|
Life and death
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 11th February 2007
Revd. Matthew Vernon
I had the great honour of preaching at my Grandmother's funeral last week.
It was a wonderful and deeply moving occasion.
What the Chinese call a "siu song" – a smiling funeral – when someone has lived a long and full life.
Grandma was 94 and lived in her own home until 2 weeks before she died.
Her death is big loss,
• but we were lucky she lived so long and so well.
Perhaps you've had similar experience.
Grandma didn't want us to be miserable at the Service, so I told this joke.
Johnnie was at school and the teacher asked all the children what their fathers did for a living.
Sarah said "My Dad is an accountant."
Peter said "My Dad is a doctor."
Johnnie was being quiet and so the teacher asked him about his father.
"My father is a male stripper. He works late at night and sometimes does parties."
The teacher asked Johnnie to come to the front and asked "is your Dad really a stripper?"
"No" said Johnnie, "He plays cricket for England but I'm too embarrassed to admit that."
Ironically, England have one two games in a row since then!
The funeral was in Grandma's parish church in her village.
She lived in Sussex, in the village of Lurgashall.
Her house was on one side of the village green.
The church and pub on the other.
It's a church I know well from my childhood.
When you are 10 years old sitting in the pew next to your Grandparents,
• you don't imagine for a moment that one day you'll be standing in the pulpit preaching at Grandma's funeral.
But time's winged chariot hurries on.
And Grandma has left these shores.
I'm going to talk about two sides of the same coin:
• life and death.
We usually think of death as the tough bit, so I'll start there.
For the last two weeks of her life Grandma moved into an old people's home.
Once there, she wanted to die as soon as possible.
In fact, she had talked about welcoming death before that.
For a number of years, she was very honest about being old:
• its not easy when your health is deteriorating, in her case her breathing;
• not easy when you have lost your husband, your only sister and a daughter.
Grandma looking forward to death is so different to the way we usually think, isn't it?
We rightly celebrate life,
• but death is the one thing we can be sure of;
• the one thing we know will happen to us.
Yet we spend a great deal of time and energy avoiding the subject.
I don't want to claim Grandma was especially wise or holy.
She was lovely, but not perfect!
However it is wise to acknowledge the reality of death.
As the meditation says:
I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill-heath.
There is no way to escape ill-health.
I am of the nature to die.
There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being separated from them.
That is very hard, especially being separated from the people we love.
But grief is part of love.
You know that from your own experience.
Accepting the inevitably of death, accepting our mortality actually helps us live better.
It makes us reflect on what life is about.
It gives us a healthy sense of perspective.
We learn to make the most of the time we have.
Which is the second area to talk about: life.
Let me highlight two things from my Grandmother's life that might help us live better:
Tea and breathing – bear with me!
You may have heard of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk called Thich Nhat Hanh.
He is holy and wise.
A friend has told me that watching Thich Nhat Hanh drink tea is a spiritual experience.
What on earth does that mean?
Well, apparently, Thich Nhat Hanh savours and appreciates the tea.
He doesn't just gulp it down.
He notices and enjoys the colour, the smell, the taste, the sensation on the lips and the fluid in his mouth.
• The swallowing and the warmth spreading through his body.
For those of us who are British, tea is an institution.
"How about a nice cup of tea?"
Drinking tea carefully is an example of making the most of life.
Life rushes by so quickly.
Even 94 years.
Grandma used to say that time sped up as you got older.
I'm beginning to know what she meant.
It's good to slow things down, to pause.
A cup of tea does that.
It's about living in the present.
Appreciating what we have before us, right now,
• rather than rushing on in our minds to the next job
• or concern
• or whether we should put the kettle on again.
Learning "that the present moment is all you ever have".
That "the only thing you can be sure of is the present tense".
Grandma often served cake with tea.
She made excellent cakes –
• apart from Christmas pudding that exploded one year –
• and the time her rock cakes were, how shall I say, less than successful and rather too much like rocks.
My sisters and I round it very difficult to eat them.
And we got the giggles.
Grandma was not impressed.
Especially when Rachel laughed so much that the milk she was drinking came back out of her nose.
What about breathing?
Grandma's breathing in her final years was difficult.
Emphysema restricted her physical life a great deal.
Her experience of emphysema meant that Grandma knew the importance of breathing.
She was conscious of her breathing.
If you do yoga, you'll know about this.
Thinking about your breathing is a way of calming down, and connecting with God.
"Deep breaths" we say when someone is stressed.
You can feel the air enter your nostrils and fill your lungs.
It's another way of living in the present.
Appreciating the things we have,
• things we often take for granted in the mad rush of life.
There's a wonderful quote attributed to the Buddha:
"Things to do today: inhale; exhale … ahh!"
Breathe with me now and you'll see what I mean.
When we concentrate on our breathing we can connect with those we love who have died.
We connect too with God's spirit which is always with us
• closer even than the breaths we breathe.
|
