lament for granny: a sermon

i have been taking an independent study course this year called psalms and grieving.  as part of the class, i wrote a sermon and the following is the sermon i would have preached if i had been able to preach at my grandmother’s memorial.  instead of preaching on a psalm, i wanted to structure the sermon as a psalm of lament.  the scripture are listed at the beginning and the parts of the lament are marked out, though in preaching they would not be stated explicitly.  

granny and i when i visited her back in 2011

scripture:

romans 8:26-39

psalm 13

john 14:1-14

(address to god)

spirit of comfort and consolation.  god of hope and mercy.  be with us now.

we come today to bear witness to a life lived in faith—to a woman who knew the maker of heaven and earth—the one full of loving kindness and saving grace.

(complaint)

we have lost a mother, grandmother, friend, minister, and sister in christ.  marguerite marie darcey hoffmann worked hard in her life.  as the certificate states, she successfully raised 4 kids, 1 husband, and 3 dogs, and—i would add to that—1 more dog and 5 grandkids.

peggy or, as i knew her, granny was born in waterbury to james and margaret darcey on march 3, 1921.  in her baptism, god claimed marguerite marie as a beloved child and called her into the world and into a life of faith. 

at the age of seven, granny came to paul ney rd, where she would live out the majority of her life.  in 1944, while on vacation in florida, peggy met a young navy lieutenant from reno, nevada.  their relationship was as scandalous from the start as it was a romance made for the movies.  granny and grandaddy fell in love and once they figured out how to navigate their distinct faith traditions and prior commitments, it seemed that they lived happily ever after.

peg was a great support to fred when he was in the south pacific and they worked well together as architect-builder and interior designer for miniature mansions of cheshire.

her life wasn’t perfect.  granny faced her share of struggles—she battled with and conquered more health problems than i can count and each time she exceeded doctors’ expectations, but we always knew that granny was a fighter; determined to live life and to love others.  granny loved her family and her church.  she worked hard to love and care for her own 4 kids as well as the rest of the neighborhood kids.  she cared for her friends and those around her.  she also cared deeply about her faith.

i don’t know if she would’ve sought ordination if she could have, but i do know that she was a minister throughout her life.  granny lived out her vocation as a eucharistic minister and a child of god. 

so much so that i used to tell people that when i came to visit granny every august we would go to church “every day but sunday”—faithfully attending daily and saturday afternoon masses. 

each morning, if i was still in bed when granny was getting ready, she’d come into the room my brother christian and i shared, and nudge me awake to ask if i was coming with her to mass. 

granny brought me to jesus—even having me baptized here at st. bridget’s may 15, 1987—and letting me tag along with her for daily mass.

granny also brought jesus to countless others.  i remember the countless times i joined granny as she brought eucharist and led a short worship tuesdays at marbridge convalescent home.  after daily mass at church or at marbridge, granny and i would then go out for coffee and pastries with the coffee klatch—a group of strong and deeply faithful women granny and i have been blessed to know throughout our lives.

so we gather here, to mourn the loss of our mother, grandmother, friend, and sister in christ. 

after over 91 years journeying with us, granny has joined grandaddy, pete, nonnie, goggie, and all the saints in that mansion in the sky.

while we were with her in the hospital, mom, ghiq, christian, carrie, and i talked with granny about a variety of things.  one thing we all agreed on was that grandaddy was putting the finishing touches on their miniature mansion so that it would be ready for her.  jesus’ words to his disciples ring so true for granny.  jesus has gone to prepare a place for each of us and as our loved ones bring us to god and can be christ for us, encouraging us in our faith and lives, so too, grandaddy has been at work on that miniature mansion in heaven, preparing it for when jesus would bring granny home.

