A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on September 9, 2023 by Revd Dr Sam Wells
Time Together, September 9 2023, 2.00pm
In March this year a person I deeply admired, younger than me, ended her life. At the inquest a month ago both her husband and her psychotherapist testified that they had no idea something like this was coming. She was immaculately efficient, fiercely funny, highly disciplined, rigorously honest, and universally loved. Within minutes of the news becoming known, people were searching for understanding, comprehension, and consolation. I spent much of the rest of the day on zoom with those who hoped I could offer some insight, explanation, or comfort. I couldn’t. I could only offer one thing: companionship. I wonder if many, perhaps most of us who gathered an hour ago for today’s service were likewise looking for understanding, comprehension, or consolation. But the one thing I most hope you’ve found, during and after this service, is companionship.
The person I much admired was called Anna. I couldn’t attend her funeral, but I scoured the words people had said about her to find understanding, comprehension, and consolation I couldn’t conjure up for myself. One put it succinctly: ‘Alongside a deep humility … lay an incapacity to recognise in herself the gifts that others saw in her so abundantly, or to show towards herself anything like the depths of love that others felt for her.’ Those words actually helped me a lot. It wasn’t blaming Anna: it was just naming the truth that she for reasons no one seems to know got into a place of having an inexplicably low opinion of herself. The same person said another beautiful thing: ‘Dying so young, she leaves an influence as immense as her loss is now unfathomable.’ That summed up her legacy perfectly. Another friend said a similar thing differently: ‘The extravagant and unconditional love of God she showed to others, she sometimes found harder to see belonged to her too. Her story about herself was sometimes different from the one we gratefully related. … Those who got close to her will recognise this fragility in her. We loved her for it, but she doubted it was loveable.’
Six months later, this is what I’ve learned from the loss of Anna. I’ve learned again how fragile and precious life is, and how we do well to cherish those we care about and tell them what they mean to us while we have the chance. I’ve learned that you can never fully know what’s in another person’s heart and soul. I’ve learned how a person’s words about love, about life, about God, about hope, can mask their most profound doubts about everything. I’ve learned how the immense good and beauty a person can offer in their life is not lessened by the last thing they did. I’ve learned that there are some questions in life to which no one has the answer, and to which, however much we ask, we’ll never receive an adequate reply.
But most of all, I’ve learned what I learned that first evening after the news about Anna broke: the solidarity of companionship. Anna created a community, even after her death: all who admired her found through her a language to express what they most valued in life. They lost her, but in a paradoxical way, they gained each other. And that points to something important about what we’re doing together today. We’re a community brought together by tragedy and near-tragedy. Everyone here has chosen not to seek solace alone, but to find understanding, comprehension, and consolation in companionship. Insight may be elusive; explanations may never be forthcoming; sadness may never end. But companionship is a precious gift; maybe the most precious of all. Answers may be hard to find: but perhaps the best place to look is one another.
