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| Image by Dragan Stanojevic on Pixabay |
In the last 10 days we have celebrated the lives of two members of our Trinity community. As I talked with Lin’s and Barbara’s friends and family to prepare the funeral services, I heard stories about how they lived their lives. Stories of kindness and compassion. Stories of family, of work and integrity, sorrow, play, and delight.
Reflecting on the lives of these two faithful people reminded me of an interview with a death doula that I heard recently. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of a death doula. It was new to me, too.
Birth doulas work with an expectant mother to understand and anticipate the physiological, emotional, and family changes of pregnancy, birthing, and early parenting. Death doulas do similar things with someone who is approaching death. The death doula I heard asked two questions that stuck with me: How do we want to be remembered? And, having answered that question: Are we living the way we want to be remembered?
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is answering these two questions. This portion of John 15 falls in the middle of the “farewell discourse” Jesus gives after Judas has left the Last Supper to go betray him. Preparing his disciples for his imminent arrest, trial, and death, Jesus reminds them of his purpose: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (Jn 15:11)
The whole reason Jesus came to be among us, is to show us the way to joy. Joy that is found, as he tells us in the next breath, when we love one another as he loved us. Loving one another with the compassion, forgiveness, empathy, and self-sacrifice of forever friends.
With this commandment, he appoints us to go and bear fruit. To grow and thrive like grapes on the vine. To be a gift and delight to the world. To show the world by our living that we follow a God who desires every person and all creation to know the deep joy of love, acceptance, and thriving.
To borrow a line from an old TV series, this is our mission, should we choose to accept it.
Faithful living requires us to constantly ask ourselves whose vision and values define our choices. Even in Jesus’ time, people with power often abused, diminished, and oppressed others. And the wider society accepted their abuse of power and use of violence with resignation. Jesus’ mission to inspire love to an end of complete joy declares that there is another way.
As followers of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, who came to bring life and health so that all people and creation will thrive, are we living the lives for which we want to be remembered?
Trinity is historically remembered as a flagship or cardinal parish in this diocese. The first Episcopal congregation in Seattle, and mother church to many congregations in the diocese. An historic and beautiful church building. A place of radical welcome for more than a century. A congregation that tried all the variations of the ‘new prayer book’ in the 1970s. The work to reduce our carbon footprint and become a greening congregation. Those years were often difficult financially as the church building burned several times in several locations, and the ministries of the church pivoted every few years to meet changing and varied needs of our neighbors. When we look back, the drought and pruning moments fade away. We remember the fruit: the innovation, the delight and pride in being a unique place in the city and diocese, the joy in witnessing to God’s expansive love for all people and creation.
In this nearly post-pandemic world, we are pivoting from remembering the past. Looking to the future, at the fruitful and thriving life we hope to lead in the coming decades, and asking, How do we want to be remembered for our life in the 21st century?
How are we living into the mission of the church, quoting from the prayer book catechism here, “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ”?
How are we continuing Jesus’ mission to love one another as he loved? Treating every person and all creation with the compassion, kindness, patience, and generosity we have for our friends?
We ponder these questions, in healthy and prayerful self-examination. Asking the Holy Spirit to inspire and strengthen us, to root and graft us, into fruit that nourishes the world into joy.
On Thursday this week, we will celebrate Jesus’ ascension into heaven, his final departure from earthly life. His words to his disciples in John provide eternal words of hope and reassurance. As he encourages and exhorts us to a deep and forever friendship.
As the Father has loved him, so he has loved us. And showed us how to love one another, with a love that almost guarantees to break our hearts. It’s the same love we seek and find as we gather around God’s table, becoming the body of Christ as we consume holy food and drink, while seeing Christ reflected in the faces around us. It’s the love that leads to opening our hearts to one another, friend and stranger, with vulnerability and hospitality - and deep joy.
For one last time, we recall the promise of new life that comes at Easter, as dawn breaks after a night of death and sorrow,
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
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