The Death of my cousin, Arley Parsley

Arley Jarret Parsley(July 28, 1962-September 4, 2009)

September 10, 2009

Romans 8.35-39
In moments like this, we often wonder: how do we make sense of a situation like this? We find ourselves running the gauntlet of emotions—everything from fear to guilt, to shock to levels of pain we never thought we were capable of feeling.

We also find ourselves asking why. Why did this happen? Why did it have to happen this way? There aren’t easy answers to any of these questions. In fact, there might not be any answers to any of these questions. And the fact that there aren’t answers makes the situation even more difficult to bear.

We don’t know what went through Arley’s mind in those last moments on Friday. We don’t know what peace he made with himself—or if he did at all.

But what we do know—and what we can take consolation in—is in fact that he has found a peace now he couldn’t find in this world. And we can take consolation in a loving God who knows us so completely and wholly. We can take consolation in the a love that envelopes us today and holds us up.

In our reading from Romans, we find that nothing separates us from the love Christ, not “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword.”

And we are told that certainly death does not separate us from that love.

Our grandmother, Minnie, had a deep devotion of the Heart of Jesus. Even though she was a good evangelical Lutheran, her house surrounded with pictures and statues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

One of the first gifts I remember receiving from her was a plastic statue of the Sacred Heart. I have cherished that statue for many years now.

But more than anything our grandmother’s devotion taught me—and I think all of us who saw that devotion lived out in the life of our grandmother—that Jesus’ love for us was a burning love. It was a love that burned brightly in his Heart and we all knew it was a love directed toward us.

We might not have the answers today, but what we do know is that we do have this love and this love is more powerful than anything life or death can throw at us.

We also know that, in Jesus, what has happened isn’t some event that happened separate from Christ. Despair, as ugly as it is, as horrible as it, isn’t something that Christ didn’t know.

On the night before he died, Jesus too knew despair. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed that the cup of his suffering would be taken from him. And it wasn’t. On the night before he died, Jesus felt such despair that he actually sweated blood.

The Jesus who went through that night certainly knew what Arley went through last Friday. The Jesus who spent the night of his death in anguish was, beyond any doubt that we might have, certainly was with Arley in his anguish on the night of his death.

The Jesus who suffered in anguish before he died was there, was truly present with Arley in those last moments of his life.

And I have no doubt that the Jesus who rose from the darkness and destruction of his violent death was there to greet Arley with the bright light of resurrection.

We are sad today. We are angry today. We are lost and disoriented and uncertain today. We don’t know what to hold onto to today.

But we can hope in the fact that Jesus knew what was in Arley’s heart last Friday and that, though it all, God understood.

And God loved.

God loved and still loves Arley. Nothing Arley was experiencing could separate him from the love of Christ in his life. That love of Christ was able to break all barriers. And it was that love that allowed Arley to come forward into the Light of Christ’s Presence and to be received into that unending joy where he would never feel pain or despair again.

In few moments, we will pray for Arley with these words. We will pray that Arley “may rest from his labors, and enter into the light of God's eternal sabbath rest.”

Those are not light and easy words only meant to comfort us in our pain and sorrow. They are words of truth and life.

Still a little bit later we will pray that Arley will be welcomed “into the courts of God’s heavenly dwelling place.” We will pray that “his heart and soul” may “ ring out in joy” to “the living God, and the God of those who live.”

That is where our hope lies today. What seems like defeat and a moment of darkness and despair is actually a moment of hidden victory. Christ’s love always triumphs and wins out over the forces of darkness. And for Arley, the despair and pain he closed his eyes to on Friday were replaced by the light and joy awakened to moments later, in the Presence of Christ.

So, yes, we feel sadness and pain today. But we also know that the pain and sadness we feel is only temporary. It too will pass from his, as it did for Arley, much as a nightmare passes from us upon awakening.

So, today, in our sadness, let us hold onto that love of Christ. And let us, as we cling to it, know that in it—in that open and loving heart of Jesus—Arley now rests, without pain or suffering, but in perfect unending joy.