Death is all around, so let’s put some language around it. A brief homily given at a recent funeral, for one who suffered too long and died too young.
Interesting fact: the Jesus stuff, what we call the gospel, isn’t highfalutin’ literature. Instead, it’s working class language. Like life, it’s rough, it’s raw, and it’s real. But translations tend to tidy things up. Take the word ‘splanchna.’
When Jesus saw suffering, our Bibles usually say that he was moved by compassion. It’s a nice, contained, dignified response, appropriate for a greeting card perhaps. But the Greek word ‘splanchna’ refers to guts. A plain translation says that, when Jesus witnessed suffering, ‘his guts wrenched’. He was so intimately involved, and cared so much, that he felt it in his stomach, his bowels.
‘We suffered with Grace,’ her husband told me. ‘For two years, we have grieved.’ I suggest that those who have journeyed with her know exactly how it feels to have their guts wrench in solidarity, in grief, in love. And our story says that Jesus’ guts wrench with them. For we worship a God who comes alongside our suffering, and who enters into our pain. Grace’s pain, but also the pain of those who farewell her now, all who loved her well.
The pain is not magically whisked away. Like the children’s story of a bear hunt, we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, we’ve got to go through it. Even so, we have a companion in that pain, who knows what it is to suffer, even what it is to feel abandoned in the face of death. For Jesus cried from the cross in agony and fear, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ – and to this, there was only silence.
If that was the end of the story, I’m not sure we could bear it. But the story goes on. It says that Jesus went through it. He died and descended into the grave, and there defeated death forever. Then he rose again to be everywhere present, but particularly in the sharing between people. The sharing of love, of food, of conversation. The sharing of suffering, of solidarity, of pain. The sharing as we listen to one another’s stories, and tend one another’s wounds. Through intimacy and vulnerability and doing life together, Christ’s spirit is present and known.
With patient endurance and grace, even gratitude, Grace has shared in Christ’s suffering. Now she shares in his glory. Your love for Grace has led you to share many moments: laughter and tears, joy and pain and, in all these, Christ was present. More, by sharing in her suffering over the last two years, you, too, have shared in Christ’s suffering. Each time your guts wrenched in solidarity, in grief, in love, you were aligned with Jesus and his Spirit was with you.
Suffering. You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you’ve got to go through it. But when you share in it with others, our faith says that the spirit of Christ moves among you and within you, and you will ultimately know full and flourishing life and the joy of the resurrection. So let us be grateful for all we have shared with Grace over the years: the good and the bad, the joyful and the terrible. And may the presence of Christ’s Holy Spirit lead us ever onward into faith and fullness of joy. Amen. Ω
Where & when: Wurundjeri country, Waring (Wombat) Season. It’s a time of crisp mornings, cool days, evening shadows, and the rains have finally come.
A reflection first shared at a funeral at Manningham Uniting Church on 13 May 2026 © Alison Sampson, 2026. Name has been changed. Photo by Daniel Gutko on Unsplash (edited).
Alison and the whale 