Graveside service for Baby Faith

It has been over a year now since we lost our precious granddaughter Baby Faith. I never knew how much her little life would continue to impact us everyday. My daughter and I have since written a book for children. She has written several blog articles at her blog site: https://sandhillcranelove.wordpress.com/

And even now I realize the more we write and the more we make resources available the more help this provides for other mothers and families who have experienced loss.

There were two most important gift lessons we learned. 1. Always use Baby's name. even if it is too difficult to name baby encourage this to happen-the hospital was so wonderful in making sure this was done.
2. Make sure a funeral, a prayer, a special acknowledgement is done. All this has made the difference in the months and now the year since.

Here is a sample service. It was done on the rural property of my daughter's family. May God's grace, mercy and strength be with you.

Service of Witness to the Resurrection

W

Faith Elisabeth Rodgers

February 10, 2016

February 13, 2016

Welcome

Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.

We gather here today to bring honor to the little life of our daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, and child of God, Faith Elisabeth Rodgers.

We only knew her as our hope and joy, the anticipation of all the good God has to offer us in new life.

We are here under this treasured tree, on this land, this solid ground, this earth, to which we remember holds us all together. From dust we were made and to dust we shall return. Here this space has been special and so under the canopy of this tree and the canopy of God’s love we gather now in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

Scripture

Psalm 139:1-3;13-18

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
³ You search out my path and my lying down,
    and are acquainted with all my ways.

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
¹⁵     My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.
¹⁷ How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
    I come to the end^[a]—I am still with you.

Mark 10:13-16

¹³ People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. ¹⁴ But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. ¹⁵ Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” ¹⁶ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Words from the Family

Our hearts are filled with the loss of the hopes and dreams we held for the life of Baby Faith. Yet, we hold to the truth that a mother and father hold their children’s hands for but a short while and their hearts forever.

Prayer

Loving God,

Your beloved Son took children into his arms and blessed them. Give us grace that we may entrust

Baby Faith Elisabeth Rodgers to your never failing love and care. Comfort us in our sorrow; strengthen us with hope; and breathe peace into our troubled hearts. Assure us that the love in which we rejoiced for a time is not lost. The love we hold here together as a family unites us forever with each other and with you.

In our loneliness, may we remember Baby Faith in love until the eternal morning breaks.

Through Christ, in Christ, always surrounded and wrapped together in the loving arms of Jesus. Amen.

Poem

I give you this one thought to keep

I am still with you-I do not sleep

I am a thousand winds that blow

I am the diamond glints on snow

I am the sunlight on ripened grain

I am the gentle autumn rain

When you waken in the morning hush,

I am the swift, uplifting rush,

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not think of me as gone-I am still

With you-in each new dawn.

Commendation

You only are immortal, the creator and maker of all. We are mortal, formed of the earth, and to the earth we shall return. This you ordained when you created us, saying, ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Give space, O Christ, to your child Baby Faith, with all your saints, where there is neither pain, nor sorrow nor sighing, but life everlasting.

Into your hand, O merciful Savior, we commend your child, Baby Faith Elisabeth Rodgers. Acknowledge we humbly pray, a sheep of your fold, a lamb of your flock, a baby of your own redeeming. Receive her into your arms of mercy, into the blessed rest of eternal peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

Benediction

The peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Blessed are They

Sermon Matthew 5:3-12 January 29, 2017 Ordinary time

Blessed are They

Children's sermon: the Bee-attitudes

sermon: 

The Beatitudes are beautiful aspiring words.

They look good on a plaque or cross stitch hung in the hallways of our homes.

They are sweet lovely platitudes that offer a sense of peace and comfort. We view them in this way and rarely consider them in other way.

Yet, these words of Jesus are a call to discipleship. They are a call to living for God. They are a call to live for the kingdom of heaven.

As a whole they are God’s blessings to have the ability to live for the pursuit of righteousness in accordance to God’s righteousness. To live as we heard from the verses of Micah 6:8, “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”

The word beatitude comes from Latin beātitūdō, from beātus blessed. Beatitude means happy. William Barclay one of our contemporary theologians tells us that happy means, ‘a joy which has a secret within itself, that joy which is serene and untouchable, and self-contained…completely independent of all the chances and changes of life.’

