All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song:

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The disciples were full of questions about God. Said the master, “God is the unknown and the unknowable. Every statement about Him, every answer to your questions, is a distortion of the truth.” The disciples were bewildered. “Then why do you speak of Him at all?” “Why does the bird sing?” said the master.[1]

On Thursday morning, as we gathered here at Christ Church to begin the planning for today’s Mass of the Resurrection, Cody’s mother Carla handed me a copy of this story, “The Song of the Bird,” by the Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello. Perhaps, she said to me, it might be useful in the preparation of the sermon for the mass, as it was a favorite of Cody’s, one he had shared with several friends and family.

As it turns out, I can think of few stories better to use on such an occasion as today. For Cody lived just as the bird – always singing the Lord’s song, living his life as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to the Triune God whom he loved, and who so deeply loves him. It was simply who he was. He wholly exulted in his Lord even when God seemed most foreign, most unknown, most unknowable. Cody, like the bird, could not keep from singing, even on days like today. Every fiber of his being rejoiced in God his savior, every moment was an act of worship. All of us, who have gathered here today to celebrate his life and ministry among us, know this of our dear friend and brother in Christ Jesus.

Ever since Cody so suddenly fell ill, and especially since he moved from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant this Wednesday, every fiber of my being has told me that this shouldn’t be happening. That we shouldn’t be here. That thirty-six year olds are not supposed to have aneurysms. That someone as good, and holy, and loving, and intelligent as Cody is not supposed to leave us in his prime, with so much to offer the church, to the academy, and to the world. Even as I stand in this pulpit now, and see my friend lying here, I simply want someone to pinch me, to wake me up, to end the nightmare of the past few days.

I imagine that Jesus’ disciples must have felt the same way after Good Friday, as they looked back on their final few days with their Lord. They must have wanted their nightmare to end, as they sat in fear on Friday evening, pondering over what Jesus had told them only the night before – those same words we hear in today’s Gospel:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me… I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.[2]

On the day that Jesus died, the disciples were left with only their grief, their great sense of loss and pain, their confusion at how their Lord could tell them, in a time like this, to “not let their hearts be troubled.” After all, they had seen that Jesus had gone not to a great mansion, or to a palace, or to triumph, but to the cross. To death. To the grave. Back to the very dust of the earth. Yet we know what the disciples could not have known on that fateful Friday – that the glories of Easter were only just beyond the horizon. That the Risen Lord would rise from the grave, and, destroying death, would make the whole creation new. And that the risen Lord sent those same disciples who had sat in fear on Friday night out in to the world only days later – commanding them to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.[3]

Paul spoke to this great mystery in his Letter to the Romans: “Do you not know,” he asks, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his… If we have died with Christ, we will also live with him.”[4]

It is this great mystery that we celebrate today – the sure and certain knowledge that Cody, who joyfully lived and sang knowing that he was sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever – that he was baptized into Christ’s death and is forever united with him in his resurrection. We celebrate the knowledge that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.[5]

We know that despite the pain and sadness of this day, as we commend our pastor, teacher, son, and friend Cody to God’s gracious care, that this is not Cody’s Good Friday moment, for as a Christian, baptized into Jesus’ body, Cody was not a Good Friday person. Cody is a resurrection person. Death cannot separate him from God’s love, because he at his baptism, he was already raised with Christ.

Indeed, nothing could ever possibly separate us from the love of God, for as Christians, we believe that even heaven itself is not God’s final word. We look forward to the great feast that Isaiah foretold, in which heaven and earth are joined, when death is swallowed up forever, and when the whole creation is made new. We know that even as today we commend our dear brother Cody to the dust of the earth, that our Lord’s victory over death assures that this very same dust will be that upon which a new and more glorious creation is being built. Even now… Even today.

My very first encounter with Cody was when I was a prospective student, looking to enter General Seminary in 2008. I visited in the spring, towards the end of the semester, and attended the noonday mass at which Cody had been assigned to preach. I remember it vividly, because in his sermon, without hesitation or reservation, Cody sang:

My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far off hymn
That hails a new creation:
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?

What though my joys and comforts die?
The Lord my Savior liveth;
What though the darkness gather round!
Songs in the night He giveth:
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that refuge clinging;
Since Christ is Lord of Heav’n and earth,
How can I keep from singing?

I lift mine eyes; the cloud grows thin;
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smoothes
Since first I learned to love it:
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
A fountain ever springing:
All things are mine since I am His—
How can I keep from singing?[6]

AMEN.

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