We are gathered here this morning to celebrate the life of
Allison Frances Rose and to commend her to God’s keeping.
We welcome so many of you: her family, friends, Daughters
of the King and Stephen Ministers. It is a moving experience to see you all
here today.
We are still reeling from the shock of Allison’s death. It
is hard to accept a young person dying so suddenly.
There is no satisfactory answer that will not seem glib.
There is an irreducible mystery to life and to death.
Life itself is a mystery. The very fact that we are here,
alive, when a few years ago we did not exist. Life’s fragility. Death is so
close to us, but we do not see it except at times like this. And what is death?
What comes after?
In the seventh century Christian missionaries sent by Pope
Gregory I arrived at the court of the powerful pagan King Edwin of Northumbria.
The king had a meeting with his advisors as to whether they should receive
them. An old advisor responded, “O King, when you are sitting here in your
great court with fire and warmth in the midst of winter, a sparrow flies in at
one door, darts across the hall and flies out at another. From wintry darkness
he came in and to wintry darkness he returns. So it is with human life. We are
such a short time in this world. From where have we come, and to whither do we
go? If this new religion can help us address these questions and perhaps
provide some answers, it is worth our while to listen.”
In spite of all our modern sophistication and technology, the nature of life has not changed since then. And even those of us who profess to be Christians must confess that we do not know the why of life and death, why illness happens, why accidents happen, why bad things happen to good people, why a person we love is suddenly no longer in our midst.
And, if in your agony you want to curse God because of this, do it! God can take it. God has indeed taken our curses, our doubts, our questions, our indifference ever since we humans have been around. And that, my friends, is the good news that this new religion has brought us, namely that God is there for us, not just in the good times but also in the bad times and the scary times. God is there for us not just when we are full of faith and love but when we are beating on the walls of what has happened and cry out in our agony, “I don’t understand this!”
God is there for us no matter what, for God loves us with a deep and everlasting love, and always has! That’s good news!
We don’t know the why, but we know the who. We can know God, even in the shadow of death. Maybe especially in the shadow of death. This is the good news those missionaries brought.
In the Gospel we have just heard that Christ is the way, the truth and the life, which is a summary way of putting the good news.
We know God especially in the love shining in the face of Jesus Christ, and in the lives of those who have known him. He taught us that even the fall of a sparrow is in God’s hands. His love is the deepest truth about life. The most certain clue to its mystery. But even he did not escape an early death.
Christ said, “I came that human beings might have life, and have it more abundantly.” Life trumps death! Eternal life, life of a new quality, that for must of us began in symbol with our Baptism, that grew in the love of our nurturing, and keeps struggling and growing within us all our lives; even beyond our birthday into eternity, our death, we have the promise of this life that is stronger than death.
Christ is the truth, the life, and he is also the way—he is accessible, here with us in this holy gathering place and in everywhere we go. In his words in scripture, in this Holy Communion you are all welcome to this morning, he is saying, “I am here.” And in the needs of those around us he is saying, “I am here.” The way is not easy. It is the way of the cross. It is ultimately a way through death. But through all this—life and death--God’s great love is offered to us.
That is the new religion we have come to profess. But it doesn’t take away the agony, the anger, or even the questioning. We have to live through it. And God says, “That’s all right.”
We often have another problem at a time like this, and that is our guilt. We may not curse God, but we may curse ourselves. Could I have somehow kept this from happening through what I might have done and did not do, or through what I should not have done, but did? At least, I might have been more understanding, more kind. If any of you have feelings of that nature, known that God loves you, too, understands, and is reaching out to you, right now, with his wonderful forgiveness. That, too, is the good news of that new religion. God in Christ, on the cross, has forgiven us all.
On this particular occasion, one of the hardest things for us to cope with is the sense of loss of what might have been, the life cut off too soon, the gifts and the future that might have come.
Perhaps it will help if I suggest that all our lives on earth are poems. “Some lives are long, epic poems. Other lives take different lengths and shapes and tone. Some are no longer than sonnets. Each in its own way is complete. Each can be remembered and quoted for the joy of others. Each can be beautiful or powerful; and each is full of meaning.”
Let us listen for the meaning of the poem that was Allison, first in the words of her mother and father, interpreted by myself, and then in the words of her friends at Westminster Schools and Vanderbilt, and the words of her sister, Whitney.
Karen said Allison was “ebullient.” That has a happy image of exhilaration of spirits, “bubbling,” almost “boiling over” in her love for her friends, in her humor. Recently she was wrapping gifts for friends she just made in the summer. She would lift people up, listen to their problems for hours. People liked her, as I can tell with all of you here.
Her wit came through in interesting ways. Once when she was injured after soccer, and had to use a crutch, she put a pillow on her stomach to see if people would help a poor, pregnant girl. One Halloween she showed up dressed as a toilet plunger. How she did that I do not know, but I understand that a certain bathroom epithet was attached to her after that costume. She loved to dress up, and she and her friends would pretend that it was “Allison’s birthday” from time to time when they would go out together.
There was a serious side to her. In her essay to enter college, she described herself as a “survivor.” That was done with the Navy soccer team, and probably as she navigated the whole competitive world of schooling and sports. There was no “attitude” in her, no pretense. She was infectiously unassuming and could relate to anyone. She perhaps a bit stubbornly tried to help herself (had about every self-help book ever written), but her goal in life was to help other people. How? Well, she changed her major several times from “cognitive studies” (terribly cerebral, though she was intelligent!) to “psychology” (better), and finally to “human organizational development” (which is a kind of thing good folks like myself have been involved in, so I think she was on the right track.) The clouds that had hindered her in the past for years were lifting, and then light!
A such unexpected sort of light that it seems to be darkness. The sparrow flies out of the hall.
Just her nest is left behind. A body, her family, her friends.
Henry Vaughn, a seventeenth century poet, wrote:
“He that hath found some
fledged bird’s
nest may know
At first sight if the bird be flown;
But what fair dell or grove she sings in now,
Is that to him unknown.”
One of my favorite verses that sits on my desk is from Isaiah:
“Surely it is God who saves me: I will trust in him and not be afraid.” [12:2]
We are called today to that trust in God who saves us, we are called to love one another, we are called to celebrate the brief, ebullient life of Allison, a beautiful sonnet, to remember her always, and above all to know that God loves her immensely, and has come to take her home.