(confession of trust)

granny wasn’t perfect—she did her best to love others and remain true to her words, but it was in her baptism that she was set free.  as paul states, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height; nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate granny from the love of god in christ jesus our lord.”

in our baptisms we are all set free so that the power of death no longer rules our lives.  granny was ready to be with grandaddy again.  she lived a full life with no shortage of struggles and her faith was a big part of it even until the very end.  we who are left will miss her and we begin today to figure out how to live in the world anew now that her physical presence is gone.  by god’s grace, she is indeed in a better place and we can now await the time when we will join her and all the beloved in a place far from pain and sickness, sorrow and fear.

(petition)

so we pray for her welcome reception in the church triumphant.  we pray that she and grandaddy would prepare our rooms in the miniature mansion just as they worked here on earth to prepare the miniature mansions of cheshire.  we pray that god would console and accompany us as we relearn the world without her.  and perhaps most of all, we pray that her spirit and love remain with us until we can join her and all the saints in heaven.

(words of assurance)

and so, 

may the god whose grace and love is bigger and more powerful
                                                                       than all the forces of evil and death

        guide us, and carry us into the future. 

may god embrace granny in loving arms. 

may god inspire in us acts of love and service to others, following granny’s example.  and
may god be with us always,

(vow to praise)

as we once again pray, and praise the god of love and grace—the god who chooses each one of us and calls us, with granny and all the sinners and saints, beloved children.

amen.

timey wimey - is this the time?: ascension day

the other readings for the day, which i reference were: acts 1:1-11 and ephesians 1:15-23

the holy gospel according to luke, the 24^th chapter.  glory to you, o lord.

⁴⁴Then Jesus said to his disciples,

            “These are my words that I spoke to you

                        while I was still with you—

                                    that everything written

                                                about me in the law of Moses,

                                                the prophets,

                                                and the psalms

                                    must be fulfilled.”

⁴⁵Then he opened their minds

            to understand the scriptures,

⁴⁶and he said to them,

            “Thus it is written,

                        that the Messiah is to suffer

                                    and to rise from the dead on the third day,

                                    ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins

                                                is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations,

                        beginning from Jerusalem.

            ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things.

                        ⁴⁹And see,

                                    I am sending upon you what my Father promised;

                                    so stay here in the city

                                                until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

⁵⁰Then he led them out as far as Bethany,

            and, lifting up his hands,

                        he blessed them.

                                    ⁵¹While he was blessing them,

                        he withdrew from them

                        and was carried up into heaven.

            ⁵²And they worshiped him,

                        and returned to Jerusalem with great joy;

                                    ⁵³and they were continually in the temple

                                    blessing God.

the gospel of the lord.  praise to you, o christ.

-----

throughout the readings for today—and, in fact, on this day itself—we are in a liminal time.  today we celebrate jesus’ ascension.  the day jesus—in bodily form—leaves his disciples and the disciples begin the wait for the holy spirit.

the texts themselves are the end of luke and the beginning of acts—two books likely written by the same author.  this is a time of transition.  we are moving from “all that jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven” in luke to the work of the holy spirit through jesus’ followers throughout the book of acts and even into today.

we are on the edge—the margin between two places—liminal space.  it can be confusing or frustrating.  even the disciples are confused about what’s going on and what time it is.  they ask, “lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to israel?”

we can hear that question, 2000 years later, and scoff a bit.  we know the answer and we know that jesus is about bigger things than mere human institutions, yet there’s something compelling about the question. … “is this the time…”

it is important to point out that in greek there are two words for time: chronos and kairos.  chronos refers—as you might guess from the sound of it—to linear or chronological time—minutes, hours, days, months, years.  it is the time that we tend to be most familiar with and it is the time the disciples are referring to in their question.  have enough days, weeks, months, years passed that we can rule ourselves again like before?

jesus, however, recognizes what’s going on.  the disciples are confused, and, maybe, a little worried.  this bonus time they’ve had with jesus since the resurrection has been great, but they know it can’t last forever and they’ve got their own agenda that needs to be taken care of.  they’re still holding onto this idea that jesus is here to overthrow the roman occupation—to give rule and sovereignty back to israel—they’ve forgotten that the kin-dom should be and, in fact, is god’s in the first place.

