"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Revelation 1:8 (RSV)
And he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment.
Revelation 21:6 (RSV)
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."
Revelation 22:13 (RSV)
I was sorting through the thousands of documents on my computer in the hope of making them a bit more usable. My colleagues assert that I am obsessive when it comes to keeping records. They may have a point, but if I want to find a sermon where I mentioned Abraham Lincoln that I think I preached sometime in the '80's, a simple search finds it.
I stopped at the file labeled, "Funeral Sermons". I would like to believe that it contained all the funerals from my parish ministry. I am confident that the majority are there. I started in 1977, soon, over an hour was gone.
Most of the names recalled faces of parishioners I knew well. A few names I struggled to remember the person. These were often funerals I was called upon to do as the family had no church background. All of them carried sadness and loss, some more tragically than others. A few were folk openly questioned the deceased's eternal destiny, wondering why we were going through the charade of a church funeral. Many were dear saints of Christ whose witness to the Lord was the fabric of their lives.
In my younger, more zealous days, I was confident in my ability to discern the direction the person would take. Heaven or hell, I thought I could give a pretty fair determination of if they were going up or down.
I am less sure about many things now that I am much closer to the grave. The passing of decades reveals that one knows far less about the mind of God than when the years were few. The eternal destiny of anyone, even myself, is not mine to judge. It has never been, nor will the Father ever turn it over to me.
Of course, it is as it should be. Who populates heaven and who resides in hell was never mine, or anyone else's, to determine. We are too finite for such things. Our transgressions blind us to see clearly enough to judge others.
This judgment is where the One who is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, will rule. God alone sees all things in the scope of eternity. He knows every heartbeat and a fleeting thought of all who have ever lived. In faith, we commend ourselves, the whole world, into His mercy. As St. Thomas confessed, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."