Bev More Funeral Sermon

I have instructions for this day, written in Bev’s familiar, precise penmanship: “Memorial requests from Bev and Glen More.” “Rite I,” she wrote (not Rite II, like St. John’s normally uses). She wanted the old language – the language of the church first known to Bev, the language first imprinted on her soul. She chose each reading, each hymn. She even chose the prelude: “Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring” or “Before thy throne I now stand” – both by Bach. This was one instruction we didn’t exactly follow. She said, “or” (to choose one or the other). Dennis chose both pieces for this afternoon. This is Bev we’re talking about. For God’s sake – after so many years of deafness – play ‘em both! And let her hear them, loud and clear!

She went on to write emphatically, “No eulogy.” It was one of only two instructions she gave that were underlined. She followed this up with, “We want this to be a joyous celebration for our children and grandchildren.” But – truth be told – I’m not exactly sure just what she meant with this instruction. Sounds to me that Bev must have gone to a lot of funerals in her days with rather dire preaching. ‘Cause, honestly, I don’t know how a sermon for Bev could be anything but joyous.

So, with no disrespect for her instructions, I claim the privilege of her one other instruction that was underlined, “To the priest: Use this outline in whatever way you feel is appropriate.”

Well, Bev, I feel it is appropriate to make this eulogy – to stand before your family and friends and proclaim with joyous celebration the woman you were for all of us; and to celebrate the substance of your faith, now realized fully in you.

After all, you were a woman who knew how to celebrate – and to celebrate well. Celebrations were the rhythm of your life. Wendy writes,

“Celebrations were important to mom. No one’s birthday got overlooked, and when asked, everyone wanted her famous chocolate cake. Whenever I came home from college, she always had a vase of fresh flowers in my room …. Times with friends, especially during summer when the party could be outside, included special food.”

[As an aside, speaking of these outdoor summer parties, Carl particularly remembers the picnic down at City Park back in the 80s (Bev must have been around 60-years-old at that point) and she got a wild hair to ride his moped, which honestly, isn’t a difficult thing to do. But she couldn’t quite figure it out and kept goosing the throttle and ended up crashing into the picnic shelter wall. But up she popped, laughing away at herself, laughing at this celebration of life.]

Wendy goes on to say, “Any church celebration was a joy, and she loved being part of the planning, the crafting, the cooking, and the teamwork to bring an event to life. She liked to make people feel welcome and special, and when she hosted, she was good at it. When she was the guest, she enjoyed dressing up, bringing a gift, laughing with friends, and noticing what made people tick. Especially her grandchildren, whom she thoroughly enjoyed watching as they grew and started their own families.”

Perhaps this gift of celebration – this value for celebration – would have flourished in Bev in any circumstances, because it was simply true of who she was at an organic level. But, I suspect, it was more than that. It was something learned. True celebration (after all) is no Martha Stewart affair; it’s not about impressing other people. It’s about loving other people. Nor is true celebration some endless Club Med holiday party that’s self-gratifying or hollow. It’s about seeing and naming the occasions in our shared lives that matter, that are important, that are (in a way) defiant – that insist, despite all the sufferings of this life: the hardships, the sorrows, the regrets – there are greater things that we uphold, truer things that have the final word.

This was certainly true of Bev.

The circumstances of her early years were anything but celebratory. She was an only child, born in 1924 in Steilacoom, Washington. When she was only six-years-old, her father was buried alive in the gravel pit where he worked. The Great Depression had just begun the year before, and Bev and her mother were left with nothing. So they moved immediately to Tacoma to live with Bev’s maternal grandmother who was, herself, a widow with seven children. Bev’s mother was one of six sisters and one brother. The brother, by this time, lived in eastern Washington and would send what money he could. There was no school near her grandmother’s house, so Bev missed a lot of the first grade. What Bev remembered from that season of life is that they moved a lot.

These are formative circumstances. And they don’t remain sequestered as an archive of memories that are separate from us. They are absorbed into our souls. They are absorbed into our souls as we try to make sense of this life, especially in our earliest years, asking all the most elemental questions of existence:

Who is God? What is the world all about? Who am I? What is my place in this world? Will I belong? Will I be safe?

I can’t say what the full trajectory of this learning meant for Bev. I don’t know how her life circumstances filtered through her mind and soul, as she came of age, as she married Glen, as she became a mother to Pam and Susan and Wendy, then a grandmother and great-grandmother. All I know is the Bev who emerged from it all, the Bev I first knew in 2011 when I became her priest here at St. John’s. I got the final version of Bev: this extraordinary woman, so forged of grace and filled with grace, who knew how to celebrate, who knew what mattered in this life, “that light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

This, of course, is the language of faith, which had become deeply engrained in Bev, body and soul. The substance of our faith, after all, is rooted in the belief that God in Christ has joined us in this life: in all its sorrows and deformities, even the cruelties of rejection and crucifixion, and conquered them all through grace. This is the gospel! It is love that wins. It is forgiveness that has the final word. It is resurrection that triumphs. For himself. And for us all.