The Beatitudes are a message of hope, simplicity and compassion in a world of chaos, confusion, and misery. And yet, when we hear them we wonder, “Who in their right mind, can achieve the lofty goal of living into each of these?

When we hear things such as the pursuit of righteousness, and blessed are the peacemakers, the people who pop into our mind are people like Mother Teresa, MLKjr, Desmond Tutu. As we think of these names we convince ourselves that we cannot measure up to these larger than life figures of our history. We set aside those beatitudes as something that ‘those’ people do. We cannot bring ourselves to think of them as a call to us.

Yet, each of these larger than life people did not aspire to make history. They started simply within their own context of living doing small things to make a difference where they were. They sought the kingdom-the desire for equality and humaneness for all-as their dream to reach. But, they lived practically one small step at a time until it grew as God allowed it to.

One thing about context for us to remember is that the gospel writer of Matthew placed these words of Jesus in what we call a narrative context. As we read through the gospel we are made aware of the sociopolitical climate into which Jesus was born. A climate of oppression under the Roman Empire. And his religious context was an environment of religious elitism and corruption. Both contexts put this Sermon on the Mount in direct contrast to the culture in which Jesus was living. Jesus presented to his listeners an alternative community. For the followers of Jesus, his disciples and his crowds of listeners-he provided them with the opportunity of another way. The Way of the future reign of God.

Jesus pronounces blessing upon those within his reach. He recognizes that the people surrounding him are the poor, the meek, the hungry. Through his words he reinforces the strong Jewish principles of living for God. He brings back the words of faithful living for the people. The words of Deuteronomy and Micah are threaded throughout these beatitudes.

The culture that Jesus was going against was a culture that dehumanized and dismissed people whether through political oppression or religious dogma.

Jesus is calling the disciples to action.

I guess you call Jesus’ agenda a political one or a counter religious for his time.

His agenda as we read these beatitudes is the pursuit of righteousness. And in his sociopolitical context this meant being willing to risk their lives for the sake of others- for the sake of the stranger, for the sake of their neighbor, for the sake of their children, for the sake of their loved one.

God always chooses the side of the weak, the forgotten, the despised, the justice seekers, the peacemakers, and the persecuted.

Jesus couldn’t be more relevant today than he was when he was walking the streets of Galilee.

Every century of our history has shown a time of sociopolitical unrest and oppression and worse it has shown religion in its most disturbing exclusionary ways.

Just this week we had Holocaust Remembrance Day. A day in my context of living which is so important. I spoke to my brother this week as well. In September I had given him copies of my father’s diaries. The diaries recorded my father’s experience during the war. My brother asked me about an entry about my grandfather being bedridden for three weeks. I shared the reason he was bed ridden was because he suffered from severe Rheumatoid arthritis and the complications of it caused him great immobility. The reason for the severity of the complications was because this was during the time that the only thing they had to eat was tulip bulbs. As a result of poor nutrition, he became bedridden. The context of where and how we live is so important to how we hear these words of Jesus and the words of Micah. My father’s family hoped for the day when someone out there would hear the cries of the people and come to do justice and love kindness.

Our opportunity in the context of our lives is to grasp the richness of the blessings that Jesus offers us.

As we live each day we have the opportunity to risk our life for the reign of God. We have the opportunity to stand up for those who are unable to stand up for themselves. Christ calls us to partner with him in the mission of the kingdom of heaven. To be his hands and feet and voice.

How do we practically risk our lives for the kingdom?

As we are blessed, so we choose to bless others.

It doesn’t take money we don’t have.

It doesn’t take time we don’t have.

It doesn’t take objects or possessions we don’t have.

What it takes is the awareness of who we are where we are.

As we drive kids to school we notice the person in the line ahead of us and we wave and smile.

We show kindness in every circumstance.

We help the person who dropped their groceries on the floor.

We call a neighbor when we go to the store and invite them to go with us-because we’re going anyway-it doesn’t cost us anything.

As we develop these small risks to reach out,

God grants us more courage to do more

and to step further beyond ourselves.

We can do this! We are blessed. And blessed are they! Amen.