Sermon for the Funeral of Caroline Bindel-John 10:11-16
I am so grateful to be here with each of you today…with Amanda, John, Elizabeth and this great crowd of friends and family…for as I say to our St. Julian’s family so often…I need you and you need me…we need each other…if we are to find our way forward…for I believe it will only be found together. The Apostle Paul, in the 8###sup/sup### chapter of Romans, writes, “What then are we to write about these things.” And as the preacher today…these words resonate with me deeply…what am I…what are we moving forward to say about these things…about this tremendous loss. I think of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas who famously writes, “Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.” And I, indeed, think that we can only find both the words and the profound courage required to rage, in a love fueled defiance, against our present darkness…again…together. And, though this work has already begun, perhaps it continues today in these words I hope to humbly offer…but as you will see they are not mine alone…but they come from some of Caroline’s own beloved…her friends…as we all take inspiration from Caroline herself…the brave and beautiful and fully alive life she lived among us…and that she continues to live among us in an entirely new way. For, we indeed lost a precious life a week ago Thursday…but not a relationship…for as Easter promises, Jesus’ glorious resurrection proclaims…death is more gate than grave…life does not end, only changes, and love is always, always stronger than death. So today, Caroline, provides us the lasting gift to be together on this holy and heart-breaking occasion to give thanks to the God of life and love for her life so wondrously lived, to grieve together her loss, which is so deeply felt, and to seek the hope of the resurrection…that light, life and love are, indeed, eternal…that there is a great cloud of witnesses, the Communion of Saints, who have welcomed Caroline home…as she takes her place at God’s great feast…prepared for her, and each of us, from before time even began. She is all wrapped up in the everlasting arms of love…a place where sorrow and pain are no more…only life…and that life is everlasting. And, it is in God’s everlasting life, basking in God’s perpetual light…that Caroline has now found rest, her entire healing, and peace…at the last.
As I have reflected on those everlasting arms of love…God’s eternal embrace…God’s connection to his beloved, Caroline and each of us, I thought of a story that my wife, Ashley, shared with me about a moment of connection…a hand to hold…someone to be with when in a quite literal moment of darkness. Pilgrims from St. Julian’s, Caroline’s church, were traveling home from a pilgrimage to Navajoland in far northwest New Mexico…and on that return trip we stopped for a day of fun at Carlsbad Caverns. As we finished our walk through that beautiful and otherworldly place deep under the earth’ surface…I returned to the hotel with our daughters…but Ashley remained for an extended tour of a room in the cavern that required a park ranger as guide. And as they entered an even deeper place in the cavern, the park ranger invited those on the tour to experience what it would have been like in the cavern before the first person ever entered it…before any light ever shone in the deep darkness of that place. The ranger asked everyone to turn off phones or anything that produced any sort of light and asked them to sit on the floor of the cavern and be as quiet as possible and then the ranger proceeded to simply turn out the lights. My wife said the darkness was immediate and absolute. You literally could not even see your own hand held as close to your face as possible. It was absolute blindness. And, in the total and complete darkness, my wife said she began to quickly feel lost and confused and, though the cave was full of people, without being able to see even the person sitting just at her side…she said she began to feel a sort of loneliness…what I might describe as utter disconnectedness…the feeling of lost-ness began to overwhelm her…she said she began to feel anxious…even powerless…and then almost instinctually she began to move her hand along the floor until it reached what it was looking for…what she was looking for…which was another hand…the hand of her friend Nancy who was sitting at her side. And, in the absolute darkness…the two women held on to each other, and Ashley said it was sort of like the light was turned back on. She could sort of locate herself in the world…she felt connected to some sense of permanence…she felt safe again…and the anxiety began to melt away…light, hope, direction, love…all discovered in holding another’s hand…in a touch…in an embrace…in connection…one to another…empowered by the love of God flowing between two people.
