Elaine Hodgkins' funeral homily

Elaine Hodgkins funeral homily December 16, 2018 Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Two tiny words in these two sentences are so very important today as we celebrate the life of Elaine Hodgkins and commend her to God’s care and keeping. Martha is encountering Jesus who has come too late to heal her brother and his friend Lazarus. And this expression of her faith in Jesus is also a true and authentic cry of one in mourning that is not often heard said aloud. The authenticity is found in the power of the tiny word: “If”… If only this. If only that. What might have happened differently; possibility that is now ended, cut off, cut short by death. Elaine Hodgkins had a variety of relationships with the people gathered here in this church today. She was the soul-mate to Phil; one who shared his expectations, his disappointments, his hopes and his dreams, and it was in her marriage to Phil that she finally found joy. She was a faithful communicant of this church, finding her community in and among this choir. She was an artist, working in a variety of different media—pastels and oils, photography, scrapbooking, and quilting. She was a mother and a grandmother, and her relationship with each of her children was as different and varied as they are, but all complicated (and dare I say? Challenging). She was fiercely independent, and she didn’t put up with a lot of nonsense. I found her to be really smart: an interested, interesting, and engaging conversationalist. All of us feel the burden of that “if” in different ways today: some perhaps in unresolved expectations; others in the face of a long-term and lingering illness which took a sudden turn toward hospice and Elaine’s death. But there’s another tiny word in today’s gospel passage that offers us the good news, even on this day, when “if” seems to loom so large. The word is “but.” Martha says to Jesus: ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ If the “if” in Martha’s statement is frustrated hopes and dreams and expectations, if the “if” is Good Friday, then the “but” in Martha’s statement of faith is Easter Sunday. The “but” is Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, which we also remember and celebrate this day. Jesus’s crucifixion is all of the worst that humanity and this world had to offer; it is broken relationships and frustrated hopes and dreams; it is disease of mind, body, and spirit; it is the times when we could and did not love as we should have loved. But… Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is God’s way of saying, “But…”. It is God showing, once and for all, that God can and will redeem all of our worst. God can and will redeem and re-create relationships, even as God recreates us in our bodies in eternal life. Jesus’s resurrection shows us, once and for all, that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything; stronger than old age, disease, and infirmity; stronger than our broken and challenging relationships; God’s love is stronger than heartbreak and disappointment. God’s love is stronger than anything, even death. So whatever “if” you may bring with you here this day, as we remember the unique soul that is Elaine and commend her to God’s care and keeping, know that in the kingdom of God, there is always a “but” to go with that “if.” And that but is that in God, all things can and will be redeemed and made new.