Preached on Monday, December 1, 2025 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Little Rock in memoriam Kaye Phillips Miers (May 28, 1954 – November 16, 2025).

“Jesus said, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted’” (Matthew 5:4).

I can hear Kaye Miers telling me, “Thomas, don’t start with mourning; that’ll be such a downer.” But I would respond, “Kaye, if you’ll trust your preacher, I think that’s where we have to start. Because there’s a lot for us to mourn today.”

After all, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve been mourning a great deal for a while now. I know Olivia and those of you closest to Kaye certainly have been.

Cancer is just about as terrible as it gets, only to be bested by having more than one kind of cancer—as was the case for Kaye. Cancer is deadly, of course. But even worse is its elusiveness and its aggression. Cancer fights back and it doesn’t play by the rules. And the treatment can be worse than the disease itself—draining strength and wearing down even the sturdiest of spirits.

And cancer takes its toll on the family, too. It demands decisions no one should have to make. It fills the home with fear and with fatigue. It reminds everyone every day of how vulnerable the people we love really are.

And the anxiety around cancer never seems to go away, no matter how far into it you get and no matter how well the treatment goes, because it can always come back—as it did for Kaye.

There’s nothing about any of this that is good. All of it is heartbreaking to God.

Behind our sorrow lies the fact of a world in disorder. The grief we feel indicates to us that creation has been deeply disordered. Cancer is disorder. Illness, decay, the shattering of what was once whole—these are not what God intended when He called His creation “good.” There is nothing natural about any of this. It’s because of this disorder that we have lost something and someone good. And that is what it means for Christians to “mourn.” We mourn—we grieve—because something terrible has come between us and someone good.

Kaye knew this intimately. She knew it in her vocation as a nurse: caring for the vulnerable, advocating for the overlooked, offering dignity where the world had stripped it away. She walked into other people’s suffering with gentleness and with a humor only Kaye Miers could pull off, and she bore witness to God’s care in rooms where fear was thick in the air. She knew what it meant for people to lose something good––and she ministered to them.

After all, Kaye knew it in her own life, from childhood through adulthood, not least of which includes the death of her beloved Shep, whose shocking and unexpected death was the antithesis to Kaye’s. Shep was just who Kaye needed, and Kaye was the same for Shep––and those who knew them could tell. They had each other to love and to cherish until parted by death––and so it was. Kaye knew what it meant to mourn the loss of something good.

And like Kaye, we know it too. We know that the disorder of the creation separates us from those whom we love. We know it because of all of the grief we carry around with us––because, of course, we never really get over grief, but we just learn how to carry it around with us. And we especially know it today because we mourn the death of our sister, Kaye.

I need not remind you all that we lost someone good in Kaye. She held court with the best of them, even into her final days. She was a story-teller par excellence, and she had a wicked sense of humor. She and Shep were consummate hosts. They made good on that prayer we say over newly married couples in the Episcopal Church: “Give them such fulfillment of their mutual affection that they may reach out in love and concern for others” [1]––that was Kaye and Shep! She was a fierce friend who didn’t mince words––the sign of a true friendship! She was adventurous, a virtue that she kept until the day she died. She cared deeply about her family: all of you who became family to her over the course of her life, and especially her daughter, Olivia. Olivia, if your mother has run her course and finished her race, you were, no doubt, running alongside her until the very end.  We lost someone good, indeed. And today, we mourn that loss.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” And why is that? “Because they will be comforted.” We are blessed not because of our tears, but because we stand under the promise of comfort. Our mourning is the light of God’s coming kingdom breaking into the darkness. Our mourning points us to the Advent of Christ. Our very grief is a sign that the broken world is not all there is—that God is already pulling creation back toward its intended ordering. We are blessed because God does not let this disorder have the final word.

Saint Paul puts it this way: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day…For we know that, if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 4:16, 5:1).

I’ve been reading a book by Kathryn Schulz called Lost and Found, a heartfelt memoir about the death of her father in which she wrestles with what it means to lose someone. It’s a great read. Here’s an excerpt:

“There is an old saying—of what origin I cannot say—about how to make a man happy. First you take away his donkey then you give it back. I don’t know anything about donkeys, beyond the fact that the comparison would make my father laugh.” I can imagine Kaye laughing, too. “But,” Schulz continues, “I can affirm that there is nothing in this world more wonderful than the feeling of being reunited with something precious that you thought was permanently lost.” [2]

Amen to that. If you want a good definition of what we Christians mean by Good News––“Gospel,” as we call it––that’s a good one: there is nothing more wonderful than being reunited with something precious––or someone precious––that we thought was permanently lost.

Better yet, how about we hear it in Kaye’s words?

I had a conversation with Kaye in the hospital just moments after she was told that she would have weeks, maybe months, to live. She told me, “I’d put the emphasis on ‘weeks’ rather than ‘months,’” and she was right. Kaye told me that day that she didn’t know how she felt about the actual “dying” part—“it sounds unnatural,” she told me, and I told her, “you’re right about that”—but she also told me that she has no concern about the “life after death” part. “That part is going to be good, I just know it,” she said. “I just hope Shep has built us a big beautiful bed by now. I’m exhausted, and he’s had plenty of time.”

And I told her, “Kaye, that’s exactly it.” All of this will be restored, in a way that’s familiar—but in a way that’s so much more, too. And it will be good. God is safeguarding for us what we have lost. God will make whole what has been broken. And God will do for Kaye what God has promised to do for all of us: in the words of Saint Paul, that which is “mortal is swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:4).

So today we mourn, but we mourn as people who trust that grace is running to meet us. We grieve, but we grieve as people who believe that redemption is on the way––and for Kaye, redemption is now seen face to face. “Jesus said, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted’” (Matthew 5:4). Amen.

[1] Book of Common Prayer, 429.

[2] Kathryn Schulz, Lost and Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness (New York: Random House, 2022), 36.