At the Solemn Requiem Mass for the repose of the soul of Nevin Brown
The Feast of Saint Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr, 12 September 2025
O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servant Nevin, and grant her an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, on God, now and for ever. Amen.
Isaiah 25:6-9
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:11-16
One of the principal purposes of the Church is to help people make meaning of our lives and experiences. Our common life provides us with a physical location, a method, and a good deal of time, to understand our place in the larger life of the Cosmos that God has created and declared good. This aspect of the work of the Body of Christ is also revelatory of the significance of the part we play as members of that Body.
This is all a way of saying that what we do matters; and it matters to God. What we do has an impact upon that which comes next. What we do affects the way that the Kingdom of God is unfolding around us. Yes, God’s purpose and eventual accomplishment of the Kingdom are unwavering and unchanging, yet its course is affected by what we do and how we cooperate with that purpose. This is why that meaning-making is so important. Working towards understanding the nature of life and death – concepts indeed too large for us to fully apprehend – is essential if we are going to be effective members of the Body of Christ, and so it is with our eyes open that we are called to engage the work God has given us to do in ministry as baptised persons.
Scripture is an essential tool for this work. Scripture tells the story of how the God of Israel revealed himself to the world, first to a small (and still) beleaguered people and then, in the person of Jesus Christ, to the whole world. It is the story of the expansion and extension of Love into the world, and of a sure and certain hope for the triumph of that Love over all the forces that conspire against it – mostly those of power seeking self-promotion, greed, and envy. Scripture shows us what God wants for us and that, despite the human reality of our physical death, that there is life eternal for all of us.
The three readings from Scripture we have just heard, I selected from among the options provided for masses of the dead in our 1979 Book of Common Prayer. That list is, I have always felt, quite expansive, and that this expansiveness is meant to reflect the truly diverse nature of both individual human beings and of our personal experiences of life and death. Each of the Gospel choices, all of which come from John, speak of the way in which it is through Jesus Christ that the Gentiles – the Nations – come to know the God of Israel. That is unwavering, and is summed up in Jesus declaration that “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and by Jesus’ assurance to Martha that “whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” Yet, each also speaks to a different aspect of God’s promises to us. One reminds us that “the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live,” teaching us that the victory of the Cross and the defeat of death are inevitable and already accomplished. Others shows both that “in my Father’s house are many rooms” and that “it is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life,” teaching the expansive and inclusive nature of that victory.
The lessons for today give us yet more ways of understanding both how important we are to God and, in this particular case, how Nevin’s life, in so many ways, points us towards a vision of the Resurrection and eternal life. Few passages in scripture fill me with more joy and hope than the one we heard from Isaiah. The prophet tell us,
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth.
God’s vision of the span of life and death is not dour. God’s purpose involves not the vanquishing of enemies at the hands of an army, but a great feast of the most wonderful produtti sourced from markets more overflowing and bounteous than those of Siena and Florence, and vineyards more productive than those of all the region of Chianti. The banquet that is God’s hope for us, the banquet that swallows up death itself is an occasion that will remove all sorrow and sadness and fill us with love. And of course, it is God’s way that the heavenly banquet will mirror – and exceed – those we have known here. How do we know what joy in heaven looks like, if God does not desire joy for us in this life, even a glimpse so we might come to a vision of eternal life? But of course, life is not always full of that kind of joy, and those glimpses may be few and fleeting.
In the passage from Revelation we also hear the reassurance that God will “wipe away every tear from our eyes,” but this time, we also receive recognition that the Christian life is not all “feasts of fat things,” that in the here and now many of us experience “great tribulation,” hunger and thirst, flood and drought. These especially, who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” are the ones who stand “before the throne of God, and serve him day and night within his temple; and he who sits upon the throne will shelter them with his presence.” God assures us that through the tribulations of life, the realities of life, the inevitabilities of a life of serving God and God’s purpose that,
they [– that we –] shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
In life and death, in feasting and through famine and fast, God’s promise of New Life begins here in our mortal bodies and extends into the expanse of a Cosmos in which death is rendered powerless by the Love of the shepherd who is also the lamb that has been sacrificed for us.
Through this all, through the journey of our lives, there is one both who tends and cares for us, who leads us into better pastures, and keeps us safe, and who knows what it is to live in human form and to suffer at the hands of cruel men. This is Jesus the Good Shepherd who knows us, really knows us and loves us and we know and love him. Indeed, this mutual, reciprocal relationship is perhaps the best definition of faith that I can give you. Bound in personal connection, bound in mutual knowledge and love, bound in something real, faith is what binds us in this life to the pursuit of the works of love, both when life is wonderful and beautiful, full of food and song, but also when it is difficult and uncertain. Nevin’s life was all these things, and his faith, his relationship with God in Christ was an anchor that inspired him, and inspires us here in this moment that faith is real and powerful, that relationship with God in Christ as members of his Body is powerful and meaningful and helps us to understand how much we are loved, how tenderly we are cared for, how evil and death can never win and that both here and now and in the age to come “God will wipe away every tear” from our eyes.
Andrew Charles Blume ✠
Barnstable, Mass.
John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York, 12 September 2025
© 2025 Andrew Charles Blume