Today we gather with great love, with sadness, with gratitude, with everything that we’re feeling that I won’t try to list or name, because they are endless shades of colours and experiences, like a kaleidoscope or a stained glass window.
But I want to say how precious and powerful it is that we have gathered; together we have created a stained glass window made of our bodies, here in church, our experiences and memories, our hearts, our stories, our relationships, and the loved ones that we came here to remember before God. It sounds obvious or simple. But actually in this dark and divided world, in this lonely human family, we have already (simply be being here) done some radical and transformative and life changing.
It is one of the things that makes me most proud of our little parish churches like this one, that we gather as a human family day by day and week by week to be something good and loving in the world, to become more than ourselves.
So I do hope you know how wonderful it is to be here this evening, and indeed every Sunday and every day.
And I say all that, because not only have we gathered, but we have gathered to touch eternity together. When we come and light a candle as you are invited to having received a blessing or Holy Communion, the love and prayer with which this little flame flickers reaches from here, through death and into eternity. It may be a small candle, but our love and prayer is powerful.
Likewise, when we celebrate the Eucharist, as Christians have done since the first days of Jesus’ Resurrection, after His Last Supper, His death and resurrection, we here gather at this table, which actually stretches right round the world, joining every altar at which Christ gives Himself in bread and wine: on mountains tops, in deserts and jungles and cities. And it doesn’t stop there, all these earthly altars are just one end of the table, that reaches through death, to the banquet of heaven, at which Jesus our King, surrounded by saints and angels, calls us and our loved ones we remember tonight home to Himself.
It is an image of heaven that the Bible gives us in lots of different ways.
The closest place to heaven, to our departed loved ones, in this life, is at Holy Communion. And here we are tonight, together, on the threshold of eternity.
But. But, we still can’t hold their hands any more, or laugh together like we used to, or whatever it is. And that hurts. But, as we know here tonight, even that hurt is part of our loving. It has been said often, including by our dear late Queen, that ‘grief is the price we pay for love’.
And so, again, we gather. And as well as praying for our own loved ones, we pray for each other in church here today. We pray for those for whom no one prays, we pray for those whose lives have ended unnoticed, untended. How many street children, how many exploited workers in mines and factories and fields, how many lost and lonely souls - we pray for them all tonight, and love them home to Jesus, who cares for each and every one of them, as He cares for each and every one of us. Cares enough, loves enough, to give His life on the cross for each and every one of them, and each and every one of us.
Friends, together we touch eternity tonight, and then step back out through those doors, to find Christ’s invitation to keep going, keep living, keep loving, keep praying, keep finding Christ’s call on our lives in the remaining hours of this day, and tomorrow.