Homily for Jack Theige Burial Office,
“No fear”
St. John Parish Church, Tulare, CA
Saturday, September 17, 2011
The Rev Robert G Eaton
lessons and psalm taken from the Burial Office, Rite Two, 1979 BCP (with rubrical adjustments to Romans)
Lamentations 3:22-26;31-33
Romans 8:14-25, 37-39
John 14:1-6
I’m giving a Jack Theige sermon today, 2 hours long with 17 separate points. (Pause for anticipated nervous laughter – people knew Jack had the ability to talk for long periods!) Not really. But now that you’ve experienced a bit of fear, I can continue.
As we all know, fear is a common enemy when we are faced suddenly or even gradually with our own mortality, when we are faced with death. That fear can take many forms, and it runs the gamut of our emotions, of our behaviors, and our personalities, good or bad; that is, fear pushes our buttons, to use an old phrase; a more clinical phrase would be “acting out.” You are blessed if you have an honest, truthful, and hopefully, compassionate friend who will tell you when you are acting out, and can point you back to the besetting issue. Which in this case, I have raised as the Fear of Death. Otherwise without such a friend, we are left to the sincere but eventually unhelpful sayings of others who are observing, but don’t know what else to say or what to do — God bless them — such as, “Well, we all deal with it in different ways.” They may be, and they may not be, actually “dealing” with it. The phrase is ultimately not helpful.
I’m sure you’ve seen it happen in others. Acting out. I’m not sure you’ve seen it happen in yourself — so make sure you have some good friends.
What about those people, though, who seem to be able to face death head on, to take it in stride, or at the least, to come to grips with their fears and then face them? How do they do that?
If they are not acting out in some way, aren’t they just being in denial?
If they say they are not afraid, are they just protecting themselves emotionally by lying to those who are asking, or just to themselves?
For instance. How do you explain the actions of the Marine sergeant who took an armored Humvee not once but – what – 5 times into sure and certain death in order to attempt to save his comrades, both American and Afghani? His old school teachers seem to suggest the possibility of bullheadedness. Don’t worry, I’m not going to make any allusions in that category to our beloved Jack. (Ed: smile. During the actual giving of the homily, it was apparent at this point that very few – 125 in attendance – still were ready for any kind of humor from the pulpit. So after an appropriate pause for timing, I said, “That was a joke.” And then people laughed.)
Did Dakota Meyer have some special knowledge that he would not be killed, and so the fear of death did not slow him down? Not by his own admission. He was quoted as saying, “I didn’t think I was going to die. I knew I was.” He figured he was a goner, but he’d try to get as many of his fellow soldiers out as possible before that happened, especially those of his own unit. The courage to overcome the fear of death, as Sgt Meyer described it, had to do with a connection, a human connection, “Those were my brothers”, he said, “And that’s what you do for your brothers.” Wow, what a sense of bonding. And, of course, the whole Marine Corps in proud response is saying, “That’s how we roll.”
Where does that courage come from? The military training, some innate energy, a wisdom of understanding the benefits of death? Yes, the benefits of looming death. Is that possible?
In our scripture for today, we are reminded, if not already informed, of how Christians are supposed to face their death.
There are assurances, there are promises, yes, there are even benefits. So, we too, must rely on training to become mature Christians. That’s why we listen to the scriptures during a burial service. To be informed, and thus to have informed responses, when it comes to us.
We begin with Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8, where he too, makes the point of a connection, both an human connection and a divine connection, which can give us and should give us courage. In fact, Paul is quite adamant that our human fears of our own demise are quite out of place with our faith. Paul goes so far as to say that any innate ability to be courageous in the face of the fear of death is actually brought through the work of God in us; that is, when we believed in Jesus, and the Spirit of God brought us into relationship with God, as was said by St Peter, as well, and by Jesus to Nicodemus, when you are “born again.” Courage in this case is spiritual DNA. Why?
Paul wrote,
14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
This does not mean we cannot be sad (for God himself created us with the capability to cry), or have our regrets (God created us with the ability to remember) . But as a Christian there is a new priority for our hopes, and there is a new understanding of how we perceive death. It is not necessarily an intellectual assent, although for some it could be, and that might explain some of Jack’s later years. It is not necessarily an emotional bravado, nor a disregard of the physical. The answer, of course is in resurrection. And the answer is in our Faith in Jesus Christ, and in a God we can trust. And HIS… BONDING…. with… US!
Paul is clear:
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And that means death itself cannot tear apart our bond with God through Jesus.
That, you see, is a new paradigm, and a new priority for our observations of the world around us. In everything that we do.
Jesus taught that there is something to look forward to on the other side of not life, but other side of death.
A place with him forever. And in that eternity, a new body. depending on the condition of yours right now, Thank God for that new body when you get it! (Smile)
So now that we have seen where our new found courage comes from in order to overcome the fear of death, we can now settle into a healthy growth as mature disciples of Jesus Christ. What once was not seemingly logical, now becomes a possibility. And in that maturity, we can accept that every situation in our lives as those situations come to us, are moments for reflection and growth. And that includes facing our death. And so we can see some benefits made available to us as our own death, or perhaps the death of someone so very close to us, comes into focus.
What ARE the benefits of looming death?
Well, I think we can see some of these in Jack Theige himself over the last few years of his life.
As he faced death, or the possibility of death much earlier than he and Wanda had hoped for,
(1) The validity of his own Faith in the risen Lord Jesus came into focus and into review.
That, my friends, is one benefit of facing death. What is my Faith in Christ? Where am I going? What promises do I actually hold? Where is Jesus in my life, and where am I in His life?
And Jack answered those satisfactorily.
And once that becomes more clear, and perhaps even brought to a moment of repentance, and confession of the lack of our faith, and now a pastoral moment of renewal and absolution, as it did for Jack, a new benefit arises, which is,
(2) I want to do while I still have breath what I can to help build up the Body of Christ, and the Kingdom of God. And Jack found the reading of Scripture in Church on Sundays as his answer. You can ask the family how high a priority those moments became for him. And as you see, as this was what he knew he could do, he received the further personal benefit of being immersed in the Word of God.
(3) a third benefit of the awareness of death in us, may take just a couple more moments of reflection:
In Lamentations we heard,
22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Every day, goes the saying, is a gift from God. Use it wisely. That is to say, that this death which is awaiting us — and we can count on it — has not already consumed us before this time, this day! We are all here, in the flesh today, so that we might have and take the opportunity to say, as does the author of Lamentations:
24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
Shall I say it again? Here’s the benefit: The fact that you are facing death at all means that you are Not Dead Yet..….. you are still alive!
Make room, then, for the Lord, which of course leads us back to the first benefit of looming death, the risen Lord Jesus coming into view,crystal clear. The promise is true to all, whether found in the Old Testament, or the New Testament, thus affirming the consistent Nature of our God, that, as again we heard in lamentations,
25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
26 it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
My friends, should it be a surprise for you all to know that death is on its way to you? What then shall you do?
Well, you can follow the holy example of Jack Theige, as imperfect as he was:
1) Seek the Lord; renew now your faith in Jesus Christ, if only for the sake of your own resurrection
2) consider the work before you die for the Risen Christ in accomplishing his goals and objectives,
3) realize that you are still alive, and this is a gift from God.
The Lord be merciful to us all, and grant us preparation of our souls.
