Cooking With Jean

A Sermon for the Funeral of Jean Baker

January 26, 2008

The Rev Kit Carlson
http://www.allsaints-el.org/

This is not fair.

It is not fair that we should be here today,
marking the end of Jean Baker’s life on earth.

It’s not fair that Jean,
who was such a good person, such a kind person, such a joyful person,
should have been forced to fight cancer, that terrible disease.

It’s not
fair that Charles and Liz should lose their mother, that Watts should
lose his wife, or that all of us should lose such a beloved friend, in such
an untimely way.

Jean was a person worth keeping around. She was smart – she
earned her Ph.D. in 1992, but she never stopped learning. Even in the
midst of her illness, she continued to counsel students and pursue her
research. In fact, a paper she helped author was published in a
professional journal in the week of her death.

Jean loved her work,
loved her colleagues, loved her students, all the way up to the end.
Jean was deeply grounded in God -- from her earliest days as a
PK -- a priest’s kid -- through long summers at Bement Center Camp,
even to her last days, praying with the Irish Jesuits on the web site
“Sacred Spaces.” She was a devoted mother – worrying about her
children, hoping she would be around long enough to watch them
mature into strong and independent adults.

She was a loving wife, who
adored her husband, and who appreciated every day of their life
together.

It is not fair to lose Jean--her wisdom, her gifts and her love--so
soon. And I think that God won’t mind if we stand here today alongside
Abraham and Job and Jonah and every Biblical character who has ever
called God to account. I think it is all right for us to rage at God and
say, “This is not fair!”


And the answer will come: yes, God knows that this is not fair.
God knows that this is not fair, because God has been here already.
God has suffered, as Jean suffered. God has wept, as we weep today.
There is comfort for us who mourn, comfort in the great mystery
that lies at the heart of the Christian faith … God became a person who
lived and loved and died, just as we do. God knows what Jean went
through. God knows what we are going through right now.


Christians proclaim that in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God
learned what it means to be a mortal human being. In the person of
Jesus, God stood at the grave of his friend Lazarus, weeping with grief.
In the person of Jesus, God suffered unjustly and died too young. God,
in the person of Jesus, left behind a weeping mother, sorrowing siblings,
and distraught friends.


God knows – right in the core of God’s being – what “not fair”
looks like. And to realize this is to know that God never intended Jean
to suffer. Jean’s illness was not God’s will. God did not wave a magic
wand and give Jean cancer while sparing another person. God did not
withhold some miracle from Jean that another person received. God
did not take Jean away from us. Biology gone terribly, terribly wrong
took Jean away from us.
No, what God did was to walk with Jean through all of it. God
walked by Jean’s side in good times and in bad. God was there with her
when she met Watts, there when she got her Ph.D., there at the birth of
her children, there with her when she developed cancer. Every single
day, God walked with Jean and strengthened her to meet each new
challenge.


And I believe that compassionate, companioning God wept with
Jean when she wept, suffered when she suffered, laughed when she
laughed, and rejoiced in her rejoicing. As that compassionate,
companioning God does for us today.


But there is more to the mystery of our faith than simply believing
that God knows what we are going through, and that God walks with us
throughout our lives. The deeper mystery of our faith is that by living
and loving and dying like us, God transformed our humanity. When
Jesus Christ died and rose again, we discovered that death does not get
the last word. On days like this it is easy to think that life’s not fair, but
in the end, God gets the last laugh on “not fair.” God’s mercy, God’s
love, and God’s life are larger than our mortality.


And so, we believe that in death, life is changed, not ended. Jean’s
life goes on, hidden in Christ, but connected to us still. Her sickness is
healed; her pain is gone. Her tears are dried; her joy is made complete.
And we will share that with her someday. We will be reunited with her,
caught up in the greater, overflowing love of God that sustains us all.
This is what we Christians call the resurrected life. And it does
not begin when we die. It does not begin at some final judgment day.
Jean’s resurrected life began the day she took her first breath. Alive
with the spirit of Christ burning inside of her, Jean lived the reality of
resurrection every day -- in her prayer life, in her professional life, in
her family life. She lived it with every laugh, every joke, every tear,
every embrace. She lived it as she knitted socks. She lived it as she
cooked a meal. She lived it as she held her children.


Jean has always been resurrected. Jean is resurrected. Jean will
be resurrected. Christ has always held her life tenderly, lovingly, in the
palm of his hand. That life can never really end.
But the life she lived here on earth has ended. She no longer
walks among us, speaks to us, laughs with us. Not in her own
independent flesh, at any rate. But we too can share in her resurrection.
We can resurrect her in our lives, in our memories, in the way we go
about our work and our play.


To her students, I say … resurrect Jean. Resurrect her in your
curiosity and commitment to your studies.

To her colleagues, I say …
resurrect Jean. Resurrect her in your care and dedication and
passionate energy for the work that you and she did together.

To her
friends and extended family, I say … resurrect Jean. Resurrect her in
your ability to listen with an open heart, to laugh with a wide-open
smile.


To her children, to Liz and Charles, I say … resurrect your
mother. Resurrect her by becoming the people she raised you to be, the
people she believed you to be. She brought you into this world to be a
gift to the world. Be that gift. Be that continuation of everything that
was good and wise and strong in her.

And to Watts, I say … resurrect Jean. You knew her the best of
all, and you know best how to manifest her joy, her passion, her wisdom
in this world. Don’t get stuck in the past, but carry all of that
wonderful Jean Baker brilliance forward, into the future, into the rest
of what life has to show you.


It is a paradox, really. In the midst of death, we celebrate Jean’s
life. In the midst of our grief, we sing and laugh with joy at having
known her. In the midst of our darkness, we proclaim an unquenchable
light.


It is the mystery and paradox of the Christian life, the mystery
and paradox Jean lived every day, the mystery and paradox that will be
proclaimed at the end of this service when we make our final farewells,
with the great prayer of Commendation,
All of us go down to the dust, yet even at the grave, we make our
song.
Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.
Amen.