Canon Henry Scott Holland of St Paul’s included the following words in a sermon preached on the death of King Edward VII: 

‘Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I and you are you. And the old life we lived together is untouched, unchanged.’

 I have great difficulty with this concept – it seems to me to be wishful thinking, it certainly bears no resemblance to how I felt when I lost my father, and how the bereaved talk to me in my surgery.  Death unfortunately does count, and it changes if not everything, certainly a great deal.  This statement is no help for some bereaved who may have to come to terms with the fact that a difficult relationship can no longer be transformed.  We do not know if our loved ones who have died have changed but those of us who are bereaved feel very different.

Later on in his sermon Canon Holland says this:

Death seems so inexplicable, so blundering…. It makes its horrible breach in our gladness with careless inhuman disregard of us….dumb as the night, that terrifying silence!

I find that is much more what it feels like in reality.  If only death wasn’t quite as destructive as it seems to be.  If only it didn’t count.  Surely our loved ones are in a better place and so we should be happy for them, shouldn’t we?  What are we doing making such a fuss?

In the Bible reading we have just heard Jesus didn’t go in for the ‘stiff upper lip.’  When he heard that his friend Lazarus had died, he wept.   We’re not told why he wept but I’m sure we can think of several reasons:

• Mary and Martha had called him to see their brother when he was ill but Jesus stayed where he was for a further couple of days before travelling to Bethany.  If he had left straight away might he have seen his friend before he died?

• And had he let his friends down by lingering at his previous accommodation?  He would miss the wonderful times he had enjoyed at the house of the three of them: he and Lazarus talking at length with Mary perhaps listening in and Martha serving them.  Much as he loved Mary and Martha, visiting their home would be different now that Lazarus was no longer there.  And how many of us have found that the home of our loved one is less appealing than it was?

• But most importantly Jesus wept because his great friend had died.  He didn’t say, “Never mind, he is just in another room. It doesn’t change anything between us.” No, he mourned the loss of his friend.  He didn’t want him to be dead.  Like many of us who have lost friends or family, even if they are in a better place we would really rather they were still here with us.

Later on in the four gospels we read of Jesus’ crucifixion.  When he was killed his disciples weren’t going around saying, “Well, at least now he’s in heaven with God!” or “Weren’t we lucky to have known such a wonderful man for three years!”  No, they were distraught because they thought that he was the Messiah, come to rescue them from the Romans, and they were distraught because he had done so many wonderful things and healed so many people and most of all he had cared, really, really cared.  And they loved him and wanted to have more time with him and then everything went so terribly wrong that he was killed.

I have people who say to me that it isn’t fair that someone so kind and loving has died of cancer, or in an accident, so we perhaps have some idea just how the disciples felt.  I hope that I have given an accurate image of how many of you feel in your bereavement but I realise that it is not a positive picture.  If that were all I had to say we would go home feeling rather depressed.  Fortunately, however, Good Friday proved not to be the end of the story of Jesus.  The reason this church is here and that I am speaking to you is because of what happened on Easter Sunday.

But first let us go back to the events after Jesus’ death on the cross.  At the end of Good Friday Jesus was put in a tomb in rather a hurry because once sunset came all good Jews started celebrating the Sabbath which did not permit dealing with corpses.  So, sad as they were, the disciples, and the women who had been present at the crucifixion, went home.  It was not until early on Sunday morning that the women set off for the tomb to prepare Jesus’ body properly for burial, with spices they had prepared during the Sabbath.

You can imagine their shock when they arrived at the tomb to see that the huge stone left in the entrance had been rolled away and Jesus’ body had gone.  The four gospel accounts differ in some of the detail but all of them mention that Jesus was gone and some of them mention that angels were waiting at the tomb to tell the frightened women that Jesus was not here because he was alive.  He had risen from the dead.

I could spend hours discussing the evidence for the Resurrection but I will spare you that (although if anyone wants to talk to me about it afterwards that is fine!).  I will just make the point that the frightened, devastated and distraught disciples changed remarkably. They all met at least once with the risen Christ and as a result of that spread the news of the Resurrection across the Middle East and beyond.  Many of them died martyrs’ deaths because they were not prepared to go back on their belief that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, who had conquered death.  As a scientist and a doctor I cannot explain how this happened but I do believe that it did happen and that it changes everything.

Now that’s a very interesting story but it all happened two thousand years ago. What does that have to do with us now?  At the beginning of the Gospel reading we heard that Jesus said: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.  Whoever has faith in me shall live, even though he dies; and no one who lives and has faith in me shall ever die.”  This is included in the funeral service because it is so important. It tells us that what happened on that first Easter morning does affect us.  It tells us that death is not the end.  We can look forward to life beyond the grave. We will even see our loved ones again.

But what does that actually mean?  People of faith do die.  I’ve been to their funerals.  And I have never known any of them come back from the dead and be resurrected.  So how is it that that Resurrection of Jesus all those years ago makes a difference?  Well, 40 days after Easter Jesus disappeared from earth to return to His Father and sent us the Holy Spirit to help us.  In ways I also cannot explain God is with us wherever we are and He is supporting us and listening to each one of us.  

But best of all through Jesus, God knows just what it is like to be human.  And so he can empathise in our weakness and our sorrows as well as sharing in our joys.  The reason that we know about Jesus and his teachings and have the New Testament is because of what happened on Easter Day.  That old enemy death, and I am really rather inclined to look on death as just that, has been overcome.  Christ has not risen from the dead and left us to our own devices, but is present with us, unseen by the eyes and beyond the touch of the hand.

Through our faith we come to realise more and more his presence within us and around us.  This is what he meant when he told us he is the Resurrection and the Life.  And in the same way that the Resurrection transformed the lives of the disciples so it can do the same for us today.  It cannot completely take away the pain of losing a loved one, but it can give us hope for now and hope for the future.  For it is because Jesus died, because of the great love he and the Father have for us, that we have new life, and we all need to learn to live in the hope of that Resurrection.

Jesus who is the Resurrection and the Life is with us each minute of the day—we just need to remember that and have faith.  And as we experience this from day to day so we are prepared for the day of our dying and our ultimate resurrection.   With Mary we can say: ‘I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who was to come into the world.’  This was proved by the events of Easter when Jesus destroyed death.    In this life we can experience God’s overwhelming love for us; in the next we will move into the nearer presence of God, with our own loved ones.  As St Paul puts it so eloquently in his First Letter to the Corinthians:

Now all we can see of God is like a cloudy picture

in a mirror. Later we will see him face to face.

We don't know everything, but then we will,

just as God completely  understands us.

For now there are faith, hope, and love.

But of these three, the greatest is love.

I pray that you may all encounter God’s love in this life and go on to share it with your loved ones in the next.

 Amen