Saint John’s Episcopal Church, Sandwich, Massachusetts

Fr. John E. McGinn

July 22, 2006

   For Susan Jaeger    

 

And now dear God we give Susan back to thee who gave her to us.  Yet, as thou dids’t not lose Susan in giving, so we have not lost Susan forever by her return.  For what is thine is always ours, if we are thine.  Life is eternal and love is immortal. Death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of sight.  Lift us up strong, son of God, that we may see further; cleanse our eyes that we may know ourselves nearer to our beloved Susan who is with thee; that where Susan is and Thou art, we too may one day be.  AMEN

 

 

In 2003, we enlarged St John’s.  While the construction took place we had to hold our worship services elsewhere.  The Town of Sandwich let us use the auditorium of the Wing School.  Susan Jaeger and I had a meeting and agreed spiritual growth was as necessary to our Church as the growth in size.  She suggested we began our seven months “in exile” with the Silver Leaf Gospel Choir.  They came.  They returned the first Sunday we reopened here.  On both visits they sang the song entitled “Let the River Flow” which reads:   

 

               Let the lost person say, I am found again

               Let the dead person say, I am born again

               Let the river flow.  Let the river flow.

               Holy Spirit care, move in power

               And let the river flow.

 

I associate this song with Susan’s life.

 

 

Susan Yeager experienced both success and failure in her life.  She experienced laughter and fighting, change and disappointment but the river of God’s grace was always there, unchanging.  It was the defining force and spiritual center for Susan.

 

Like Susan, all of us, her family-Rod, Ingrid, Gretchen, Eric, Evan. Lynn, Steve, Jackie, Connor, Michael, David, Kendra, Mikayla, and her friends have known good times and bad.  They have known laughter and deep joy.  Susan was a woman who loved to laugh and she knew power of the river of God, flowing, forgiving, loving and strengthening.

 

The book of Proverbs says “Happy is the home that is filled with laughter.”  Many of us need to take a lesson from Susan’s life.  She understood that life is to be enjoyed.  Jesus tells us “I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”

 

Life brought many changes for Susan. She had known love and loss, triumph and tragedy.   But always there has been a river running through her life.  That river has brought love and grace and God’s purpose.

 

I suppose it is natural to ask, “Why did Susan die now?” We think we can find an answer in our mind, if we can make sense of it somehow, then we can get through.  But I’m not sure there is a reason for everything.  A reason implies a simple direct cause and effect for everything in life and life is far too complicated for that.

 

But I want to suggest to you that although there may not be a “reason”, there is a river running through the lives of people and that river is God’s purpose.  Paul wrote, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.  Who have been called to God’s purposes?”  God works all things for the good.  A purpose runs through it.

 

Sometimes God’s purposes are so clear that we can see them.  Other times we can only trust that the river is still running through our lives.   That is what faith really is –trusting God’s purposes.  At the end of Susan’s life, that is where she was-trusting in God, putting her life in the middle of that river that runs through all our lives.

 

A wonderful woman has been taken from us.  It is terrifying to think that the enemy got the best of Susan, and us, in this battle.  It is easy to think that if we had only used the right weapons, if only we learned earlier, if we had a cure…but that would not be true.  You see this battle belongs to God, as does every battle in our lives—and God never loses a battle.

 

Terminal illness and death tried very hard to thwart God, and separate Susan from the rest of us and God.  But illness and death did not succeed because today we celebrate the fact that Susan is with God and God is with us.  Death tried to separate Susan from those she loved.  Death and Illness failed because those of us with God in our hearts will soon be with Susan.  She has been reunited with family and friends who have gone on before.  Yes, illness and death tried very hard to destroy God’s work in Susan’s life and in ours.  They did not succeed because now Susan is closer to God than ever before and Susan’s good works live on in each of us.

 

I believe God’s purposes are part of everything in life.  God’s purpose may not always be clear.  Today, some of us will be terrified to ask why.  We should pray for strength courage and patience and for God to put us in the place Susan would want us to be.  We should cling to God’s promise to take everything in life and show us the good.  I will trust in God’s promise to hold me up when I feel I can go no further and carry me through when I feel myself in the fires of this life and I will continue to believe that a purpose runs through each of our lives.

Susan believed that with all her heart and now she is free from all the limitations of her earthly body.  Susan knows a joy that we can only seek to imagine.  And some day so will we.  As the song says:

 

“And God will raise you up on eagle’s wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you shine like the sun

And hold you in the palm of God’s hand.”

 

Because we know that God holds us in the palm of God’s hands, because we know that God’s purposes are flowing through our lives, let us say with all our hearts “Thank you, thank you Jesus for our good friend Susan, our faithful companion on the way, our wife, our mother, our grandmother.  And let the river flow; let the river flow through us.”

 

In closing, I would like to recite a poem one of Susan’s favorite poets, Mary Oliver.  The poem is titled “When Death Comes” and I think it sums up how Susan lived her life.

 

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

 

to buy me, and the purse snaps shut; when death comes

like the measles pox;

 

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

 

I want to step through the door of curiosity, wondering:

What is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

 

and therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

 

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

 

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

 

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

 

When it is over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

 

When it is over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.

 

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

 

We love you Susan.  We will never forget you and we will see you again.  In Jesus’ name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.      AMEN

 

 

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