so, jesus addresses their concerns by affirming the validity of their uncertainty, saying, “it is not for you to know the times or periods that the father has set by his own authority.”  in affirming their uncertainty, jesus does two important things:

he brings the focus back onto god’s power and authority—confronting the disciples’ assumptions about human power and authority.  jesus contrasts the disciples’ desire for israel to rule itself with the reality of god’s supreme authority over everything.

jesus also introduces kairos into the conversation.  the disciples ask about chronos—human time—and jesus tells them that it is not for them to know the human times (chronos) or the periods—the divine time (kairos).

here it is important to understand kairos.  so, while chronos is linear and horizontal, kairos is vertical.  i like to think of kairos as heaven-time—this cloud-like nebulus floating around that will occasionally crash into the chronos that’s just chugging along fairly steadily.  those moments are what i like to call kairos moments.  it is when god’s timing interrupts our steady human time.

these kairos moments happen throughout our lives.  for me, when i was getting ready to graduate from luther college, i knew that i didn’t want to go directly into seminary, but i was uncertain about what to do when i graduated.  i ended up applying for and getting into the elca’s young adults in global mission program.  i interviewed with two places and when i came out from the second interview, i called my parents and told them that i knew where i needed to be the next year.  and i did end up in slovakia as i thought. 

that was a kairos moment in my life—that moment; that time, god interrupted and as i was open to the moment, god broke in and pointed the way.  coming into the interviews, however, i didn’t have certainty about any of it.  yet i was willing to jump into that uncertainty, trusting that god was up to something.  and when i did jump, god was there to catch and guide me.

going into the interviews, i had no idea that they would become a kairos moment, and yet, looking back, i am certain that it was a kairos moment.  god interrupted my life.  my chronos was interrupted by god’s kairos.

today, with the disciples, we wait for god’s timing, for kairos moments of our own.  the hard thing for us is that there’s not much in the way of a warning that the moment is coming and a lot of the time the build-up to a kairos moment is filled with uncertainty and can feel like the end of our time. 

today we as individuals may be losing a job, facing a serious illness, graduating without any prospects or ideas for the future—unsure of what the future might hold.

as a country and world, the weather is increasingly erratic as we’ve seen even just this week; the legislative sessions are quickly coming to an end seemingly without the changes we want; and pain and suffering seem to be everywhere.

and as a congregation we are facing a million dollar building debt, we are grappling with what it means to live out the hospitality and welcome we have first received from god at the table, and we wonder where and how god is at work in it all. 

it is a scary time as we wait—confusing and frustrating, filled with uncertainty, yet we know that the holy spirit comes in those scary moments most of all—the liminal times, the times when we are unsure and confused.  when we are open—and sometimes when we’re not—god breaks in and shows us, as paul states in ephesians, “the hope to which god has called you, the riches of god’s glorious inheritance, and the immeasurable greatness of god’s power.”

jesus broke into the disciples’ fearfully locked house after the resurrection and in this time after his ascension, we wait with mounting urgency for the holy spirit to break into the house where we wait in jerusalem

and even now we catch glimpses that this might be a kairos moment in the making.  we may now have opportunities to branch out and pursue a new passion or try our hand at a new position, invest more time in the relationships we have or try that thing we’ve been thinking about for a while.   

we hear of the people who are running toward crises seeking to help, of more pressure to provide safe workspace for workers around the world, especially in bangladesh, of changes in how we approach the environment.  people seem to be stepping up to fill in where they see a need.   

and as a congregation we are discerning a new welcoming statement, starting a task force to be creative in exploring finances for the future.

urgency is building and glimpses are increasing that the holy spirit might be stirring something up.  can you feel her whisper?  can you feel the approaching pentecost—chronos becoming kairos?   

is this the time?

can you feel the energy mounting?  change is coming; the holy spirit is stirring.  what might god be up to?  where is god leading us?  how will you be open to the approaching kairos moment?