(Kathryn) Ann Scheller Funeral Homily, TLC, John 14:1-6, Jan 18 2024

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

This is a lot to take in.

Certainly in this reading, but also for Gregg, Ken, Mark and all those of you in Ann’s family. Since the end of last year, your lives have been turned upside down, not just once, but twice, as both Don and Ann completed their baptismal journeys, just over two months apart.

As I spoke to you this past week, I thought about your idyllic childhoods and adult family lives. Now, I know families aren’t perfect. But the joy on your faces when you recounted how your family’s life centered on sports, and the outdoors, and family trips and even family chores – I can see how that bonded you, and gave you shared pastimes and values. Your relationships sustained you through good times and bad.

And your parents were the heart of that. Your mom surrounded you with love and faith. You learned to be part of something bigger than yourselves when you set up the altar and communion with your mother on Trinity’s altar guild, and helped in worship. You learned to be kind and generous to your neighbors through your mom’s many examples. And some of the pranks – well, those are also a part of being family, and church family.

And when, one by one, you connected with your future spouses, Gregg, Ken, and Mark, Donna, Chris and Sandy became not just in-laws, but daughters. Ann wouldn’t have it any other way. And the family grew in love and grace.

So, perhaps the way this reading begins is challenging. “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Your hearts are aching, have been aching, and are longing for some peace. I’m certain Jesus’ disciples must have felt this ache. Their teacher was telling them that this would be their last meal together, that he would die. Their hearts were breaking. And their minds weren’t functioning. And they spoke like people who had never heard Jesus talk about giving up his life and rising again, or what God was like. All they felt and knew at that moment was grief.

So Jesus gently reminded them: I’m going ahead. You know the way. You know my father, the Creator of the Universe, because you know me. You know what I’ve done, and what we’ve done together. And you’re going to stay here and do even more than I could.

More than Jesus. It probably didn’t sink in at the time, but they remembered those words. And eventually shared them. How was it that Jesus’ disciples, and generations upon generations would do even more than Jesus himself?

It is in these places, when you sit over the dinner table, and you read bedtime stories. You make an extra meal for a neighbor who just had surgery. You gather in the guests and make room at the table. You give grace when someone steps over a line or messes up. You show that relationships are everything. Ann understood what it meant to give her heart to God, to follow in Jesus’ ways, and she passed that down to her children. And you gave that gift to your children.

I know that, because I saw it in your faces when you talked to me and wanted everything to go just right today, the way Ann had envisioned it. I know, because I saw a smile light up the face of one of Trinity’s members when I mentioned Ann’s name this week. Ann understood that she was showing the way to God the Father when she organized Trinity’s Vacation Bible School, or when she showed you the wonders of God’s creation in your family trips. She knew that as you absorbed the way she lived her faith, that you would learn to live what was important, too.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” Jesus said, and Ann understood that living out the way, the truth and the life wasn’t JUST in her commitment to the Church, although that was considerable, but in her 91 years of living out her faith with her family and in the community, in the legacy that will continue.

Amen