A sermon for the funeral of Sonja Lash
September 18, 2024, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs
Readings: Isaiah 61:1-3; Psalm 23; Romans 8:14-19,34-35,37-39; John 14:1-6
Once upon a time there was a painter. She wasn’t a professional painter, but she painted everyday. She didn’t sell her paintings (that’s not why she did it), but she occasionally put a few up at the local fair. Truthfully, she painted because she was made to paint. She spent the last 20 years of her life painting leaves on the oak tree in her backyard. She loved that tree. Maybe it was a little like the oaks of righteousness in our reading from Isaiah today. She loved to paint the leaves on that tree. She would paint the leaves as they were budding out in spring, in full leaf in summer; as they began to turn in the fall, and as they decayed on the ground in winter. She painted those darn leaves over and over and over again because she thought they were beautiful, but she could never quite get it right. There was a beauty that she could not quite put on the page. She tried anyway and pushed on. She was compelled by that uncaptured beauty. Artists are stubborn like that.
Today we gather to give thanks for someone who would have appreciated that artistic compulsion toward uncaptured beauty. We gather to give thanks for Sonja, a daughter of God. We gather to pray for her soul that is now held in God’s loving arms. We gather to pray for her family and friends–for one another–as we grieve a light gone too soon, a beauty slipped away. We gather to commend Sonja to the God who made her, the God who redeemed her, the God who sustains her still. And above all, we gather because we have a Christian hope–a hope that nothing in this life or the next is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Because Sonja was baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ, she is his, today and forever.
Sonja was a feathery sort of person. Feathery is a strange word to describe a person, but that’s what comes to mind. I can still see her walking up the stairs for service on Sunday. She came in at the buzzer, light, airy, smiling; and I would say hello to her just before the opening hymn and procession. She sat on the back row without fail. She often read the scriptures in public worship. She read well, with care. Then back to her seat. Most of the time she would slip out right before Communion. Other times she would slip out right after receiving Communion. I never saw her at the end of the service. Of course, we know that was because she lived with pain. But it also fit her. Mercedes tells me it’s okay if you want to slip out early today in her honor. I won’t be offended. But as you slip out, be sure to stumble on to our reception in the parish hall.
For her lightness, Sonja was someone in this life who knew grief and pain. Let us be honest about that. She knew grief and pain in her body, in her family, in her community. There were things in her life like those leaves that the painter tried to capture: a beauty just out of reach, a frailty accompanied by kindness, a grief at the unfinished, the unsaid, the undone. You and I today feel that grief and pain. It is as if Sonja, this summer tree in full leaf, has fallen too soon. We feel robbed of the beauty of autumn, of the picture that may have been painted of these next years.
The gospel speaks to us in our grief today: “Let not your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says. Jesus does not say that there is nothing to be troubled by. Now at the Last Supper, the disciples will soon be engulfed by questions and grief, regrets and sorrow. Jesus does not promise that there will never be pain or grief, sorrow or despair. But Jesus does promise that he is with us in it. Jesus does promise that there is a home for us, plenty of good room in the Father’s arms, both now and in the life to come. And there, in those dwelling places prepared for us, tears are wiped away, and we are restored, and newness comes, and reconciliation is possible, and justice rains down, and healing happens even beyond the grave. In those dwelling places, the summer leaf is full and does not fall.
Jesus tells us to believe that. “Believe in God, believe also in me,” he says. The word believe gets a bad rap. We want to make it about what’s in our head. But the true artist knows that beauty does not start in the head; it starts in the heart. To believe is to trust with our heart, with our very being, down into our gut, that God is with us. That we are never abandoned. That nothing, not sickness, not shock, not grief, not sorrow, not regret, not the unfinished, not death itself–nothing, St. Paul says today, will separate us from God’s goodness, grace, and love for us in Christ.
It is said that when that painter died, she expected to go to the gates of pearl. But when she awakened, she did not see gates. She saw that oak of righteousness from her backyard. The oak tree was beautiful, more beautiful than ever, and each leaf she had known on this side of life shone with a glory the artist had not previously seen. St. Peter was sitting at the bottom of the tree. The artist walked up. “Well,” she said, “Did I not make the cut?” St. Peter was confused: “What do you mean, you didn’t make the cut?” The artist replied, “The cut to get into heaven. Aren’t there supposed to be gates of pearl, walls of jasper, streets of gold, or something like that?” Peter smiled: “For some there are gates. Those are the more unfortunate ones. For the lucky ones, the gateway to heaven is the beauty they once saw on earth. And you saw beauty in this tree and in every leaf.”
On September 6th, Sonja left us. Her children were at her side. She left a beauty behind: above all, the beauty of family and friends and community; the beauty of artistic celebration; the beauty of kindness and generosity of spirit; the beauty of last minute entrances and early exits. I don’t know what she saw when she awoke on the other side, on that further shore, in that greater light; but given the beauty she knew in this life… Well, it must have been something.
Storied Grace 