we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come

 

I attended the funeral of a friend today. Of a friend and fellow priest. I don’t often attend a funeral these days, sit in the pews with nothing to do except bear witness to a life well lived, a good death, and the hope of the resurrection that is ours in Jesus. I had forgotten how exhausting attending a funeral is — it is different when you have a job to do — and I am grateful for the wisdom of my wife, who knows, and told me to rearrange the appointment that had been in my diary later in the day.

There are times, when you are called to be a priest, when your colleagues huddle around you. Laying hands on you when you are made a deacon — as I shall lay hands on the curate I shall be tasked with training just next weekend — and again when you are made a priest, and, for some, again when you are made a bishop. Today the church was full of priests. Today we — priests and the whole people of God — huddled around our brother one final time, and around his family — his widow (also a priest, as it happens), their children — as, in the Antarctic, penguins gather around the young, turning their backs against the blizzard: the warmth of the huddle was the affection God has for each one of us. God who does not save us from the blizzard, but who saves us through it. Today, we were penguins (ironically, unusually at a funeral, I was not dressed like a penguin, in black and white).

After the church, I stood at my friend’s graveside and threw dirt on the coffin, making my ‘thank you’ for a sea of small and gentle kindnesses; a small and gentle kindness in return, made also on behalf of all our colleagues.

And after the after, I went for a run. I ran a kilometre to meet with other friends, carrying a heavy burden, heavy enough almost to drive me to my knees, forcing me to turn back home. But this was a burden that I knew I must run off, the turning over of my limbs a prayer, loosening the knot that it might slip from me. And after a kilometre, I ran with others, and we bore one another — one whose legs were heavy, me whose heart was heavy — because carrying one another is what we do. I have no idea what my legs were doing over those nine further kilometres we ran, but my spirit was doing the work of receiving grace, of letting go, being made lighter.

I am telling this story from the first-person perspective, because I can tell it from no other. But it is not about me. It is a story about the loving-kindness of Jesus, and the affection of God the Father, and the companionship of the Holy Spirit, experienced in flesh and blood and in the invisible connections between us. And I am grateful to be able to tell this tale.