Homily for the funeral of my Grandfather, Hedley Guillou, on 4th August 2022 at St Joseph's Catholic Church in Guernsey.
Readings: Romans 8:31-35,37-39 and John 11:17-27
One of my earliest memories, going into Nanny and Grandpa’s house on the Avenue du Manoir, is of Nanny putting a Vinyl recording of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ into her record player for us to listen to. It was several years after hearing that recording for the first time that I watched the film, which ends after the death of Jesus somewhat abruptly; the actors playing the disciples all pack up into beat-up vans and drive away. The end. Death has the final word.
Whenever someone we know dies it can seem a little bit like the end of that film; like death has gotten the final word. After a short life or a long life, one full of happiness or full of sorrow and suffering, the ending is the same. We die. We are placed in a coffin and buried or cremated, and everyone who knew us packs-up and goes about their way until it’s their turn to die. The death of a loved one, a husband, a father, a brother, or a friend, forces us to reckon with our own mortality. It forces us to ask whether death really is the end.
It isn’t hard on days like today to put ourselves in the place of the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, grieving their brother’s recent death. Mary is inconsolable, she sits by the grave and weeps. Martha goes out to give Jesus a piece of her mind; “If you had been here” she says, almost accusingly “my brother would not have died.” How many of us, when our loved ones have died, have turned to bitter grief or anger, even anger with God? It is a natural, human, response to death. To be sad or to be angry.
“If you had been here, my brother would not have died, but even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you”
Martha challenges Jesus, criticising Him for His lateness, but not daring to ask for what she really wants; to have her brother back.
Very often, when we think or talk about Jesus, we confine Him to the human world. We think of Him as a great moral teacher, or a purely historical figure, a religious founder or a prophet. A good man, but just a man. Martha, despite being one of Jesus’ closest friends and followers, does the same here; she speaks to Him as if He were just a man; a prophet, a teacher, a miraculous healer, but a man nonetheless. She stops short of actually asking, but hints that He might be able to obtain the resurrection of her brother by asking a favour of God.
She doesn’t know what we already know by this point in St John’s Gospel, what is revealed to us in Chapter One (verses 1-14); that Jesus is not merely a man. That He is the Eternal Word who was with God in the beginning and who is of one being and substance with God. She doesn’t understand the error of what she is saying. “If you had been here my brother would not have died” she says to the God who created all things, is present to all things at all times and in all places and who holds all things in existence. “Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you” she says to the one to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been given.
Jesus has been waiting for this moment since he was told Lazarus was on the verge of death, he baits Martha into professing her Hope in what was promised by the prophets. “Your brother will Rise” He tells her, and she answers “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” Now Jesus has the opportunity to reveal Himself, who He is and what He came here to do; “I am the resurrection and the life” He says “whoever believes in me even if he dies will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” He goes beyond the role assigned to Him by the world (teacher, prophet, miracle worker, etc.) and claims His true identity “I am the resurrection and the life.”
He asks her for an affirmation, a statement of Faith, she answers “Yes Lord, I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” In answer, in the next passage of St John’s Gospel, He raises Lazarus from the tomb, freeing him from his bodily death.
***
There is a great deal here to unpack and understand. The first and most important is who Jesus is; the Son of God, God become flesh, the Saviour of the World. In his own words, He is “the Resurrection and the Life.”
The second thing to understand is What Jesus is promising;
“whoever believes in me even if he dies will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
When I was very small, my mother and father took me to a Church, St Michael and All Angels in Leigh Park, and made a simple profession of Faith; on behalf of the Church they stated belief in God and rejection of Sin, and asked that I be Baptised. Nanny and Grandpa did the same for my mother, Grandad and Grandma did the same for my Father. Their parents did the same for them. They were brought as babies to different Churches, and the same basic profession of Faith was made, before baby Edward, baby Heather, baby Hedley, were held over the Baptismal font and doused with water three times as a priest or minister said the words “I Baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
When we welcomed Hedley’s body into the Church this morning, we recalled that moment in our prayers, I read out the following words;
“In Baptism Hedley became God’s temple and the Spirit of God lived in him”
Another option in the book reads:
“In the Waters of Baptism, Hedley died with Christ and rose with Him to new life, me He now share with Him eternal glory.”
