Karen Montana homily March 31, 2023, St. Mark’s
Karen’s St. Mark’s family knew her only for the last four years of her life. But we are all stunned by her death. Her quiet, cheerful, loving, thoughtful presence impacted this whole church, as rarely experienced in such a brief time. The enormity of Karen’s loving presence was most evident when our chapel was packed with standing room only/ by people called spontaneously to pray for her and share their grief last Sunday after her death./
The story of Karen’s presence here is a God thing. Karen mourned deeply the death of her 26-year-old son, Jeremy, in 2002, and then the death of her husband, John, on Christmas Eve 2018. Her physician told her about St. Mark’s grief group, Walking the Mourner’s Path. Karen decided to take a chance with us. Each participant has a prayer partner who holds them in prayer for the program’s eight weeks. Participants meet their prayer partners at the closing Eucharist in the final session. Mary Hines, who grieved her husband, Marion’s death, participated in Mourner’s Path the year before and was randomly selected to be Karen’s partner. They met for the first time at that Eucharist,/ shared their common stories/ and began regular lunches together. Mary invited Karen to church at St. Mark’s,/ and something clicked. The two sat together for the next four years on the third row from the front, on the other side of this aisle. I loved watching one come in, leave room for the other, who arrived a little later, and was immediately met with a hug. It was a constant sign that love was visibly present in this congregation. This story of love occurred Sunday after Sunday. Karen soon became incorporated in more ministries than I can name. /
Karen’s story at St. Mark’s was a universal model of God’s love and redemption. Out of Karen’s grief, she listened to someone she trusted and reached out to this community. She was led to attend church here by someone praying for her, leading to new friends and a new way of life. Karen, in turn, shared her huge heart, her huge heart, with the rest of us.//
Funeral sermons should be about resurrection. I don’t need to explain resurrection this morning because Karen’s life is a resurrection story. Her deep sorrow and grief were transformed into a love in this congregation that will never die,/ even when all of us are forgotten. Her love has become part of the DNA of this congregation, just as it is a part of her family’s DNA for generations to come. She so loved her daughter, Laurie, and her husband, Michael. She adored her grandchildren, AJ, Everett, Hayley, and Kate./
Remember the reading from I Corinthians. Paul tells us love never dies. Love is the only thing we leave on this earth and the only thing we also take with us into life beyond death. Laurie told me several times how she finds joy in her immense sorrow, knowing her mother’s love is now directly connected to the love of Laurie’s father, John, and her brother, Jeremy.
We don’t understand it. It is a mystery./ I look at pictures of my 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 our bodies die, but our mutual love somehow stays with God and is kept for all eternity.
So Karen gifted her love to each of us. It is also now part of the enlarging love of God/ in her eternal life. If you are a mystic, you have no difficulty understanding this. But this is a difficult concept to comprehend by rational thinking.
This same belief is in 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 America. British Prime Minister Tony Blair read the passage 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)1
I know in my heart that Karen’s love will always endure with each of us/ and in all eternity. Her Love is always there inside of us as we carry it forward to transform ourselves, transform others, //and transform the universe./ My heart tells me this mystery is true, and I think you know it as well, because this is what Karen’s life taught us./
Unfortunately, the Bible does not answer most of our questions about resurrection. It refuses to approach resurrection as something rational for us to understand in our lifetime.2
However, in this mysterious universe, what we do know is that those who mean most to us// mean EVEN MORE to God. In God’s way, God keeps them, and because God keeps them, we are never separated from them, or they from us.3///
It is an early Christian tradition4 to tell stories about the one who has died as the body is on its pilgrimage to its final burial place. Keep telling all you meet Karen stories./ This is one way we continue to share her love. We tell stories because Christians believe that death changes/but does not destroy. Death5 is not a period at the end of a sentence, but more like a comma/where we go on to a new relationship with God AND with those we love. Our God of love does not give us a loving relationship, and then stop it abruptly, as with Karen’s death. This loving relationship is still there, but in some different form of love. We tell stories of Karen to remember her, as seen through that prism of her life,/ as refractions of God’s love and grace/ in glad and sorrowful memories.////
This morning, as we carry our dear friend’s ashes, in and out of this sacred space, we sac/ra/men/tally take her back to God.4 We know she already is with God, but this funeral lit/ur/gy allows us to shout a prayerful petition, “God, get ready! Here comes Karen! A sinner of your own redeeming,/ a lamb of your own flock. You gave her to us, and now with gratitude for the gift of her life, we return her to you.”/
“God of grace and glory, we remember today our sister, Karen. We thank you for giving her to us, to know and love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage.
And now O God,6 who loves us/ with a greater love than we can know or understand:/ We give you the highest praise and hearty thanks for the excellent example of your servant, Karen, who now is in the larger life of your heavenly Presence;/ who here on this earth was a tower of strength, who stood by us,/ helped us,/ 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 each of us; who rejoiced to serve all people;/ whose loyalty was steadfast,/ and friendship unselfish and secure; whose joy it was to know You/ and be of service. Grant that Karen 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.
1Thornton Wilder. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (HarperCollins, 1927), p. 107.
2Heaven. edited by Roger Ferlo (Seabury Books, 2007).
3 Theodore Farris. Death and Transfiguration (Forward Movement 1998).
4Thomas Long, “O Sing to Me of Heaven: Preaching at Funerals” in Journal for Preachers, vol. 29, No. 3, Easter 2006, pp.21-26.
5Edward Gleason. Dying we Live (Cowley 1990).
6 J. B. Bernardin. Burial Services (Morehouse 1980) p. 117.