Evelyn Fulton - Funeral Sermon

“I Lift my eyes to the mountain. Where is my help to come? My help comes from the Lord”

There are a lot of times in our life when we need help. Babies, toddlers, and children have that built-in, they know they need our help and so do we. As we get older, we can easily forget how much we need help, even while we are being helped by doctors, customer service, friends, farmers, and more. When we lose something or someone, or sometimes we come face to face with a wall, we know we need help. We know that we can’t do it on our own. So where are we going to turn, who will help us persevere and even grow through these trying times? Friends and family may help, but they can’t change these things. My help comes from the Lord. He will watch over you. He will not let you be overcome. He who knows everything will guide your every step - If we let him. 

Did you ever notice that Evelyn wore a Mustard Seed in a necklace? It came from Jerusalem and it was because of the same parable we read today. If you even have a little faith, faith the size of a mustard seed it can become a great and mighty tree that supports others. That is what we see in Evelyn’s life, but we’ll come back to that.

Does a seed grow on its own? It can grow without our help, but a seed needs a lot of things to grow. First, it needs to be buried and die. There in the ground, it is fed by all the nutrients of the soil. It is also watered through the rain. Until, finally, it has enough strength to break through that soil and bask in and be fed by the light. Here this little tiny seed gets help in four ways: the soil, the water, and the light. Then there is the fourth, the hand or thing that stirs up the soil and plants it. Here we see why our faith only needs to be the size of a mustard seed because our faith is about who we depend on, who we turn to. All we need to give is a little faith, because God in Jesus will take even the littlest we give and turn it into something wonderful. 

I would love to take some time to pour over what the water, light, and planting hand all can mean as they are all ways that we meet and get the help of God, but for now, I will speak only to the seed’s death. This is our hope as Christians. Death is not the end - in fact, it is nowhere close to the end. Baptism is a kind of death, where we mark out a death to what was, but more than that it is a new beginning in the glorious love, peace, and joy of Christ. Take that image a little further, if we are buried in Christ, then we are fed by him. It is his life that went through the worst death humanity could come up with and yet overcame it. If we are fed by Jesus’ life, then our life is sustained in perpetuity, beyond the fickle and disappearing things of this world. We feel this loss and distance because we don’t yet know what eternity means and how it is being offered to us right now. 

“Do not be afraid”. This is one of the most repeated phrases in all of the bible, because God knows that there is a lot we could be and are afraid of. “Do not be afraid”. How is this possible? God tells us. “Don’t be afraid, because I am with you”. You see God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are our ever-present help. If we only turn to him. All of these things that we feel overcome by, burdened by, and afraid of, they are nothing, they are only specks of sand compared to our loving and mighty God. Imagine that. Our worst fears and biggest problems are like specks of sand to God. Yet, he cares enough to come to us and to want to help us through them. We have to trust Him though. God says “Do not be afraid”, because he knows things will scare us, but also that when we act out of fear we hurt ourselves and others. 

So what are we supposed to do with all of this hurt, all of these feelings? There are three things. I already mentioned trust. This is not a blind trust though. God meets us when we trust in him. Look at the birds of the air, they don’t sow, nor reap, but the Lord provides for them. Look at the flowers of the field, they don’t spin, or work and yet they are more beautiful than all our modern fashion. Look at them and realize if God cares for a little bird or a little flower, does he not care even more for you? Trust and see what the Lord is already doing in and around your life.

Second, Jesus says to us, “Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest”. What a beautiful invitation. One I think we could all do with at least a few times a week. Jesus continues, “for my yoke is easy and my burden light and it will bring rest for your souls”. So the second call is to trust God enough to give him our burdens, but God knows how easy it is for us to take up our worries again, so he wants us to take up his burdens which are light and easy and are not burdens at all, because they lead to rest and life. 

Finally, God, in the Letter to the Romans, calls us to rejoice in our suffering. If we suffer while remaining faithful to God, that suffering produces in us endurance. It produces in us a kind of strength of love where we can endure and overcome even more in our lives in ways that express God’s joy, peace and love. That endurance then works in us to shape our character. A character that is like Christ’s who loved to the point of sacrifice and changed the world through his godly character. Finally, that character produces in us, hope, because we will see God’s hope come to life and lived out in our very lives. So, we can truly rejoice, even in our suffering, because in God our suffering produces, endurance, which produces character, which produces hope and our hope does not disappoint because it is grounded in the one who can, has and will overcome everything. Obviously, this pertains to Evelyn’s death, but it also pertains to our lives. Evelyn knew what this hope can do. She knew what a mustard seed of faith could mean in God’s hands. She knew that she didn’t have to worry, because she saw God’s mighty hand that supported and cared for her through it all. Now, we can trust that he is still supporting her, but in ways that are beyond our understanding, which now we can only reach to by faith. AMEN