thornton Wilder tell us that in some mysterious way this love we have for each other never dies./ Joan’s love stays with each of you as you carry it forward to transform yourselves, transform others you meet, //and transform the universe./ Joan’s love is also now in the resurrected life in some way we do not understand as part of the God of love. The verse from Corinthians and Wilder in his novel are both telling us that the best of this love we have for each other never ever dies. This is a mystery, but I know in my heart it is true and I think you know it as well because this is what Joan taught us and you./ Unfortunately, the Bible does not answer most of our questions about resurrection. It refuses to approach resurrection as something rational for us in our lifetime.1
In this mysterious universe what we do know, however, is that those who mean most to us// mean EVEN MORE to God. In God's way, God will keep them, and because God keeps them, we will never be separated from them, or they from us./
This morning as we carry the ashes of our dear friend, Joan, in and out of this sacred space, we are sac/ra/men/tally carrying her back to God. 2We know she already is with God, but this funeral lit/ur/gy allows us in effect to shout out a prayerful petition to God, “God, get ready! Here comes Joan! A sinner of your own redeeming, and a lamb of your own flock. You have given her to us, and now with gratitude for the gift of her life, we are returning her to you.” Our prayers are like the prayers at the offertory, “We give thee but thine own,”/ except in this case the offering is not money but the life of one we love.
It is an early Christian tradition2 to tell stories about the one who has died as the body is on its pilgrimage to its final burial place. You are a family of story tellers, so keep telling all of us/ and all you meet, stories about Joan/ as I know you will do at the reception. This is how you will continue to share her love. We tell stories because Christians believe that death changes but does not destroy. Death3 is not a period at the end of a sentence, but more like a comma/ where we die but go on to a new relationship with God AND with those we love. Our experience is that our God of love does not give us a loving relationship and then let it stop abruptly as with Joan’s death. This loving relationship is still there but in some different form of love. We tell stories of Joan especially at her death to continue our relationship with her, to know Joan’s never-ending love for you, to remember Joan’s love for the God of love, as seen through the prism of her life, both in glad and sorrowful memories, which will continually be refractions of the grace and love of God.////
“O God of grace and glory, we remember before you this day our sister, Joan. We thank you for giving her to us,..to know and to love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage…and now 4O God of Love
who loves us/ with a greater love than we can neither know nor understand: We give you most high praise and hearty thanks for the good example of your servant, Joan, who now is in the larger life of your heavenly Presence;/ who here on this earth was a tower of strength for all of us, who stood by us and helped us;/ who cheered us by her sympathy and encouraged us by her example;/ who looked not disdainfully on the outward appearance, but lovingly into the hearts of men and women and children; who rejoiced to serve all people, especially the sick;/ whose loyalty was steadfast, and her friendship unselfish and secure; whose joy it was to know more about You and be of service. Grant that Joan may continue to find abiding peace and wisdom in your heavenly kingdom, and that we may carry forward her unfinished work for you on this earth;/ through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
1Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo (Seabury Books, 2007).
2Thomas Long, “O Sing to Me of Heaven: Preaching at Funerals” in Journal for Preachers, vol. 29, No. 3, Easter 2006, pp.21-26.
3Edward Gleason, Dying we Live (Cowley 1990).
4 J. B. Bernardin Burial Services (Morehouse Publishing 1980) p. 117.
Joanna. Seibert