Noah Daubaras Memorial Service

20 October 01

Memorial Service for Noah Daubaras (4 Oct 01-10 Oct 01)

Homily:

A little child shall lead them, says Isaiah the prophet to the listening people of Judah.

We have hear a picture of a natural terrain – God’s garden of Eden – the holy mountain - and in that pastoral scene we have a

wolf and a lamb, a leopard and a young goat, a lion and a calf, and

even an infant alongside poisonous snakes – these are of course normally enemies to each other.

The one should normally cower in fear and the other begin licking his chops drooling over the supper before him.

But no in this peaceable kingdom – this visionary reign of God, instead of one devouring the other, we have them playing today, enjoying each other, warming and cuddling each other.

No longer mortal enemies, but friends and companions in God’s creation.

Even the little ones don’t need to fear the venomous snakes – other normal symbols of mortal danger.

And then in a culture where little children get very little place, in a society where it really was children’s place to be seen but not heard, to obey rather than direct, to follow rather than lead,

we are given the image of a child who will lead all these wild and domestic animals – as if a shepherd, caring for them and leading them to food and water, like the divine shepherd of Psalm 23..

That’s the kind of world inspiring the heart of our faith. Where enemies become friends; and strangers become companions; and children lead the way in bringing in God’s peaceable kingdom.

But then we are brought back to the harshness of reality. We live in a world where enemies still kill and maim each other, where diseases and illnesses cut short the lives of God’s people;

And where Noah Daubaras was given only one week to make his contribution toward God’s peaceable kingdom.

All of us grieve the shortness of those seven day. And yet in Biblical understanding, seven is the number of the fullness. God created for six days and rested on the seventh to signal completion.

And that is Noah’s gift – six days of work and the final day of his rest.

What was that work Noah undertook over those six days:

It included telling his parents what he needed to survive; and working with caregivers for his care. And it certainly included his valiant fight for life. He laboured to claim the gift which his parents had desired for him and to live the full measure God intends for all God’s children. Struggling for life – life in its fullness – is of course the root work all of us are called to. And Noah without doubt did his part.

Noah had other work besides. He opened himself to the camera. We all know how demanding it can be to pose for pictures, and Noah posed for seven or eight rolls, and demonstrated in the collage his Mum & Dad prepared what a photogenic child he was and how much he gave himself to those who would know him.

The pictures were of course simply part of a deeper work Noah was carrying out.

Noah emerged from that warm place of nurture to reveal his love for Darcy and Fiona, and his gratitude for the others who encircled him with care.

Loving is demanding work. It’s demanding in the sense that once you start loving the other, once Noah started loving Darcy and Fiona and they responded, he began an endless – eternal – task. Love never ends, says the scriptures.

And we trust that even now his love and their love are alive and flowing freely between them.

But love’s hard work also includes the pain and grief when that love can no longer be incarnated, when death in whatever form prevents us from embodying that love.

And that raises for us another of Noah’s works.

Noah gave himself to be baptized and confirmed.

There is no clearer way to signal that we live by God’s grace and love, than coming with empty hands to be baptized with the water of life, anointed with the sign of Christ, and commissioned with laying on of hands and prayer for the Spirit.

In short, the sacrament celebrates our simply receiving God’s boundless love.

And on Tuesday, the ninth of October in the year of our Lord 2001, the sixth work day of Noah’s little life, the sacrament was celebrated in the special nursery unit of the hospital.

By God’s boundless love, Noah was included as a member of this congregation – the Body of Christ, the company of Jesus, and counted among the saints – God’s holy people - of the faith.

And then the next day – the seventh day - Noah rested –

that is he immersed himself and entrusted himself to that infinite love which is of God.

Noah died, but God’s love did not and we trust and believe deeply that in life and in death, Noah and we belong to God.

The Gospel stories of Jesus reveal the fierce and gentle love Jesus demonstrated for the children around him. They reveal to us that children, this child, Noah hold a uniquely special place in the faithful heart of God.

At the end of Noah’s life among us we dare to commend him to God’s care, just as with our own lives, we may confidently and peacefully rest, entrusting ourselves to God. Perhaps that is Noah’s largest work for us. He teaches us how to enter that seventh day rest – that day when all our work is done and we finally entrust our whole being to the eternal God. Thank you, Noah.

But we can’t celebrate Noah’s life and death without tears and lament and probably, rage. The scriptural vision doesn’t really have room for infants dying after only a week. It really is not God’s intention.

So even as God receives Noah into the communion of God’s love, I believe God is weeping, lamenting and raging.

God is grieving for what Noah might have become for the world God loves so much.

Hear what Isaiah 65 says about the new heaven & earth God longs for:

That’s the kind of cosmos God is longing for.

And so we grieve with God over Noah’s death. You, Darcy and Fiona grieve because you miss Noah’s presence. Our hearts go out to you, and we all grieve and lament that Noah was not given more days and weeks and years to work and rest.

Like the Christ of the Gospels, compassion fills us – our innards embrace the hurt of Noah’s death and your feelings of loss, and

we take into our lives something of your suffering.

The Spirit comforts and gives strength.

We will not be shaken from the deepest conviction that the grieving, loving God brings laughter even as the tears stream down our faces; that God gives joy even as our hearts are broken; that God transforms death in the resurrection life – where you and I and Noah and all God’s beloved children will be reunited in love to celebrate God’s goodness in death and in life, now and always.

So it is we join Fiona and Darcy in insisting,

that even as we commend Noah to God’s care,

we are not saying a final "good bye",

but rather we express a hopeful

Blessed be the God of the crucified and risen Lord, Jesus Christ. AMEN.