Growing as Children of God

Homily for The Burial of Eleanor King

December 16, 2023

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“Beloved.”  If there is one word that might describe Eleanor and her extraordinarily long life, it might be “beloved.”  Eleanor was beloved - by her children,grandchildren, great grandchildren, friends, neighbors, the staff at Wingate, parishioners here at Trinity Parish… Eleanor was beloved.

To celebrate Eleanor’s life, one who was beloved, places us in the context of the so-called Johannine community, the community that produced the Gospel of John and also the epistles of 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rdJohn:  “Beloved,” writes the author to his flock in 3 John, “I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health” (3 John 1:2).  “Beloved,”the author addresses them again, “do not imitate what is evil, but imitate what is good” (3 John 1:11).  And again in today’s reading from 1 John:

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this:  when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

This passage is complex, and made even more complex by being taken out of context.  But the gist of the passage, and the likely reason the Church chose it as a reading for the burial rite, is that 1) we are God’s beloved children, and 2) though we may not always be able to see it, God continues to work God’s growth in us.  

Unlike most of us, whose life expectancy is most likely shorter than Eleanor’s, [unlike most of us] with Eleanor we saw over one hundred years of God continuing to work God’s growth in one of his beloved children.  To be sure, “What we will be has not yet been revealed,” the author writes – we are not able to see the fullness of what Eleanor now is becoming in the nearer presence of God.  But during Eleanor’s many years with us in this life, God gave us a teasing glimpse of what an additional, say, ten to twenty years of God working God’s growth in us might look like.  If Eleanor is any indication, what God’s growth works in us over time is… even more beloved-ness.  Eleanor was beloved.  

And she passed that love on to others.  For example, when visiting Eleanor, how often was she not gracious?  And how often did she not take an interest in you ask you about yourself, how you were doing and, “Oh, how is your family?” Even though she might have had every reason to, how often did Eleanor ever dwell on complaints?  (“Complaining doesn’t do any good anyway,” she would say.)  Further evidence of God’s growth working in Eleanor…. Did Eleanor ever say “no” to an offer to pray with her?  And how often would she, when you said you would pray with her, also think of someone else who needed prayer and for whom she, too, was certainly praying?  And how often did she miss reading from Day by Day, that daily devotional, and reading there the suggested scriptures? And how easily, if you were to ask, would she speak about Jesus, as though Jesus were an intimate friend with whom she regularly conversed?  With Eleanor’s 101 years came ten to twenty more years than most of us of God working God’s growth, so that through Eleanor, whom the epistle suggests is becoming in some ways more like him, we have a furtive glimpse even of God’s self, of (in the words of the epistle) “coming to see him as he is:”  which is love, beloved,loving.

Death is never easy.  Death is so final, and it reminds us of the march of time and of our own impending death.  But death is not without gifts.  I wonder if – when we’re ready to receive it– one of the gifts that Eleanor might leave us is not only the witness of one in whom God has worked God’s growth for so long and that that growth (if we let it) is a growth in love; but also that just as God invited Eleanor to be beloved, to accept and be a conduit of that love to others, so is God inviting us to be beloved, to accept God’s love and to be a channel of God’s love to those around us.  

In the Gospel lesson we just heard, which also comes from John’s community, Jesus tells us that he is “the way and the truth and the life.”  And Jesus tells us, too, that someday, “I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you maybe also.”  I pray that – keeping in mind Eleanor’s witness – we might hear in Jesus’ words how much Jesus loves us and wishes to be with us… how beloved we are. And I hope that – keeping in mind Eleanor’s witness – [that] we, too,might follow Jesus in the way.  For if Eleanor is any indication, what God wishes to reveal to us is ever more,increasing, growing, deepening, expanding, never-ending love; that we like Eleanor are beloved.  And that God invites us in this life, as did Eleanor, to bear that love to others.