"All might be saved and pass from death to life"

The Reverend Charlotte Rushton, Pontypridd Ministry Area Leader

Whenever I am asked what my favourite part of being a Vicar is, people expect me to say weddings or presiding at the Eucharist. All of those are amazing ministries that fill me with joy, but my answer is always “being able to preside at a funeral”. My mother thinks that I am weird for giving that answer, but for me, this is the time where I have witness God’s immeasurable grace and the hope we have in Jesus.

My first encounter with death came as a young teenager when my grandmother passed away. As a 13-year-old, I was comforted by my family, assuring me that despite the sadness of her loss, my nan was ‘old’ and I was young, and this was the natural order of things. I was sad, but the world still felt safe.

A few years later, when I was 16, a dear friend of mine developed Leukemia and died very shortly after diagnosis. His death was earthshattering. It wasn’t fair or right! He was just 16 and had everything to live for – the natural order that I had sought comfort in was gone and the universe had let me down. The emptiness of the grief, the anger of the injustice and the sheer futility I found in the finality of death, was a burden that I found hard to bear for many years. Then something happened in my mid-twenties that started to change my views…

At the age of 25, I met God. It was an all powerful and overwhelming experience and it was wonderful! As I attended church and as I read the Bible, I began to understand that the universe had no power, only Jesus does. I began to understand what Paul meant when he wrote “Death, you can no longer win! Death, you no longer have any power to hurt us!” (1 Corinthians 15:55). Jesus has ultimate authority over all things, including death, and he has shown us that it is not something to fear. When we have faith as small as a mustard seed, we have hope in eternal life with Jesus and knowledge changed everything. The burden of grief was abating, and all was well once again. But that was to be tested.

Like most women, I assumed that when it was time to start a family, it would simply ‘happen’. I thought that it would be easy – but it wasn’t. I lost three babies in close succession, and it broke our hearts. This time, the intensity and longevity of the grief was hard to bear, and I felt that the guilt and grief would consume me. But this time, I wasn’t seeking solace in the natural order of things, and I didn’t give the universe a second thought. This time I had Jesus with me.

My faith in him meant that I knew that my children were not merely fetuses, but people that God created and had knitted them together in my womb. They were fearfully and wonderfully made, and they mattered. They mattered to me, they mattered to their dad, and they mattered to Our Father. Not only were we assure that our babies were cared for by Jesus, but we were cared for by our Church. They loved us, cried with us and prayed with us, and they held us as we grieved.

I have a passion for funeral ministry because I have known grief with God and without Him. I know what it is to try and find fleeting comfort in platitudes and I know what it is to have deep and abiding peace in God. I pray that when I meet with a bereaved family, that the Holy Spirit will work through me and bring them peace. I know that they are entering into a lifelong journey of grief and that I get the opportunity to tell them the good news of Jesus and invite them to be part of a new family in his Church who are glad to pray with them and help them allow God to bind up their broken hear and to move from death into life.