Resting in Peace

A Reflection of the Occasion of the Burial of

Eva Hitchner Wilkinson

November 6, 1917- December 5, 2014

December 11, 2014

All Saints Church- Thomas E Wilson, Rector

Psalm 23                 John 14:1-6

This is the second of four weeks of the season of Advent, the preparation for Christmas. Each week we light a candle to remember what we need to hold on to in order to welcome Christ into our hearts – for he is the example of a life of hope, the Prince of Peace, the embodiment of joy and God’s gift of love. The first week is hope, the second is peace, the third is joy and the fourth is love. Eva, the last of her generation, was born during the time when we were fighting a war to end all wars, She lived and her values were molded during the Great Depression; she was in nursing school when another war was raging; she raised her family during a cold war. All these things needed hope to get through and she died in the week of hope as she looked forward to being reunited with all those she has ever loved, who were still in her heart and in the depths of her being, but who had all made the journey to the other shore ahead of her. I was told of a dream she had before she died of continuing the conversation with the family that has gone before.

We gather together in the week of peace. Peace is not the absence of war but a deeper reality of peace inside oneself. We cannot make peace by war but by changing ourselves. Peace is a disease where we are ill at ease with the way the world works and we go deeply into ourselves to connect with the peace that passes all understanding, that begins with us and which we pass on to those lucky enough to be in the presence of a person of peace, where it turns into a communicable disease.  People I have talked to talk about her speak of her as an uncomplicated person and this service is a simple, uncomplicated service in her honor. 

Peace begins with the acceptance of the truth of the Serenity Prayer. It goes; “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference, just for today.”

Eva was a farm girl in New Jersey who learned that sometimes the success of a crop is way beyond one’s pay grade. You can do everything right and you work very hard, but sometimes things that cannot be controlled are against success. You have a choice of feeling sorry for yourself, you can enter into blaming someone else, you can give up trying, you can be bitter and angry, or you can accept what you cannot change just for today and start over by finding a way to redeem what has happened and to give thanks for an opportunity to begin a new path.

In Nursing school, she learned that there are limits to medicine and she put that into practice by going in peace into hospice where death is not seen as a defeat but as an ending of this life and a door into another kind of existence. As a wife and mother she learned that things happen, and you work to accept and adjust.

Peace does not mean passivity where you just give up and stop fighting; it just mean that you pick your battles and pick your enemies. This is where you find what we can change and work hard nourished by hope, joy and love. When I was in seminary in 1982 I attended a series of lectures given by Elie Weisel, author, Concentration Camp Survivor, worker for Peace and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1986. One of the stories he told was about when Father Abraham was in Sodom. He had come to Sodom to urge people to repent and at first people were interested in listening, but after a while they drifted away and ignore him. Later on they would mock him. A young boy came to him one night and said; “Father Abraham, you know you are able to change them. Why do you keep going out? You are not making a difference?” Father Abraham replied; “At first I went out to change them and now I go out so they don’t change me.”

Eva was not changed by the world; she continued to have the courage to work at making her world a better place. She knew that peace that passes all understanding that allowed her to share hope, joy and love with those who were lucky enough to know her.

Jesus in the lesson from John for today is talking about not letting our hearts be troubled; to be at peace. He says that his work is to allow people to enter dwelling places with God.  He called for us to live into God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. I don’t think he was talking about what happens after we die but about dwelling with God in this life. To “rest in peace” is not to be dead but to be fully alive knowing that the Great Shepherd is with us, giving us strength to make it through each day. A life lived in peace is where we live in the Kingdom of the Heavens right here and right now. Heaven is not a reward at the end of a good life but the reality of earth being expanded in our daily lives so that heaven is within us and that when we die in this mortal life, we continue that expansion on another plane of existence. Jesus came to show us how to live in hope, peace, joy and love with God and neighbor and to die to our own ego, our own greed, our own anger, our self-absorption, and our own resentments. Each day we learn how to die in order to live fully

Eva knew a lot of turmoil in her life but each day she rested in peace – no complaints, no excuses, and no regrets. Today we give thanks to God for a life rested in peace, walking with the Good Shepherd.