The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



The Rt. Rev. John C. Bauerschmidt: Funeral Service for Laurie Hamner, March 20, 2007, St Martin’s in the Fields Church Atlanta

My sermon today is less like a sermon and more like a series of unresolved points.  So here it is: First, here’s what I remember.  I remember meeting Laurie Roberts Hamner on a beautiful September day in 1987.  She was a newlywed, leaving Baton Rouge a few months after marriage to James to move to England, where James studied and Laurie worked at jobs with increasing scope and responsibility.

James and I met because we were both students and “American priests” (to the English this is an instantly recognizable genus, and everyone there knows exactly what this means).  Laurie was on the verge of a great adventure, and leaving the States and crossing the Atlantic was an experience James and Laurie and Caroline and I shared in parallel tracks. Then I remember the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, late in the evening of June 17th in 1991, when Karyn Hamner was born.  What an experience, filled with joy for Laurie and James.  I remember finding Laurie in the recovery room, right before or after a blood transfusion.  Our own oldest son was born a few hours later, early in the morning of the following day, so we had arrived earlier and were already there.

I also remember visiting Laurie and James, in a succession of homes after we had all returned to the United States.  The first one was very tiny indeed, about big enough to turn around in; but as their family increased there was a new house, and then the move to Atlanta.  There were great successes, and many good times shared. That’s what I remember, at least a part of it.  We each have our memories of Laurie Hamner.  What a wonderful and precious collection we have gathered today.  Each of us remembers something.  But then there are Laurie’s own memories, and we are faced again with the enormity of our loss.

But God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, never loses sight of any of this.  Nothing is lost with God: neither memories nor people.  The shepherd goes to look for the sheep, the woman for the lost coin.  And the Good Shepherd is able to defend us, even from death.

This brings me to my second unresolved point.  Our family rose early this morning, explaining to our younger members that we needed to arrive early because there were going to be lots of people in church today.  So someone said, “It’s just like Easter”, thinking no doubt of the parking situation less than a week ago.  But of course, this is true of more than parking today, isn’t it?  It is just like Easter, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which brings new life to us.  In this church, decorated for the Easter feast, we perhaps can see the connection easily.

Then the third unresolved point, which I stumbled across in an essay by English philosopher and theologian Donald McKinnon.  McKinnon was writing about the philosophy of history, and I can’t remember the main points of the essay; but in a passing observation (almost a throwaway line) McKinnon notes that St Paul does not attempt to construct a philosophy of history, a metaphysic that answers all our questions, but instead seeks “to illuminate the imagination and to secure the will” (“On the Notion of a Philosophy of History”).

I think McKinnon is right, and that this is true of the Gospel as a whole.  The Good News makes affirmations; it doesn’t attempt to answer all our questions, even when we need answers.  It makes affirmations: Jesus Christ is alive, not dead; nothing can separate us from the love of God; Life, not Death, is victorious.  These are the great affirmations, which illuminate our imaginations and secure our wills.  Perhaps they add up to something less than a sermon, as a series of unresolved points, like the Gospel.  But these are the affirmations we have, and they are true today in the face of our grief. 
 
The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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