A sermon preached by the Revd Dr Trevor Jamison at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, North Shields, on 24 November 2024, at a service remembering those associated with the congregation who had died during the previous twelve months

Isaiah 46: 3-4; Romans 8: 31-39

Last week, for a couple of days, I was away at a United Reformed Church residential event, held in a conference centre in Milton Keynes. It was quite intense. During a short break between sessions I was standing in a corridor, in the company of others, sipping our coffees, topping up our caffeine levels to get us through the next session. At this point one of our number, a woman whom I have known for a number of years through church connections, though not someone with whom I am particularly close friends, spoke to me.

“Trevor, would you be offended if I asked you a personal question?” she said. “Hopefully not,” I replied, “What would you like to know?”

“I was wondering,” she said, “Is that your real hair colour, or do you add something to it, in order to make it look that way?”

“No,” I told her (truthfully), “this its natural colour, including the occasion individual silver highlights that are beginning to appear in it.” I also tried to persuade her that I dye the beard grey, but she was not convinced.

“I was just asking,” she said, pointing to her own colour-enhanced locks, “because I’m trying to figure out when the right time is just to go grey.”

It’s only subsequently that I have wondered if she asked me that question because she thinks that if my hair is what an attempt to avoid appearing grey looks like then it’s time for her to give upon the colouring agents. I’m trying not to lose sleep over that possibility..

Time marches on, and one sign of that is in the physical changes which come to us, including changes to the colour of our hair. Time marches on, and another sign of that is that the life of mortal beings comes to an end, no matter what precautions we take, or enhancements we make to our physical bodies. It is the natural way of things.

And tonight, gathered here, we focus upon those for whom time has marched on definitively; who are no longer with us, particularly including those who had a connection – direct or indirect – with this congregation; those who have died during these past twelve months: Eddie, Ethel, Sarah, Joan, Irene, Jim, and Christine. In a little while we will light a candle in memory of each, and of others also if we wish.

And we are doing all of this in the presence of God. It’s important to say that, I believe, because all of those lives, both theirs and ours, are lived in the presence of God. But it’s more than about the sense of comfort that one might feel to know that God is present as we lead our lives. More than that, our lives come from God; we are carried through life by God; and God will keep us safe when that life comes to an and.

These convictions are expressed well by the prophet Isaiah. Voicing the voice of God to the people of Israel in his time, he proclaimed they were all, ‘borne by me [God] from your birth, carried from the womb.’ (46:3) ‘Even when you turn grey I will carry you. I have made and I will bear; I will carry and will save.’ (46:3) This is about more than a promise that God will be around in the background whilst things are happening. It’s claiming that God carries us, supports us all the from birth to death, through the ups and downs of life.

And there’s just a hint there at the end of what Isaiah has to say which suggests that God’s presence, God’s support extends beyond this time on earth: ‘I will carry and will save.’ (46:4) I’m not even sure that the prophet would have been aware of, or intended to suggest that this being ‘saved’ had implications beyond this life. That said, God was there before any of us were born and will be there after all of us have died, so from God’s point of view there’s no reason why that carrying of us and others should not carry on into eternity.

Indeed, that’s what the Apostle Paul seems to be saying, in his letter, written  to Christians living in Rome, some six hundred years or more after Isaiah prophesied to Jewish people exiled in Babylon, and some two thousand years before us listening to it tonight.

Paul writes about how God has carried us out of the swamp in which we have been trapped in this life. This has entailed profound effort and sacrifice on God’s part, for God, ‘did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us.’ (8:32) It is God who ensures that even when we do what we should not in life this will not be the end of everything for us: ‘It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?’ (8:33, 34)

And, writes Paul, all this carrying of us, all this saving of us from the consequences of our own limitations, flows from God’s love for us, a love which cannot be overcome: ‘in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.’ (8:37) Paul goes on to give examples of the sort of life experiences which bring struggle, and through which, all too often, people have to be carried: hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and ‘the sword.’ (8:35)

Then, however,  he places these life-difficulties in context of God’s love: ‘For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (8:38-39) In and through Jesus Christ we are never separated from God’s love – the love which bears us from our birth to our death, and which carries through the greying-hair aging process that comes in between.

What’s true for us is also true for those whose names we remember this evening. God has been there with them, carrying them through birth and life and death, and I believe God continues to do so now. Tonight’s service carries with it at least a tinge of sadness, as we remember those from whom we are separated for a time. It should also though, contain at least a dash of hope and joy, as we remember that God carries us all the way, then saves us in the end; nothing in all creation separates them and us from the love of God. Amen.