This is the faith that wove itself into the person and character of Bev More. This is the source of her joy that taught her how to celebrate. Her famous chocolate cake, after all (with its hints of coffee and fabulous vanilla filling) was made most especially for Christmas, for the birth of Christ, in whom she had found her own rebirth, her own new life.

And hers was no shallow faith. It was deep within her. I’m mindful that – if through a lifetime – we have learned to pray, then that is a skill (no! more than a skill), that is an ontological reality that cannot be taken away – that remains ours for the whole of our days.

And nobody exemplifies that more in my reckoning than Bev. For, surely, by the last stretch of her 101 years, much had been taken away. She was bereaved (of her parents, her siblings, her husband, a daughter). Her home was sold and most possessions given away. She no longer drove. And for years (too many years and through COVID with all its isolations), she was rendered nearly deaf and blind. So much had been taken away. But not prayer.

And, if you have prayer – if you’ve truly learned to pray – you have everything.

For the heart of prayer is our union with God. It is union with the creator and sustainer of all things. It is union with the Holy Spirit who is one with everyone and all creation. So if we are in God, and God is in us, then the whole world is ours. God and God’s love becomes the truest reality that binds us, and enjoins us, in love… to everything.

In Bev and Glen’s retirement years, they’d begun to pray together regularly: Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, every day, from the Book of Common Prayer, a rhythm of prayer that was forging itself within her. When Bev still had enough sight to read her emails (especially if you made the font large enough), I would send her prayer requests from the church. Knowing she knew how to pray, and knowing she would keep confidence, I would share with her many of the deepest sorrows in our community. Sometimes, weeks and months would go by, where I’d get busy and forget to update her. No matter. She just kept praying. A year could go by, or more, and when I’d see her she’d ask, “How is so-and-so.” She never forgot. She just kept holding them and God, together, in her grasp.

Two weeks before she died, I went to see her. She couldn’t tell at first who it was that was with her. Then I leaned forward and made the sign of the cross on her forehead. “Oh, Eric,” she said, “I didn’t think I’d see you again.” Soon she asked, “How is Kathryn (my daughter)? Is she still in Richmond? And Henry (my son), he’s in Canada still? I’ve been praying for them. I’ve been praying for you.” I’ve been going through a lot lately. Life hasn’t been easy. I don’t know that Bev knew any of the details, but she’d been praying for me. And I can’t tell you how much that meant, and means to me, still.

The last time I saw her was the day before she died. “I don’t know what heaven’s like,” I told her. “I don’t know what it means to be there. But if you’re still able to pray, I’d still welcome your prayers.”

In these past several years, as Bev prayed for all of you – her friends and family – and as she prayed for me and St. John’s, St. John’s came to Bev and remained “church” with Bev through Holy Communion. “One body are we,” the church would pray beforehand, “for we share one bread and one cup.” Ever the Altar Guild member, Bev would have her own “altar” set up in her apartment, readied with its fair linen. Nora Clarke and Timmie Parker visited regularly, carrying the bread and the wine from this altar. After Timmie died last year, Alberta Jones stepped in.

Like with prayer, this communion was far more than just words, far more than some cultic ritual. It was a deep reality. It was union with God and all that God loves. When I brought Bev her last communion, she reached out her hands, found the bread, dipped it into the wine, then consumed it. Slowly. It was a wordless affair. The time for speaking was now past. It became, instead, a liturgy of the deepest sort – just a series of groans, of sighs too deep for words: “Mmmm. Mmmm,” while Melanie shed tears beside her.

When this service is over today, we’ll process out to the Memorial Garden together where we’ll inter some of Bev’s ashes, right beside those of her friend, Timmie Parker. And we’ll carry the chalice from communion with us, pouring the wine into the grave with her, with the same words we all heard at the rail, “The blood of Christ. The cup of salvation.” And each Sunday, we’ll repeat it again, as a member of the Altar Guild pours the consecrated wine into the garden. For we are the communion of saints, the living and the dead, one body, as the body of Christ.

This is our true reality for which the sacrament prepares us. This is the true reality in which Bev now dwells, for which all of life was preparing her. She is now joined with the saints of God, whose holiness she sought, a holiness which is now hers, complete.

Amen.