The Rev. George Wilson’s Funeral Homily  -- Susan J. Barnes

St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Austin -- October 4, 2006

 

We gather today to commend the soul of our beloved George Wilson to the eternal care of his Creator, and to celebrate a life of faithful service, of prayer, of humility, of self-giving love.

George is no longer here.  His spirit is with God.   In his dear memory, and inspired by today’s scriptures, I’d like to talk a bit about heaven.   Each of us may have a particular idea of heaven, of the kingdom and the company into which George passed on that early morning last week.   The Prayer Book shapes our ideas.    It blesses us with such poetic images as “the glorious company of the saints in light”.    My own idea of eternity is certainly influenced by the Prayer book: a place “where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting”.  I believe that and I believe that George Wilson, whose healing prayer touched so many, is now himself, healed.  

We might share our ideas of heaven for days on end without ever getting closer to the truth that St. Paul confessed nearly 2000 years ago—when he wrote to the church in Corinth that at best we “see through a mirror dimly”.   As my journalist mother mused about the afterlife a few months before her own death, “We really don’t know, do we?”

At the same time, we Christians pray daily as we will in a moment, for God’s kingdom to come, for God’s will to be done here on earth.  What if it were?    How would we recognize it?   What would that look like?    Today’s scriptures, particularly the gospel, Matthew’s Beatitudes, can be our guide..   

Jesus was speaking clearly to the disciples on the mount.    To do so he had left behind the crowds gathered in hope from all around, the masses of people whom he had healed, to whom he had preached the gospel.   It was to the disciples alone that Jesus imparted this vision of the kingdom of heaven.   He was explicit.  He wanted them to understand.   The kingdom of heaven belongs to certain kinds of people.  It is their homeland.   Who are those kind of people?   The rich, the powerful, the glamorous, the well-connected?   No, just the opposite—the little ones: the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—that is those whose most life-sustaining urge is to be in right relationship with God.

One thing that these kinds people have in common is their humility, their willingness to put aside their own ego, their own agenda, to welcome God’s presence, to seek and submit to God’s will, to act in accordance with God’s purposes.

The Beatitudes are  Jesus’ vision of the people of God, of God’s chosen ones.   And though that vision may seem abstract, generic, it is actually a description of how we are meant to be.  It is an invitation to a new way of life.  It’s a casting roster for the realization of heaven on earth.   In the Beatitudes, Jesus tells the disciples and all who would be his followers how we should seek to be transformed.  He holds up the models of people whose humility of bearing in this world makes it a place where the kingdom CAN come on earth, not in some remote future but here and now.

The truth is that the Kingdom DOES come on earth now and then—more often than we can imagine.  

As people of faith, we are blessed (when we pay attention) to experience and to recognize glimpses of heaven on earth.  Our Celtic forebears had a name for those experiences:  “thin places,” they called them.    As Marcus Borg pointed out in The Heart of Christianity, thin places are not just locations.   Thin places are existential.   They can happen anywhere.   And people can become thin places.    They are people, Borg wrote, “through whom we experienced the presence of the Spirit at particular junctures in our lives.”    I believe that those people give us a glimpse of heaven on earth.    In those moments, they embody the Beatitudes.

“Thin places” are experiences of holiness in the midst of our ordinary lives.  They are fulfillments of Jesus’ promise to be in our midst when we gather in his name—even as two or three.   We have to welcome those experiences.  We have to be willing, we have to be able to get out of the way ourselves, to make the space in which God can be perceived, the space in which God’s forgiveness, God’s love and healing grace can be received.   When George Wilson prayed for people, he did that.   More than anyone whom I have known, he could create the space for holy healing.   He was a gentle and powerful agent for God’s mercy and grace.   In those times, George became a thin place himself, an embodiment of the Beatitudes .

And so, as we honor George and as we commit his earthly remains to the garden here, let us praise God.  Let us thank God for George’s life and for his Christian witness.  Let us thank God for the glimpses of heaven that are here every day for those who have the eyes to see.  Thank God for the moments when we perceive, however dimly, the heavenly grace, the love that abides eternally in this life and that is our smooth transport to the next.  These are the moments when we know that heaven is more than a hoped-for future home.   These are the moments when we clearly hear Jesus’ call to us all to bring the kingdom reality to being here and now, the moments when we realize that heaven is our one, true earthly home.