Peggy Perninah Bost Strube: Memorial Service - John 11:21-37
We gather here to today for several reasons. We gather to bid farewell to a loved one who has passed from this life to the next. We gather to support family and friends of Peggy Bost Strube in this beginning phase of their grief in her passing. We gather to gain encouragement for ourselves in light of our own sense of mortality in the face of death. We gather to join our hearts with one another and seek to understand the imponderables of life with all its uncertainty.
Grief hits each of us differently. We have each lost someone different in Peggy's passing. For some, she was mother. To others, she was grandmother, sister, aunt, great-aunt, mother-in-law, friend, club member, traveling partner, church member, neighbor, and beautician. We will miss different aspects of who Peggy was in accord with our individual relationships with her, the memories, and the stories of our varied experiences with her.
Death has always been for us to process. From time immemorial, we have struggled to make sense of death even as we struggle to make sense of life. Faith calls us to seek answers in God, but we are not always comfortable with those answers. We struggle with faith, because while we want to trust God, it is difficult to set aside our druthers to embrace what God has for us.
Peggy lived a full life, having celebrated over fifty years of marriage, reared three children, and helped see six grandchildren on their way. She consistently affirmed her love for her family, even if she were angry with them. Peggy was a cook, a seamstress, a beautician. Sunday dinner every other week was a mainstay she insisted on. When she was no longer able to do the cooking, she would write out the menu as see that Sherry followed her instructions.
Peggy like to travel, sometimes taking the six grandchildren along with her. She liked to do and to go. When she fell and hurt her back, she determined to recover her strength, walking two miles in her neighborhood. She worked the hot dog sales at Kerr Street UMC from 1942 alongside her husband, making slaw and pitching in with others to pay off the activities building and other maintenance projects. She was a life member of Kerr Street UMC from cradle to grave. When the original sanctuary burned down, she kept a Bible rescued from the ashes in a case built to preserve it.
She married her sweetheart on Christmas Day, 1953. She made cakes for her grandchildren's birthdays. She worked as a beautician until age 79. She wore out a thousand tennis balls. She worked at the cotton mill making bedspreads until Pete sent her to beautician school in 1963. She worked at Belk's then at other places, following after her grandfather who was a barber.
Peggy made the best dumplings, which were always the first finished at potluck dinners. She made chocolate candies and took her kids to the races on Saturdays at the dirt track. They would come home covered in red clay. She sewed dresses and even suits for her boys, making a re-enactment uniform for David, as well. She was Miss Merry Christmas at Odell High School. She roller skated at Frye's Lake. She was often heard say she was going to run away from home, but could not find the back door. She cared for her parents and in-laws when they got older.
She was a member of the Red Hat Society. She lived a good, full life and was always proud of her young ones. She played basketball as a center during high school. She was a disciplinarian, wearing out her share of hickory switches. She had a green thumb and grew plants inside when she could no longer care for those in the yard. She did not like all the new-fangled stuff. She never failed to tell her family she loved them. Now, however, those words of comfort and love are alive to us only in memory. We grieve over the fact that we no longer experience her zest for life alongside us.
The words of John 11 recall Jesus' interaction with two grieving sisters whose brother, Lazarus, had passed away. They were struggling with their grief and its mixture with their faith. They were trying to wrap their hearts and minds around Lazarus' death, as well as Jesus' delayed arrival to see and heal him. They embraced a hope that Lazarus would rise again in the resurrection, yet they struggled with the pain and emotional turmoil of Lazarus being ripped from their lives in an untimely manner.
These sisters were not the only ones grieving. Lazarus' many friends were also there showing their support for the family, as well as processing their own grief. Some cried out a word of condemnation toward Jesus. If he had only arrived sooner, Lazarus could have been healed. They could all have been spared the heartache and pain of loss.
The sisters were at once happy Jesus had arrived and upset he had delayed. They were grateful for the support and hope he proffered, even while they wanted to blame him for not coming sooner and interfering with the processes of death that had claimed their brother's life.
Jesus understood their pain, suffering, conflict of emotions, and their desire to recriminate him amid a desperate relief over his arrival in their midst. Jesus' own emotions were in turmoil as he greeted them and began to make his way to the place where they had laid Lazarus' body in a tomb.
Jesus wept. The shortest verse in the Bible, its importance is too easily underestimated. Jesus manifested the very same emotions we experience in the face of death and loss. While Jesus was working to bring Lazarus back to life, he still grieved the death of his friend and companion. Simply knowing there is a better future awaiting does not cancel our grief.
Jesus wept for his own emotional turmoil. He wept over the pain and loss Mary and Martha were experiencing. He wept over the lack of understanding around him. He wept because the realities of grief are very real and important for us to process. Jesus wept, because he was human and experienced the full range of human emotions, including our forays into grief.
The sisters wanted to blame him, to blame God for allowing Lazarus to die. Others blamed Jesus for his late arrival, as well. It is a natural grief response for which Jesus did not recriminate them. He accepted it without comment. Then he went on with his purpose to bring Lazarus back to them. The Bible does not distinguish between things like a coma and death. The definitions it uses to determine death are not the ones we struggle with in an age of modern medicine. By whatever definition we might apply, Lazarus was as good as dead, sealed in a tomb with a large stone.
Jesus did not address issues of hope in eternity here. Instead, he addressed the sisters with hope for their present living and grieving. He called them to trust God even amid their experience of grief and pain. He walked with them in their grief, weeping alongside them on the way to their brother's tomb.
We also will need the comfort of Jesus' continued presence. Peggy will live on in memory and the stories we continue to tell here. She will live on in our lives while we await the transformation of resurrection. We can create no fresh memories with her, but we cherish those we have. So, until then, as Peggy was wont to say, “Be good. Be a lady (or gentleman). Be home early, because nothing good ever happens after midnight."
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