An homily from the funeral and burial service for John Sam on the Fifth Friday of Pascha, 7534/2026, at St. John’s, by Priest Paul Siewers.
Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!
There are a few words of our Lord Jesus Christ that are remembered in the Acts of the Apostles but not in the Gospels directly. Indeed, the Evangelist John said the world could not hold all the books that could be written of our Lord’s words and deeds. Indeed, they surround us in the very Creation. But those few extra words of our Lord quoted in Acts are these: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
And the Apostle Paul highlighted those words by writing, “God loveth a cheerful giver.”
In my memory of John Sam, he will always be a cheerful giver. At times mischievously direct, yet I always remember him with a smile exemplifying the faith of the believer.
He departed from our sight in the Pascha Season of Resurrection. His passing was peaceful, quiet, as if falling asleep while passing into another dimension of life, as prayers and Scripture were read around him by those who love him.
It is a blessing to be in the presence of a believer when he passes thus. And we now must pray for him especially during his 40-day transition, moving in and toward the particular judgment. John himself spent a good part of the last months of his life in prayer. When told that he did not have long to live, he lived longer than the expectations of the physician. But he did so with renewed prayer.
When I would visit him and his brother Innocent at the hospital or nursing home and bring communion, when the prayers were over, and we had talked, and I got up to leave, John would always ask: Can we say more prayers now?
Brothers and sisters, so should we also be in our lives now with John as our example. We are all granted time on earth for repentance and for service to our God, His Church, and one another, in the love that our Lord commanded and exemplified for us. Jesus Christ said His New Commandment is to love one another as He has loved us. This goes beyond the Great but Old commandment of loving our neighbor as ourself. He has commanded us, following His example, to love our neighbor more than our self. How much we all have to do, and how much to repent each day, emptying ourselves in Him instead of asserting ourselves. If nothing else and more than anything, we can pray, “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me” throughout each day. May we do so with John’s persistence and humility.
We pray for him now as we also pray for his brother Innocent, Bob, for strength and in love. Innocent, God has a plan for you, brother, in you being here still on earth, and likely it is the plan He has for all of us, myself more than all, which is for our repentance and prayer. To start, we each need to be there for John in prayer during his 40 days. And put ourselves in God’s hands to do His will and not ours.
St. Gregory the Theologian wrote that the Father accepts Him, Christ, in His sacrifice on the Cross, though He neither asked for this nor needed it, because of the divine plan. And that the human being must be sanctified by the humanity of God as our Lord did, so that God Himself might set us free, conquer the tyrant death by force, and lead us back to Himself the Father through the mediation of the Son. The Son also planned His sacrifice to the honor of the Father, to Whom it is manifest that He yields all things. These things we know in part from Christ. But there is a great mystery also, the mystery of love and of co-suffering compassion, as mentioned in our prayers this morning.
The Cross, a sign of death, has become through Christ a sign of victory. Likewise, as St. Gregory added, drawing on the shadows of the Old Testament, the bronze serpent in Numbers was hung up to oppose the biting serpents. This was not as a type of the One Who suffered for us, but as an antitype. It saves those who look at it, not because they believe it is alive, but because it has been killed. Yet it mortifies with itself the powers subject to it. So we know and believe that Jesus Christ died for us in His human nature, fully God and fully man, and arose again from the dead so that His death became a trampling down death by death for all of us. As St. Gregory concluded, “what is a fitting funeral oration for it from us? O death where is your sting? O Hades where is your victory? By the Cross you have been overthrown, by the Giver of life, you have been put to death.”
So the Cross near the end of this Pascha Season takes us beyond death, turns death backwards, and shows it to be dead itself. So during this season at the altar table, we turn the Cross around so that the Resurrection side faces out, and likewise flip the Gospel’s book cover to show the Resurrection of Him Whom we worship.
Dear ones, let John be our example, in using our time here for the best. Let us start with seeking a deeper repentance and a deeper state of prayer with God’s help. Force yourself, as our dear Vladyka Luke says. For God energizes us in all things, as the Apostle Paul says. We do not take a breath without the Holy Spirit breathing through us, and so let that breath be in prayer. Let us remember the words of the Righteous Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, a spiritual son of our patron St. John, when he said: “It is later than you think. Hasten therefore to do the work of God.”
Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!