A sermon at the Burial of the Dead
August 30, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Readings: Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 23; Romans 8:14-19, 34-35, 37-39; John 14:1-6
Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav’ns joy,
Sphear-born harmonious Sisters, Voice, and Vers
Those words belong to John Milton’s poem “At a Solemn Music.” The poem, later set to music by Hubert Parry, describes the power of music. Milton takes us to the heights of heaven where the music flows unabated and uncompromised. Milton also dives into our own hearts, where that music, once pure, is so often discordant and corrupted by sin, death, and the sorrows of this life. Milton goes on:
Wed your divine sounds, and mixt power employ
Dead things with inbreath’d sense able to pierce,
And to our high-rais’d phantasie present,
That undisturbèd Song of pure content,
Ay sung before the saphire-colour’d throne
To him that sits theron
With Saintly shout, and solemn Jubily…
Singing everlastingly;
We have come together to remember, mourn, and celebrate the life of a mother, grandmother, and friend, Catherine Baran. We gather in this church she loved, where she sang and served like her ancestors before her, to pray for and support those who mourn. But most of all, we gather because we have a Christian hope that nothing–nothing in this life or the next–will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. So says St. Paul today in Romans. Because Catherine was baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, she is his forever.
Over the past two years, I had the privilege of visiting Catherine in her home, first at Country Club Village, then at Westshores. And on those visits, I learned she was a lover of music. Of good music. And thank goodness she and I had the same definition of what good music was (we are both classical music snobs). Between discussing the latest thing Molly and I had heard at the Symphony, she would tell me of a different sort of music in her life: the melody of memory. She recounted travels, trips she had taken with John. She showed me pictures of those trips, of her family, of memories kept securely and meticulously in scrapbooks. And she would smile. Hers was a smile that knew joy, yes, but one that had also persevered through sorrow scarcely conceivable.
Music, and her love of music (good music, that is), accompanied her through that joy and sorrow. As Milton’s poem tells us, no doubt as Catherine herself would tell us, music is a powerful thing. It has the power to break down walls that divide, to lift the soul from the hell we so often face to the glories of heaven, even for a moment. Music has that power because there is something divine in it, something that connects us to heaven.
When someone dies, I am often asked about heaven. We all have a picture of heaven in our minds. But the truth is, most of heaven is a mystery to us. Holy Scripture tells us some things. Jesus says today in John that there are many dwelling places–places prepared by him for you and for me. Isaiah takes us to a banquet with good food and good wine, where the shroud of death is no more, where tears are wiped away, where there is communion with God and those we love. That’s heaven, and it’s beautiful, indeed. But much of heaven is clouded by divine light; we don’t get to see it until we’re there.
One other thing we know about heaven: There is music. As we pray in the Eucharist week after week, our music on earth joins the music of angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven. That company now includes Catherine; and her voice, once part of the choir at St. Luke’s, is added to that pure choir of glory.
Here’s how Milton ends his poem:
O may we soon again renew that Song
And keep in tune with Heav’n, till God ere long
To his celestial concert us unite,
To live with him, and sing in endles morn of light.
On August 26th, after waiting until Steve was able to make it in, Catherine joined that heavenly concert to live with Christ and sing in endless morn of light. And perhaps you felt the pangs of discordant music, of the disharmony of grief. In her life on earth, Catherine felt that discordant music, that disharmony, too, in so many ways–in moments of pain, of grief, of regret, of sickness. But Catherine also knew that there was hope abounding, healing aplenty, and glorious glimpses of the beauty beyond. There is a promise that those painful chords, no matter how jarring and harsh, will resolve into harmony, into beauty, into reconciliation at the end.
Now, for her, and for all of us someday, the beauty of heaven is no longer just a glimpse. For now she is part of that perfect paradise of God’s love and light. The note of glory that she heard echo off these walls for decades is now and forevermore filled out into heaven’s full symphony, and she sings along.
Storied Grace 