Funeral Homily for Rebecca McNicoll--The Rev Melanie Lemburg

Funeral Homily Rebecca McNicoll

November 20, 2021

 

        What is there to say?  How can we make sense of this senseless loss?

        Rebecca hadn’t been feeling great all week.  Jason tried to get her to go to the doctor.  Why didn’t she go to the doctor?

        On Friday, she was struggling to breathe, so Jason took her to the Emergency Room.  At some point, a blood clot that was probably in her leg broke loose, went to her lungs, and her heart stopped-for a while.  She hung on until the morning when another clot broke off, went to her brain, and caused a stroke.  Eventually, Rebecca’s fierce and faithful heart gave out, and she died.

        Why did this have to happen?

        It’s understandable that we long for answers to try to make sense of the senseless.  We fumble for reasons and say things like, “It must have been God’s plan.” or “God needed her.”  But, the mystery of God defies those easy answers.

        Friends, I don’t know why this happened, but I do know that God was the first one to weep, for us and for Rebecca’s interrupted life, when she died.

        There are so many things that I appreciate about Rebecca.  She was kind; she worked hard; she was as dependable as the day is long—I knew that if she said she’d do something, not only would she get it done, but she’d do it in a way that was better than I even imagined it could be done. 

        After her first week of working here, I realized that she was not taking lunch breaks but eating her lunch at her desk.  I told her that I expected her to take a lunch break on most days, that it was an important aspect of wellness.  She tried to tell me that she liked eating lunch at her desk, but I wasn’t having it.  So, the second week, I came back from lunch and found Rebecca eating lunch….in the conference room.  “I’m not at my desk!” she told me proudly and somewhat ironically. And I said, “Well played.”  She was at least listening to a podcast instead of doing work. 

        Rebecca had a real gift for technology, a wonderful, smart sense of humor, and a spirit of adventure.  As she was planning the trip to New York that she and Jason took in October, she admitted to me that she hadn’t been sleeping well.  When I inquired why, she ruefully admitted that she was staying up too late every night, having so much fun planning and researching their trip, and then she’d be too excited to go to sleep.

        She was grounded in her sense of self.  She knew her own mind, and she had loving and healthy boundaries between where she ended and other people began.  Jason and I were remembering how he made an appointment to see me one day, and when he came in, he said, “Becca told me that she’s getting married on October 13th of this year.  She said it can be to me or to someone else, but that is the date that she’s getting married.”

        The thing I found most intriguing about Rebecca was her intellectual curiosity.  She just loved figuring things out.  She relished a good problem to solve, a mystery to resolve.  She liked finding answers, and she was relentless in her pursuit of them and in figuring out how things worked.

        One of our communion hymns for today is “Let all mortal flesh keep silence.”  It was one of Rebecca’s favorite hymns.  And get this.  It’s all about mystery; about the mystery of God and God’s holiness; about the beauty and the darkness of mystery; about the mystery of the Incarnation.  What a gift for us this day, this fitting reminder of the mystery of the Incarnation—what it means for God to take on our flesh and dwell among us; how Jesus knows both the beauty and the pain of human life; about the mystery of God’s love so great that God makes Godself both physically present with us and humanly limited.

        And holding hands with the mystery of the incarnation is the mystery of the resurrection, the mystery that is at the very heart of our Christian hope.  That God’s love for us as manifest in the person of Jesus Christ is stronger than absolutely anything, even death; that because of God’s love, Jesus does not abandon us to the power of death, but he goes before us, making a path for us through death into resurrection and eternal life. 

        It’s the last great mystery; the ultimate adventure.  As Jason said to me, “Don’t you know she is just loving it!”

        But what about us?  My goodness, we miss her so much.  And things will never be the same without her.  We gather today to mourn, to give thanks for Rebecca and her gifts, and to remind each other of the hope of our calling—that death is not the end but a change; that when our mortal body lies in death, there is a dwelling place prepared for us in the eternal life of God.  We feast today at God’s table, and we participate, even now, in some mysterious way, in God’s heavenly banquet at which Rebecca is already feasting.  We look forward to the time when we will be reunited with her and all those we love who have gone before us.  And in the meantime, we are mindful of the mystery of God and God’s love-- surrounding, upholding, and enfolding us.

        Oh, how we miss her.  And oh, how grateful we are to have known and loved her.