Christian burial is a peculiar thing.
The basic traditions of burial usually come down to remembering a life, celebrating it in some way and finding comfort that the dead are having a pleasant afterlife.
But Christian burial is peculiar.
We aren’t simply allowed to remember and celebrate and find comfort.
We have to do something much more difficult.
We have to pay attention and let our eyes be opened wide by the image of God.
Each person in some way uniquely reveals the image of God to the world.
And each Christian in some way fleshes out the Gospel, revealing the good news of God in Jesus Christ. Like in the reading from John, we are each to be that surprise of the resurrection appearance to a world expecting only death.
When we bury our dead we are called to pay attention, to attend, to focus, to find the image of the Holy One, to see how the Gospel is being revealed. The dead are the book of scripture that we are called to open and read, to find the resurrection appearance once more. They change our hearts, they show us God, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.
We are called to attend.
Christian burial is a peculiar thing.
Which is appropriate, because Mary Stewart Hardaway was a peculiar person.
My Grandmother, Grandmom was a particular person. Which explains why so many in our family are particular in how we think things should be.
What has this unique image of God revealed to the world? What is the Gospel according to grandmother?
A domineering southern matriarch, who thought things should be done in a particular way, sometimes difficult, who loved deeply, who enjoyed people and her family, and all the things that connect people and generations. Whose laughter lifted the hearts of all around her. Laughter reveals much of a person, much of God.
Whenever she was around I noticed that I stood a little straighter, held my head up a little higher.
She taught me to see people and families and communities as part of a long ongoing story, full of victories, celebrations, failures, grief and pain. And to pay attention to each person in the full narrative of their lives, to weep with those who weep and celebrate with those who celebrate.
She was just another wonderfully flawed person through whom God’s love has been showered upon so many. The burial liturgy expresses this when it says, “A sheep of God’s own fold a sinner of God’s own redeeming.”
So what happens when we attend to the scripture of this iron whim of a woman?
Our eyes are opened to the particular and the peculiar. They matter. A lot.
We attend to and nurture all the things that connect our lives to one another.
We love lavishly with great style.
We laugh deeply, with abandon.
We flesh out the good news of God’s reckless love standing tall, with heads held high.
We become revelatory, we blaze God’s image, the resurrection appearance surprising yet again.
The Gospel according to Grandmother.
The Bible of Mary.
The blessing of God anointing and kissing this world.
What a lady. What a wonderfully difficult and darling lady.
I will always remember her laughing and saying, “Oh darling I love you, do get a haircut.” over and over year and after year. And wouldn’t you know I had my hair cut on Tuesday.
They are words of baptism, of unction, of the Spirit descending.
“Oh darling I love you.” That’s Gospel.
Peculiar, particular.