Those of you gathered here this afternoon
may be a bit shocked that an Episcopal priest is here officiating at Clarence’s
funeral. I’m not sure who is likely to
be more shocked: you all; me, because I am doing a funeral service without a Resurrection
Eucharist; or Clarence. You all laugh,
but I know Clarence well enough to know that he was shocked by turn of events
late in his life that led to an Episcopal priest strolling into his room in the
hospital and visiting him in hospice care.
I
only knew Clarence for the last couple weeks of his life here on earth. Our connection was one of those tenuous
threads that sort of make you sit back and wonder at the way God sometimes
works. His granddaughter has attended my
church, and one of his daughter’s best friends attends my church. In full disclosure, I had talked to Denise
over the phone sometime around the ice storms this winter. That was the source of our introduction. In any event, I got a call a couple weeks ago
asking if I would mind visiting him at home.
He was going to have some stents placed in his kidneys the next week,
and his loved ones felt he needed to speak with a pastor.
I learned from Clarence that he had been
raised Southern Baptist and spent some time in or around Jehovah Witnesses. During one of our early conversations I
shared that some of my colleagues in my last diocese referred to me as the
“Episco-Baptist.” That got a chuckle out
of him and a “I guess you’ll do.” I may
have only spent a few hours with Clarence in this life, but I realized pretty
quickly that was not effusive in his enthusiasm or his praise.
For the most part, Clarence and I spent
time getting to know one another. Mostly
there were other people in the room, and Clarence struck me as the kind of guy
who was slow to open up, but a real friend to those whom he chose. Certainly, those of you in his family have
born that observation or intuition out.
I have received a couple notes reminding me what you each lost in
Clarence. For some, he was a brother and
all that being a brother entails, good times and not so good times of getting
on nerves. For some of you, he was a
wonderful friend, the kind of guy who seldom let you down and never let you
down on the “big stuff” of life. For
Ruby, of course, he was far more than a husband, and that is why her grief will
be so deep in the coming weeks and months.
He was her best friend; he swept her off her feet on the dance floor;
and she treasured her time with him.
I do wish Clarence and I had had more
time, or I suppose I wish I had known he had so little. One of his deeply held fears was that some of
you were disappointed in him for a variety of reasons. I think another characteristic of Clarence
was the fact that he was his harshest critic.
Where some of you were glad he was there to help you in your struggles,
Clarence had a nagging urge that made him wish “he’d done more.” Where you all were thankful for silence; he
had that “I wish I’d known what to say” about him. I see the nods.
Clarence also had one major “I wish” that
causes me to wish I could have spent a bit more time with him. He may not have known me long, but we spoke
the same language. I understand
Clarence’s fear that he had disappointed God and, by reason of that fear, was
convinced that he had earned a place outside God’s heavenly embrace with all
the saints. I wish you all could have
seen his face when I reminded him that he had failed God, as had we all, and
that was why Christ had suffered the beatings, the mocking, the betrayal of
friends, the flogging, the Crucifixion, and death. We all, myself included, I told him, have
done horrible things in our lives. We
all, myself included, I reminded him, had disappointed God. But such was His love for us that He bore the
punishment for all our failures, for all our sins. His death was so horrible precisely because
of us, individually and collective. Now,
it was our job to repent and ask God for the grace to try again.
Typical of an engineer who put roads
together and was always concerned how joints fit just so, Clarence was loathe
to accept that it (salvation) was that easy.
It had to be harder because our failures were so bad. I told him, expecting that day to be so
somewhat off into the future, to ask His Lord when he saw Him if He thought it
was easy. Clarence, true to form,
chuckled a bit and laughed that I don’t pull many punches. I apologized for the bluntness, but I knew he
needed to hear, absolutely needed to hear, that his sins had been paid for by
our Lord and that he was by no means excluded from His covenant. It gave him things to think about. I told him I would leave and let him get some
rest and be back the next day. He
promised to think on what I had said and would likely have a few points to
argue. He died that night.
I share that part of the story because I
learned from Clarence and from other members of the family and circle of
friends that you all have dealt a lot with death these past couple months. One death is too many, but three is beyond painful. Most experts tell us that it takes a year or
so to deal with the grieving process properly.
All of you gathered here find yourself still trying to be good friends,
good family, and yet still in mourning over the death of a loved one. The strain on such a family can be massive. And no matter how many times we like to
pretend we have power to do anything about it, all our forbidding of death
accomplishes exactly nothing. We can bid
death to stay away, but death is less likely to listen to us than a cat or a
rock. Death is immune to our desires;
death is implacable.
Thankfully, in some measure, Clarence
served a God who is not implacable, who is not unmoved. Though we, like Clarence, have done
incredibly bad things to warrant our exclusion from His kingdom, our Lord made
it possible for all of us to share in that kingdom for eternity. During our big discussion, Clarence asked
repeatedly about the what if’s. What if
I did not go to church enough? What if I
did this sin? What if I did not speak
out about this? What if I knew my
workers did this? All those what if’s
were covered by the flesh and blood of Jesus on the Cross. There is no what if beyond Him! There is no failure that He cannot
redeem! There is nothing, not even
death, that He cannot use for His redemptive purposes!
God is not a God who needed your loved one
as one more angel. God is not a God who
is indifferent to your suffering. Our
Lord God is a God who weeps with you, who shares your sadness. But our God is also a God who offers us a way
to ensure that this, this bitter feeling of loss is not the last word, that
there is truly hope in the face of ultimate sadness, and life, real life and
not a figment of one’s imagination, in the face of death.
The reading for today came out of
Clarence’s own words. As we argued a bit
about the what if’s of his life, I reminded Him of all that was required. No matter Clarence’s objection, I had the
perfect answer. After a bit, Clarence
laughed at me, “No matter what I say, no matter what I have done, you seem to
think I get a clean slate every time I ask Jesus to forgive me.” When I agreed enthusiastically, Clarence had
one more. “You pastors today ignore the
Old Testament. I grew up on the Old
Testament.” I asked him what the
difference was with what I had told him and what the difference was with what
Joshua had told the people. It is the
same story! We just know the end now! Each day when we rise, each moment we are awake, you and I are afforded a choice. Whom will we serve?
Brothers and sisters, I am usually loathe
to play the evangelist in front of those suffering. There are individual discussions that need to
be had, particularly for those who have wondered away from the sheepfold. But brothers and sisters, Clarence’s life and
death reminds me that we sometimes do not have the time we think we do. Contrary to how it may sound in your ears
this afternoon, I was more slow and more gentle than I think I should have
been. That Clarence may have passed away
uncertain of his fate will nag at me for some time as a bit of a pastoral
failure on my part. I could have been
blunter. I could have been even more
forceful. But you all have been through
this now three times in two months.
Better than most families, you know the futility of trying to stave off
death. Better than many families, you
know the pain of those words left unsaid, those dances left undanced, those
hugs left ungiven, those words left unsaid. Brothers and sisters,
no matter the sadness or anger at you loss, our Lord still loves you. No matter how long you have stayed away or
never even bothered to come at all, while you have breath you still have
time. But why not get to know the One
who died for you even why you were still at enmity with Him, that you might
face the pressures of life and the fears of death with His grace in your life,
each and every day you draw that breath, a grace Clarence only dreamed could be
true, but would have loved to have shared with each and every one of those whom
he loved?
Peace,
Brian†
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