Our text from Isaiah is an intriguing one, and one that I think Marie would have taken comfort in. It is a feast — a feast of rich foods and well-aged wines strained clear — and we are promised, in the words of the prophet, that God is going to destroy on God’s holy mountain the shroud that covers all people. The shroud is often in scripture a reference to death, and we can expand the metaphor and talk about it as a reference to sadness, as a reference to sickness, as a reference to famine. In other words, all the afflictions that have at times in the past, and still at times today, characterize human existence. These things — this pall that covers us at times — will be destroyed. This is a wonderful word of hope. “He will swallow up death forever.” Death, which is often seen as that which swallows, that which overcomes, is itself, we are told, to be overcome and swallowed up. And the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces. God, who created all things, God, who thunders from the clouds, God, who is seen in the column of fire, God, who at times in scripture seems so distant, so different from us — that God is going to wipe away the tears from our eyes. Such an intimate image, and yet talking about that which at times can seem distant.
Yet for Marie, I know that God was not distant. She spent her life hoping and trusting in the return of Christ, and, failing that within her earthly lifetime, her return to him. So when I think about this word of hope, it strikes me that we have to acknowledge that the prophet is talking about the day of the Lord. Now, that is different from what Christians will often mean when they say “the Lord’s day,” referring to Sunday. When we talk about the day of the Lord in scripture, that is a day discussed in various — some might even say conflicting — ways. In one passage it might be described as the sky being rolled up like a scroll and the sun looking red like blood. In another, it is a feast. What accounts for this difference in perspective about the day of the Lord, the day when the Lord is going to set all things right?
Well, the difference, I would say, is simply one of perspective. As my ethics professor told us in seminary — and I wish I knew who originally said this, as I know it only secondhand; he was a Jesuit, but there are a lot of Jesuits — the quote is: “In the end, God will be all in all. Whether we experience that as mercy or wrath is up to us.” In the end, God will be all in all. Whether we experience that as mercy or wrath will be up to us. From talking with Marie, I know that her hope and her trust was in that mercy, and in this vision of joy—of people being brought into the feast in the kingdom of God. When Marie thought of the day of the Lord, whether the day of the Lord with Jesus returning, or the day of the Lord for her when she went to be with Jesus, I believe she understood Jesus—she understood the God upon whom she waited for, let us just go ahead and say, 102 years—as the good shepherd. That is why we heard that passage from the Gospel of John today.
Marie trusted that Jesus loved and loves her, that Jesus loves others, and she showed it in her interactions and in her passion and joy for her faith and for the people that she knew. There are a number of stories that I think illustrate this. I know I have heard some from you all, so I am going to share just a few — some funny Marie stories — including one I heard just today. I mentioned this last Sunday: when Marie sang in the choir here at St. Joseph’s, we would gather in the choir vesting room, what some people call the “everything room” — because it is the cry room, the choir vesting room, all those things, the family room before a funeral — where I prayed with you all on Sunday mornings. I would go in, and my practice is to pray with the choir before the second service. Marie, of course, would be there as long as she was able. I would ask for prayer concerns, and I would be standing there, and all of a sudden I would feel something tugging at my chasuble or my stole. I would look, and there would be Marie, muttering to herself as she straightened my vestments. And I know I was not the only one who received this sort of attention from her. Part of it — and we are not going to make her totally sainted, okay? — part of it was that she simply wanted folks to look right. But she helped. She encouraged people. If she saw something she thought should be different, she helped.
I was talking with Shelly this morning, just in the sacristy. Shelly would sit close to where Marie sat, and she would sing and then compliment Marie’s singing, even after Marie was no longer able to sing in the choir. Marie would say thank you, and then Shelly would say, “Well, I wish I could sing like you,” and Marie would say, “Don’t sell yourself short.”
Think about the experiences Marie had over 102 years — the experiences she had in her family. I just heard there were nine boys and four girls, or something close to that, growing up. The life of faith they led in her household. Being born in 1916, think of all the things that were going on that today seem so separated from where we are. World War One was raging, and Woodrow Wilson was president, just about to be elected to his second term. Consider these things. The Battle of the Somme ended on November 18 of that year with over a million casualties. In December of that same year, America’s first board-certified doctors of ophthalmology were awarded their degrees at the University of Memphis Medical School after passing their exams — how often have you gone to an ophthalmologist? In 1916, that was the first group to be board certified in the United States. The Russian Revolution began during her first year of life, in 1917. The United States entered World War One. Twenty thousand women marched in a suffragette parade in New York City that year.
Consider the changes she saw. As a woman, to go from the way things were in 1916 — when she could not vote — to the point where she could. From not being able to have her own checking account, to the point where she could. In the Episcopal Church, from not being able to serve on a vestry to the point where women were eventually able to. She saw that happen during her life and ministry in the church. So many changes: the formation and dissolution of whole nations — Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, even the Soviet Union, which for such a large portion of her life I am sure people thought of as an enduring counterpoint to the United States. She saw its beginning and she lived quite a while after its end. So many things. And through it all, what I gather from talking with you, and what I encountered in talking with her, was a deep and abiding faith, and this sense of waiting patiently on the Lord.
Marie is no longer waiting. Her wait is over. Her hope is now fulfilled. She is with her Lord, and she stands as a witness to us. From talking with you all, I know that through her life she cared for her family in ways large and small, for her children, and I am thankful to know the care that she took for you all.
In our gospel text, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away.” The good news that Marie held to, I believe, was that even in the worst times of her life, Jesus — the God whom she believed in, the God that she knew she would encounter in a feast and not in weeping and gnashing of teeth, in a celebration and in joy and not in fear, in a reunion and not in judgment — that God is the good shepherd. The one who was with her throughout her long life. The one who gave her the ability to joke as she did. When you would ask her how she was doing in her late nineties, as she turned one hundred, and she had had some knee problems, and you would say, “How are you doing this morning, Marie?” she would say, “Oh, pretty well for 98.” “Pretty well for 99.” “I am here; I am making it.” She was frustrated at times by the changes she experienced physically, but what I encountered was, for the most part, a deep sense of thankfulness, trust, and joy.
Now, I know there were times that other things came through — and don’t they always, for all of us, come through at times? But I think we would all do well with our trust in the God who is revealed as a good shepherd, who cares for and lays down his life for his sheep, who is with his sheep, who knows their names even as they know his voice, even in the worst times of their lives, even at the end of this earthly life — because of whom we know the end of this earthly life is not the end of our lives at all.
Amen.