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May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

The tragic death which brings us together today weighs heavily on all of us. A young life so rich in promise has been cut short - a young life that in some ways was closely bound up with our own. Tina was a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a niece, a classmate, a neighbor and a friend.
We come together at this time for various reasons.

We come, first of all, to pay tribute, to take time to remember Tina, who has touched our lives to varying degrees. We show our respect and affection in these moments for a loving and lovable girl with a winning smile who has walked among us, and who, although now claimed by death, will continue to be a part of our minds and spirits.

We also come to express our feelings to those who most deeply mourn. If there were any way we could take on some of your pain, your loss, your suffering, we would do so. There aren't many adequate words, if any, to express our feelings. What else can be done in a moment like this but to say and show, "We are with you."

And we come to share our faith. We look at each other in the midst of anguish and say, perhaps only by our silent presence, "Somehow our God can relieve this suffering: God can ease the pain; God can calm our troubled spirits; and Jesus Christ will receive this life and make it his own."

But if we are honest, we have to admit we have also come to this place to ask, "Why?" We hope desperately that there may be an answer in the Scriptures we hear, the prayers that are uttered, or in what the preacher might say. But there are no easy answers to the question of why. We cannot give the reason for this turn of events. We can only join in the very human question of the moment. "My God, my God, Why?" The question of agony comes from the lips of the Son of God on the Cross, into the hearts and minds of all.

My God, why was this life cut short?

Why was this family touched with tragedy?

Why did the accident happen?

So we come together today needing desperately to reaffirm our faith somehow. We need reaffirmation because there is nothing which tests our faith more deeply than a death like this.

No doubt you remember a man named Job. He's the Old Testament character who had everything when suddenly his whole world began to fall apart. Job, too, began to ask questions, just as we do. He wanted to know why all this was happening to him.

Three of Job's friends came to counsel him. With their pious and mistaken theology they tried to convince him that everything that was happening to him was exactly what he deserved. But Job was not satisfied with their explanations. And eventually the book even quotes God with words which say in effect, "I'm God and you are not, so there. That's the way it is. You just have to accept it."

But that doesn't satisfy me - nor any of you, I suspect. Rather, God's response to Job's question and to ours comes to us in Jesus Christ. We live in a world where sin, folly, and ignorance lead to suffering and death. Jesus himself suffered and died unfairly because of human sin and folly and ignorance. And in Jesus' suffering and death we discover that God enters into our suffering and gives us courage and strength to bear it.

What God is saying to us is not, "I'm God and you are not, so there, you just have to accept it." No, what God is saying to us is, "I am God, and I am with you in your suffering. If you allow me to come into your suffering we can bring something good out of it." Already you have caught a glimpse of some of the good that has come about: the outpouring of love by family and friends, the drawing closer of your family, parents and children talking to each other in ways they never have before.

What I am trying to say is that God did not take Tina from you. The God I know, the God of Jesus Christ does not operate that way. Rather, now we need to give Tina to God. In this very act of offering her to God, God will begin to fill the empty void in your life and to make something good out of this terrible thing.

What does faith say in a moment of such tremendous loss and pain?

It says, don't for a moment deny the burden of grief in this hour. It is a good grief because it comes directly from your great love for Tina. But at the same time, be assured that God makes his greatest strength accessible to you for meeting the grief.

It also says that life does not close with physical death; any more than Christ's life and ministry ended in the Cross. God raised his own son from the dead. He will raise us and our sons and daughters also. This mysterious process we know as life does not surrender to darkness and death for the last word, because God and his incredible love are always somewhere in the middle of it.

The love which is causing the terrible ache in your heart has its source in God's love. And that love is adequate to help you bear your ache. Love causes your pain and love will help you bear your pain.

Paul put it this way: "What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"

"For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."