We missed my Nana's graveside service. We got the time wrong, and my mother, sister, and I all arrived just as people were leaving. Nana had chosen a plot not far from her brother's grave, on a hillside overlooking the skyline of Los Angeles--a truly angelic view--and I was so angry I had been robbed of my final farewell, that I collapsed on her coffin, not yet lowered into the ground, and embraced its coldness as if it were her warm embrace itself.

Luckily, in the miasmal mist of my mourning I had remembered to pack a pocket-sized Book of Common Prayer, which I fetched from my sister's car trunk. My brother had made it on time but stayed behind to comfort my mom and sister. The three of them sat on cheap plastic folding chairs as I read in a shaky voice the eternal words. "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; she that believeth in me, though she were dead, yet shall she live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."

"Into thy hands, O merciful Savior, we commend thy servant. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming." And finally, "In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our sister, our grandmother...earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust..." Only then did I feel I had said goodbye properly.

I missed my grandfather's funeral, too, but that was because he didn't want one. His ashes were scattered at sea, and a marker was placed in the National Cemetery in San Diego, noting simply that he had been a Colonel and had fought in World War II. The inscription struck me as starkly modest; he had served under Patton and was in charge of the liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp--he was to me a hero, and a wonderful grandfather, and I wanted that to be etched on stone as well.

I regretted not being able to fly out there again after Christmas to be with my grandmother, a widow now for the second time in her life. But last month when she was here for my ordination, she brought along a photo of the cenotaph, and I felt, it's strange to say, a little better for seeing that slab of granite.

Each one of us here has a different story of loss. Some of the people we mourn left behind wonderful legacies of joy, and gladness, and hope. While remembering them is accompanied by a sort of glad hopefulness, the very memory of what we have lost makes us long all the more for their presence not just in spirit, but in body as well.

Of course, there are others who have departed this life whose legacies are at best mixed, and so too our feelings about the relationships we had with them when they were alive. We may regret lost opportunities or feel guilty about things done and left undone, things said or left unsaid.

But whether we have inherited joy or sadness at a loved one's death, or more likely, a strange and confusing mixture of both, we can be rooted in one thing that transcends both death and the grave: the hope of the resurrection.

It is to this hope that Martha so tenaciously clings: "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." To which Jesus says "I am the resurrection and the life." Jesus' claim here is not that he is the gatekeeper of eternal life so much as that he is its very source. In relationship with Christ, we have hope that when we die, we are still in relationship with God and each other through him.

I'm not so sure I understood this "blessed hope of everlasting life" very well until my Nana died, and of course my understanding is still shrouded in the mystery of life and death. But I found after she died that the one thing that brought me true comfort was the knowledge of how deep her own hope in the resurrection was. She was as tenacious as Martha, and knowing of her own hope gave me strength to hope in the resurrection, not only for her, but for myself as well. Now, with Martha, I can say "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."

But even if our loved ones did not live in this hope, we can hope for them. We can pray in the words of the prayer book that God would "grant them continual growth," and that our own growth would be marked by an increase of this hope.

May God grant you an increase in the hope that Martha had, the hope that my own Nana had, the hope that the Gospel proclaims with such truth and such beauty, that Christ is the resurrection and the life. And pray for me, that I might be given an extra measure of that hope, too. Amen.