When Jesus says “whoever believes in me even if he dies will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” he is referring to the rebirth in Spirit and Water which comes about as a result of our Baptism. When we were Baptised, it bound us to Jesus. The pouring of water over our heads was a symbolic burial. The mortal man, doomed to death, died, and in his place an immortal man remade in the image of the immortal Christ, was born. The Baptismal font is a tomb in which death itself is put to death.
After our Baptisms, it is common to be given a little candle. It is a symbol of the triple gift given to us on that day. The gift of the lights of faith and hope; Jesus sanctifies us and promises us that in Him we will find the resurrection and the life. He makes us members of His mystical body, and adopted Sons of His Father. He gives us the light of faith to guide us and the light of hope to help us trust in His promises. The fire also symbolises the warmth of Charity; the love that God has for us, which we are to cherish and share with others. Today, the Paschal candle, the great symbol of rebirth in Christ through His resurrection at Easter, burns on the sanctuary as a reminder of that little candle. In the last day, it is not our good works which will save us, but this little light given to us; it is the gifts of Faith, Hope, and Charity, which come to us only as a gift through Baptism which will save us.
The great saints, in every age of the Church, took that little light and nurtured it into a blazing fire such that nobody could doubt their Faith in Christ, their Hope in His promises, and the intensity of their Charity, their love for God and their Neighbour. But most of us are not saints, we keep the little fire of Faith secret, our Hope is weak or clouded by the doubts of the World, our Charity is dimmed by petty grievances and selfish desires. I won’t pretend that my Grandpa was a great saint. I think a few of you would have some pretty strong words to say to me after the service if I did! Truth be told, he could be a difficult man. Is there room in heaven for a difficult man?
Whenever Jesus works a miracle, it is Faith, not good works or innate goodness that brings it about. Lazarus is no different. When Lazarus died and Jesus raised him from the dead, it was not the Faith of Lazarus that brought about the miracle, but the Faith of those he had left behind. Specifically it was Martha’s faith. When asked if she believed Him, Martha replied ;
“Yes Lord, I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
This perhaps explains why, throughout the last two thousand years, the sons and daughters of the Church have gathered together to pray for the dead; we recognise on some level that all of us are sinners, all of us fall short of saintliness, and all of us are in need of God’s mercy. We also recognise that God, in His infinite goodness looks on our prayers in kindly love. He sees in us the beloved Children won for Him by the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and united with Him in Baptism.
He sees in the prayers of His faithful an earnest and true faith, hope, and charitable love and (provided the one who died did not utterly reject Him through a life of freely committed mortal sin) raises us up in glory with Christ. The Church teaches that those impurities, those difficulties, those imperfections, are purged away from us in purgatory, and that the prayers of those who love us can help us on that journey of purification.
For the dead, for our brother, father, grandfather, husband, for Hedley our tears become like the tears of Mary and Martha; a soothing balm and an act of Faith which speeds the Lord on the way to our loved one’s tomb, to cry out as He cried to Lazarus “Hedley, come out of the tomb” - “untie Him and let Him go.” God loves us so much, that he bound us to Himself in Baptism, that He sacrificed Himself willingly on the Cross, so that with Saint Paul we affirm that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, and with the Psalmist we can cry out;
“In death’s dark vale I fear no ill, / With thee, dear Lord, beside me; / Thy rod and staff my comfort still, / Thy Cross before to Guide me.”
Death is not the end, and when we go away from this place we don’t simply pack up and move on. We hold Hedley in our hearts and in our prayers, and we ask God to grant to Him eternal rest, in the hope that we will see Him again in the joy and the glory of the sight of God’s face in paradise, when every wound shall be healed and every tear wiped away from every eye.
Laudetur Jesus Christus. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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