Mother could be preachy. So can I unsurprisingly! On a day like today I have to tread carefully because I don’t very often preach to my family. At least they’ve already had a say and John is on the altar as his contribution. Elsie was proud of them - of us - and grateful for us, as her last message, at the end of the service booklet, makes clear.
People are put off Christianity by many things - the diversity of faith systems (how do you choose?), the historical basis of Christ’s resurrection which relies on the New Testament (a Christian document) and the well attested hypocrisy of many Christian leaders.
As the family tribute indicated, Elsie herself practised what she preached. Her house was founded on rock not sand. ‘Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock’ (Matthew 7:24) She held to the catholic and apostolic church built on Peter’s faith that the risen Jesus is universal Lord and Saviour and that the gates of hell will not prevail against his Church. The humanity of the Church is sinful, yes, but there is divinity among us and that will prevail. This was Elsie’s faith.
Not all of us here share that faith. It is the genius of Christianity that its mainstream respects dissent, knowing disbelief may be directed more at religion than the mercy of God. Religion is God-given but man-handled. Elsie lamented lack of integrity in anyone but, with Our Lord, lamented religious hypocrisy most of all, subtracting as it does from the forward movement of the world served by the church.
In February her bags were packed for God. She’d chosen the hymns and readings for her funeral and was matter of fact about death simply asking, as God granted, that she die in her sleep. Before that sleep she’d have used this well worn large print book to say evening prayer and, in so doing, would have remembered many here present before her Lord. That remembrance continues in Christ our future as does ours for her. Here we return the compliment applying what Jesus has done for us to our souls and the souls we love, on earth or in paradise. Here in the Eucharist the Holy Cross, whose Feast we keep today, becomes a tangible reality; the Body and Blood of Jesus are made present; we are united with Jesus in his suffering and in his resurrection. This great rite, left to the Church by her Lord, is the least and the most we can offer for the dead. There is no more that I and you can do for Elsie than place her soul into God’s hands as she herself did day by day at the altar.
My main souvenir of her - she kept few artefacts - is this saying from St John Henry Newman framed on her window ledge: ‘I ask not to see. I ask not to know. I ask simply to be used’.
As an apologist - not apologising for Christianity but making, like Newman, an apologia or reasoned defence for it - I’m clear about Christianity’s historical truth. You can see the evidence and there’s a good argument for it. So far as knowing God or knowing why we suffer, as with Tony’s premature death, I’m keen to know. Faith is like climbing a ladder with determination to fix a lightbulb. You’re concentrating attention on loosening the bulb and suddenly your mind switches to ponder how securely you’re placed on the ladder. Your inner questioning undermines the operation until you pull yourself together and get on with the job. When we try to analyse our faith it feels shaky. When we attend to God it is convinced. Believing in God is a practical matter beyond human analysis and Elsie knew this better than me.
‘I ask simply to be used’ - not for her so much talk about God or the knowledge of God - though she did know him as the contemplative she was - just the generous desire to be used, here and now, as God wills. David, Anne and James described something of how that occurred through her long life, to God’s praise and service and the benefit of many.
My great grandfather saw this Church completed in 1838. My father, Greg, born in the last months of Queen Victoria’s reign, sang in the choir. Elsie followed me in switching from Giggleswick to Settle Church after his death in 1974. As chorister, PCC and Deanery Synod member and parish visitor she became in Peter’s words ‘a living stone’. As we lay her to rest her building goes on, with that of Greg and all of us who aspire for the cause which will outlast us all.
‘Come to him, to Christ, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ’.
I am so grateful for the love of my mother and father and the upbringing they gave me in both life and faith. May their souls continue in God’s praise and service even as their bodily remains are united today in the Churchyard they loved. Thankful that this solemn entrustment of Elsie is at last accomplished, may we, her family and friends, be equipped to build forward in our lives ‘working together for that day when God’s kingdom comes and justice and mercy will be seen in all the earth’
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