Sermon

Once a life has come to its earthly close, that is, there is a kind of completeness to it. While Marian was living among us, those close to her were concerned with her everyday intentions and with their own relationships with her. Especially in these latter years, those closest to her were concerned with her daily needs, with her future, with the mystery of knowing so little about the state of her consciousness, the states of her affections and thoughts.

Now all that is the closing chapter of a life that was characterized by motion and achievement. Anyone who has been part of a family can read between those brief lines and have some sense of how many hours and days and months and years are compressed into the phrase, “providing a comfortable and nurturing home for her family.” As wife and mother, Marian of course went through bright times and dark times, facing the dark times with both strength and sympathy. She had a quick sense of humor and an intolerance of pretense, and we may suspect that it was only her underlying kindness that held back any number of comments that came to her mind.

Her patience in these last few years was little short of astonishing. Our own inner drives and our culture conspire to press us toward independence. We define ourselves, we measure our worth, by the responsibilities we accept. We interpret the Swedenborgian doctrine of “uses” to mean doing things for people. As we age, though, our abilities decline. We have to learn the harder lessons of accepting help, and if we have no measure of our value other than our material productivity, we must either take refuge in the past, or fall prey to a sense of worthlessness.

Not many people face this process in such an acute and accelerated form as did Marian. Perhaps when we rejoin her we will find out what did sustain her. Certainly it involved her faith. I cannot help feeling that her lifelong interest in people made life worth observing even when she could not participate. But at the heart of it all there must have been a sense of being valued, both by her Lord and by those nearest to her, that she could both feel and accept. Otherwise, what refuge could there have been from either black depression or blind rage at her losses?

Here, then, we come to the heart of things, to what really matters forever. Our theology often puts it in terms that we can read as rather bloodless and abstract, in terms of the conjunction of good and truth,” but sometimes it speaks a little more evocatively of affection and understanding. The sixties were quite right in the assertion that “all you need is love,” but awfully wrong in the assumption that love came cheap and easy. Love is demanding in its own way. It demands integrity, truth, honesty, which is why Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” It takes only one glimpse into the conflicted, fortress world of so many celebrities to convince us that no amount of material success can substitute for the inner assurance of worth.

Swedenborgian theology has a rather ungainly name for it—“the heavenly proprium.” This refers to realizing that we live from the Lord (Arcana Coelestia 155.2), simply accepting ourselves as gifts of the Divine, with nothing to defend, nothing to possess, and above all, nothing to prove—and therefore everything to give.

Marian herself, though, provided the clue I should like to end with. For much of our adult life, the simplicities of Sunday School songs are not very appropriate. We are a long way from the state that can sing “Jesus loves me! This I know for the Bible tells me so.” Little children don’t know enough to question such simplicities, and Swedenborg speaks of “the innocence of ignorance.” The life process is designed to lead back to innocence, but to “the innocence of wisdom.” There was nothing childish about Marian’s recent response to the song we just sang, “What a friend we have in Jesus.” This did not represent an escape from the long, often hard road. What as a child she had felt, now she knew. May we have the grace to accept that assurance as one more gift from her life into ours.

Amen.