Funeral for Nathan Craig Brown (April 1, 2021)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Every funeral marks an end and a beginning. It is an end insofar as those of us who are left behind say a temporary goodbye (though not an eternal farewell) to our loved ones who have passed on. But it’s a beginning because today we turn Nathan over to God, knowing that he is with him now. It is for this reason that Jesus’ words in John 14, “Let not your hearts be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me” are both reasonable but really quite hard. Jesus tells us that “I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father’s house are many mansions.” He is giving us a view of the life to come; a life where we see God and live in Communion with him eternally.

Admittedly, in these dark moments, in the midst of the suffering that comes from the loss of someone we love, such a claim often feels too good to be true. Yet God is so great that it’s precisely because it seems too good to be true that we know it is. And it’s true this day for Nathan and, Lord willing, it will be true for us one day too.

But how do we get there? God often seems far off to many of us. We walk through the valleys of life, and I think most of us are keenly aware that we’re not what we should be. So why would God want anything to do with us?

But this is why Jesus’ words from the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel are so important, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” When we were far off from God, separated from him through our sin and rebellion, Christ, who is “God from God, light from light, very God of very God” stepped into time and space, took on a body just like our bodies and died on the cross, offering himself to the Father as the sacrifice for our sins. This is a God who truly is love, who really is faithful. As Anglicans, we pray a prayer before Communion every week called the Prayer of Humble Access and there’s this beautiful line in it that says God is a God “whose property is always to have mercy.” And we know it’s true because “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

So today, we are gathered to collectively turn Nathan over to God. We pray for the repose of his soul, that light perpetual may shine upon him, and we grieve because he is no longer here, because we feel like he was taken away too soon; but, in the end, we can trust that this God whose property is always to have mercy will be faithful and merciful. We can be confident of this because of St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15, a passage particularly apt as we stand in the shadow of Easter. Because our Lord has conquered Death In his Death, we can be confident that those who are baptized, who are in Christ, will be given victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. We can rest in this fact and take Paul’s exhortation to heart that we be steadfast and unmoveable in the faith that we have in our Lord.

As we remember the life of Nathan today and mourn the fact that he is now longer with us, we should take place our own lives in context. From dust to dust, ashes to ashes, we say at the beginning of Lent. We will all one day die. So every funeral is an impetus for us to reflect on our own lives. As we hand over Nathan over to God, do we trust him with our own lives? Do we participate with God through the life of the Church? Do we treasure the gifts he gives us in our lives, especially those of our families? While I didn’t have the privilege of knowing Nathan, from what I’ve heard, he sounds like a wonderful person. But you know who does know him? God. And our Heavenly Father is taking care of hI'm now and he will take care of us too. God loves you, God loves Nathan. May he rest in peace.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.