Delivered at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, Stevens Point, Wisconsin
August 13th, 2018
But we would not have you ignorant,
brethren, concerning them that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, even
as the rest, who have no hope.
We must read what St. Paul wrote to the
Thessalonians very carefully. Is St. Paul saying that Christians
should not be sad at the death of another Christian? Is he saying
that our supernatural hope that those who have fallen asleep in
Christ will rise like Him, should cancel out our natural tears?
I think that St. Paul understood human
nature better than that; if we read more closely we see that we
ought not to sorrow in the manner of those who have no
hope. So even if we're confident
of a life after death, even if we're sure of the joys of heaven, we
sorrow nevertheless, and rightly, because we're human, and because
our beloved who have been taken from us, however temporarily, are
precisely that, beloved to us.
But
the question then remains: how does our sorrow differ, as Christians
who have hope, at the
death of our grandfather, our father, our brother, our
brother-in-law, our friend and fellow faithful church-goer, our
husband? I
think that Grandpa Crawford—that's who he was to me, and so that's
how I'll refer to him—had a notion.
When he came home from the
hospital the Sunday before last, I was blessed to visit together with
my wife Rosemary and our five young boys. Grandpa's bed was set up in
the living room where his recliner ordinarily would be. He was lucid
and at peace, finishing up a visit with my brother Jamie and his wife
Nikki. Of all things, he was overjoyed to be eating a Jimmy John's
sub after the liquid diet restrictions of his last hospital stay.
After I spent some time talking with Grandpa, I finally brought in my
family. All the boys ranged round Great-Grandpa Crawford's bedside,
their faces somber, their gazes downturned.
Propped
up in the bed, Grandpa looked at them hesitantly and then said
hoarsely, “Smile, smile!” Ever the skeptics, the boys weren't
convinced. We had told them that their Great-Grandpa was dying, and
kids naturally know that death pierces the mysterious veil between
the here and the hereafter and is therefore a solemn thing. But
Grandpa wanted it, and so I tickled the baby and got him to laugh,
and suddenly there were sheepish smiles all around, the widest,
perhaps, being on Grandpa's own tired face. Then boys began to be
boys and to push and shove a little, just as it is reported that we
Klein boys did once upon a time in that very living room. I remember
being counseled more than once not to knock down Grandma and
Grandpa's immaculately decorated Christmas tree, nor to disturb the
countless bunnies and other more fragile, carefully placed
knick-knacks.
We
Klein grandchildren never fight anymore, of course. In
adulthood, we've all turned out to be perfect angels. Smile, smile.
Even in the midst of your tears, you can smile.
But
then there are the words of the Preacher, son of David,
king in Jerusalem, which Grandpa
himself chose for this funeral, and which must therefore be touched
upon. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of
vanities, all is vanity. Like
with St. Paul, the well known opening phrase from the Book of
Ecclesiastes needs to be read very carefully. Is Qoheleth, the
Preacher, saying that all the memories that my siblings and I have of
our grandfather, all the things that we did with him, all the things
we made with him and treasure and hold dear, the things that cause us
to smile even in the midst of our tears— are all these things vain,
and empty? Well, no; of course they're not. But then how are we to
understand Qoheleth and his vanity of vanities?
I hope
that I'm not stealing my brother Jamie's fire if he decides to speak,
but a few days ago he told me that the olfactory sense—that is, our
sense of smell—is more closely linked to memory than the other
senses, and that his strongest memory of Grandpa Crawford is the
smell of fresh-cut wood.
That
came as no surprise to me. I don't know how many hours my younger
siblings and I spent down in Grandpa's basement workshop turning his
scrapwood into swords and guns and other weapons. That's what boys
make, but I think I remember Johanna and Gabrielle joining Stephen,
Jamie, Oliver and me down there before I aged out of those
activities. It may have been years ago, but I can still smell the
sweet sawdust from working with the bandsaw under Grandpa's careful
eye. Equally, I can smell the smokey-sweet scent of burning firewood
from our many camping trips—Copper Falls, Rock Island at the very
tip of Door County's peninsula, the Badlands of South Dakota and
Yellowstone National Park together with Oliver before my senior year
of high school. Others of my siblings ventured to the Grand Canyon or
rafting on the Colorado River.
These
memories were not, are not, and never will be, in vain, whether
they're based on the olfactory sense alone or all five senses working
in concert. That word vanity,
or vain, at its root
means empty. The point
is, the memories would indeed be vain if all they were were
experiences for the sake of experience that would pass away with the
one who experienced them. But these are memories because they're
filled full to the brim with our Grandfather, who, with Grandma,
helped to make our childhood the adventure that it was.
The
vanities of this world—the wooden swords and other toys created in
Grandpa's workshop under his watchful eye, even the many paintings
and sculptures which he so laboriously and carefully created and the
countless photographs he took and meticulously catalogued, even the
wonders of God's own creation like the geysers of Yellowstone and the
Grand Canyon in all its majesty which we gazed upon for the first
time in his company—are vanities because they will all pass away,
rot, decay, crumble into dust. With Grandpa's death there will be no
more grilled cheese sandwiches, no more bisquik pancakes on the
griddle, no more camping trips. These things have passed away. Even
Desmet's townhall, which looked so solid and permanent when Grandpa
built it for us twenty years ago, is now showing its age.
But
the memories Grandpa made with us in these places and doing these
things are not empty because they are filled with Grandpa. They are not the principalities or
creatures—creatures being an old fashioned way of saying created
things—that St. Paul writes about in his Letter to the Romans:
impermanent created things that have the potential to distract us from
thinking about ultimate things, particularly the hereafter. These
memories are instead firm links in a chain that binds to Grandpa, who
has pierced the veil into the hereafter. They have the potential to
inspire us with the hope that St. Paul writes about to the
Thessalonians: that someday we will grab hold of that chain and,
using St. Paul's language, be caught together with him into the
clouds to meet the Lord in the air, to be ever with the Lord, and
with all those whom we loved during our short earthly time with them.
Although
I, for one, have learned from Grandpa about what it means to be a
father and a husband, maybe even someday a grandfather, I'm not here
to canonize him. But Grandpa was
the Lord's faithful servant. In my last conversation with him on
Sunday, he said that his biggest hope for the funeral was that the
entire family would be gathered in church to pray together. And
here we are: Methodists,
Presbyterians, Catholics, all of us seekers, all of us praying
together because Grandpa Crawford wanted it.
My
favorite image of God comes from the poet Francis Thompson, for years
an opium addict very far from being a perfect servant of the Lord. In
one poem Thompson describes how he fled Lord, whom he calls the
“Hound of Heaven,”
“down the nights and down the days;
...down the arches of the years;
...down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears.”
Throughout
the poem, the Lord gradually takes vain, earthly things way from
Thompson because
And at
the end of Thompson's poem, the Lord had taken from him all earthly
things. But when all was seemingly lost for ever, all his abilities,
all the things and the people he had loved in life, the Lord turned
to him with these words:
“All which thy child's mistake Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: Rise, clasp My hand, and come!”
For
his part, Grandpa Crawford has risen and clasped the Lord's hand and
gone home with Him. Pray God that each of us, linked by that sturdy
chain of our memories of him and of everybody whom we love who has
gone before us, may someday also be caught up into the clouds. Until
then, smile. Even in the midst of your tears, smile.