With the unexpected loss of anyone we love…perhaps most especially when the person, like Caroline, is still in the beginning of life…we are left quite simply in the darkness…there really aren’t words…there are more questions than answers…and for those closest to the loss…the darkness is even more intense. There is sadness all the way down to the toes. Grief is entirely human. In fact, it reminds us of how much love we can really hold in our hearts. In a sense, our grief says to Caroline, “See how much I love you.” Still grief is not intended as a place to be stuck. Instead, it is to be the beginning, not the end, but the beginning of our own sort of Easter journey out the darkness and into the light. For, in doing so, by moving through our own grief to a new light filled day…we become, ourselves, a living witness to the power of resurrection…we become more resilient…people who can overcome…and we bring that living hope to others...in their own moments of loss and grief. And, this is of course what Caroline would want for us right now most of all. Author, Jamie Anderson, writes, “Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” And I agree with this powerful description of grief…but I believe our grief does, over time, have some place to go…the loss will never go away…but the grief…if we allow it…again…has somewhere to go…if we share it with each other…as we hold it together…as we bare one another’s burdens…as we carry it for and with each other… as we create space to mourn with each other…hold each other up…empowered by God’s own resurrection love…that lives in us and is the great connective tissue that binds us all together in this life and in the life to come…and light just begins to emerge even in the darkest places.
And it is Caroline that shows us that this is entirely true. For that is the very way she lived her wondrous life…profoundly committed to life-giving relationships with the ones she loved…profoundly connected to each of us in an unbreakable bond of affection…that transcends even the grave…life does not end, our faith tells us…it only changes. And this life of loving connection that Caroline so wondrously lived on this side of glory became very clear to me this past Sunday…as I was so blessed to spend time with about 40 or so of her dear friends. I asked them for words to describe Caroline and the love they received from her…and I promised them that I would share every single one of them with each of you. So here goes:
Her friends said Caroline is…lovable, photogenic, a queen, young at heart, colorful, spunky, a good counselor, smiley, weird in a good way, bold, a friend to those without friends, full of fortitude, tall…depending on how tall you are, a master of karaoke, determined, unrelenting, passionate, has an inner-granny in her (I think that means wise!), has, at appropriate times, a colorful vocabulary and dark sense of humor…she’s a fighter, a diamond in the rough, has a thing for uncooked spontaneous ice cream (as I said I would share every word)…she is bright, vibrant, courageous, energetic, positive, outgoing, vivacious, fun, full of integrity, confident, funny, talented, strong, stubborn, goofy, big-hearted, unique, wonderful, joyful, self-less, you are drawn to her…she is inviting, brave, smart, amazing, trustworthy, a leader, a warrior, a singer, a dancer, unique, innovative, original, full of laughs, dynamic, phenomenal, musical…she is good at twister…she would go first when others would not or could not…she is graceful, beautiful and of course they said…she is loving. My thanks to Caroline’s friends for these amazing words that so perfectly describe our beloved Caroline.
And if I can, even just perhaps, sum up what all these thoughts might suggest…it is that Caroline was and is an irreplaceable, unforgettable, profoundly talented, loving friend, family member, sister and daughter. And all of these ways she reached out to us, in the life she lived among us, should be for us now our example…that we might do and be the same…even now…that we might begin to slowly, intentionally move our own hands across the floor of the dark cave in which we, at times, will find ourselves…even if we are struggling to see the people sitting right next to us…even if it feels like they may not even be there. We begin to reach out through the darkness to the other…to each other…we grab hold of each other…like we are never going to let one another go…and we hold on…we connect…like Caroline connected with us…taught us…and we begin to, indeed, feel connected, grounded…and we cry and we laugh and we find that we are, indeed, not alone…and God’s resurrection light begins to shine. We can see a little more clearly where to put one foot in front of another as we journey through Caroline’s physical loss…not around…but through…and then on…with Caroline and each othe…more and more into the fully alive, light-filled sort of life that God desires and provides for each one of us.
And so today, as we remember the life that Caroline lived…that was mainly made up of loving all of us…she has provided us the chance to recommit to reconnecting…one to another and all to God in Christ. For, in doing so, as hearts and hands embrace, God’s Easter light breaks into our present darkness…and hope shines forth…our own path becomes illuminated…we are given a vision of an altogether wonderful sort of undiscovered future that we get to share with Caroline and each other. And, today, we remember, proclaim and give thanks that the Good Shepherd of our souls, Jesus Christ our Lord, his own precious hands have been extended through the darkness…the darkness of sickness and even death and grabbed hold of Caroline’s own hands, and God is never going to let her go. He has pulled Caroline into light perpetual…God’s eternal light.
And, for this we rightfully rejoice and give thanks…to the God of life and love…the God who, in the beginning, said “let there be light”…the God whose story ends not on a cross but with an empty tomb…the God who offers Caroline, and each one of us, in this life we share and in the life to come light, love, hope, healing, connection and, of course, peace…at the last. Amen.