Eleanor Altepeter Funeral
January 18, 2005
Sympathy to family & friends
We gather today to grieve our loss - the loss of Eleanor, but we also gather here today to celebrate. We celebrate our belief that death is not an end when we have faith in Jesus. Our scriptures today remind us that with our faith in Jesus comes the promise that, even though we die in this world, we will live forever in heaven with our loving God.
We are also gathered here today to remember and to celebrate Eleanor’s life with us. She loved her family and especially enjoyed family gatherings. She enjoyed those gatherings even in the days when her children were rambunctious and attempted to destroy everything in sight. Eleanor was a woman of faith. Her children remember the times when they wanted to play and Eleanor sat them down to pray the rosary. Eleanor faced a good deal of grief and suffering in her life time. Ray died as a young man; she lost two of her sisters, Grace and Margaret and two grand children, Connor and Morgan. Eleanor suffered from cancer in her latter years. But Eleanor was not a woman to complain. In times of trial she could always be heard to say, “better days are coming.” That is the way it is with people of faith - we are always aware that better days are coming.
Our scriptures today remind us that better days are coming as well. I think Eleanor, and people who farm and work the land have an even deeper appreciation of the image in our gospel today. Eleanor really understood what it meant to take wheat seeds that that to most people looked as if they are dead, and plant those seeds. She knew with certainty that by the grace of God and hard work those seeds would bring forth new life. As followers of Jesus we know, with just as much certainty as people of faith, by the grace of God, from our death will come new and everlasting life with God.
We believe this in faith, but we are still faced with the reality that Eleanor is not physically with us anymore. We are the ones left with the grief and the absence. But, if it would help, I would leave you with an image.
Picture yourself standing on a dock watching a great sailing ship lying silently and quietly for a wind to fill its sails and set it in majestic motion. Finally, a strong wind comes up and all spring into action. The captain shouts orders, the sailors hoist the great sails, the wind catches them with a great puff, and off the ship slowly moves like a giant sea serpent on the waters. But by and by the ship grows smaller and smaller as it eventually becomes but a speck where sky and sea meet on the horizon. Someone on the dock shouts the traditional cry, “There she goes!” and everyone waves goodbye and goes home.
But the question is, “Goes where?” That ship which is just a little dot on our horizon is just as big and mighty, just as laden with cargo and people as it was on the dock. The difference is in us. The difference is that it has merely receded from our sight and disappeared, that’s all. But somewhere, as it moves to a foreign shore, that dot, that tiny ship, invisible to us, becomes larger and larger. And there are people on that foreign shore who are about to set up a new cry. They shout, “There she comes!”
Right now we are like those people on our dock. We’ve seen Eleanor go. She has moved from the horizon of death, and we remark with sadness and grief, “There she goes,” and know that life will be empty. But I would remind you that the change is in us. Eleanor is still as large as life, for Jesus stands on that other shore with Ray, Grace, Margaret, Connor, Morgan and all Eleanor’s deceased friends and relatives. Together they shout, “There she comes!” And as Eleanor Altepeter steps forth, Jesus steps out to meet her. They instantly recognize one another. Jesus dries hers eyes and turns to the crowd and says once more, as he has done so many times before, “Welcome home, friend, better days have come.”