Friday, August 14, 2009

Funeral for Dolores Rath


Dolores Rath
(February 24, 1925-August 9, 2009)
August 14, 2009
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Fargo

Isaiah 25. 6-9; Revelation 7.9-17

Three years ago, in August 2006, I began a three-month stint as Sabbatical Pastor at St. Mark’s I looked forward to my time at St. Mark’s. My grandmother, my mother, my aunt, my uncle and many of my cousins were long-time members of St. Mark’s over the years. However, I wasn’t certain how I would be received here. After all, I’m an Episcopal priest, not a Lutheran pastor. But, everyone at St. Mark’s welcomed me and made me feel like one of the family here. Dolores was one of those people who made me feel very welcome, even despite the fact that I was that very strange creature—an Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian. Despite my strange prostrations during Eucharist and my black clerical outfit and strange dog collar, she welcomed me without any qualms.

Every time I saw Dolores, whether it was stopping in to see the quilters or stopping by at coffee before Sunday Eucharist, or whenever, she always had a smile on her face and always seemed genuinely happy to see me. I think she was like that with almost everyone.

When we talk about good people, Dolores definitely seemed to be one of them. She was one of those genuinely good people. And for me, in many ways, Dolores was the face of St. Mark’s. At times, and I’m sure she probably felt the same way, it seemed as though Dolores and St. Mark’s were entwined.

Beneath that smiling face and that welcoming exterior, as I’ve learned in these last few days, I discovered that still waters definitely ran deep. Dolores was a woman of deep, if quiet, faith. What a lot of people didn’t know about her was that she kept a daily diary of all that she did. And she kept that diary right next to her Scriptures. Now there’s a message for us. Her daily diary was located next to her scriptures. This was a woman who by this very simple arrangement showed us how important her faith was. Her faith—her reading of scripture, her associating scripture with her daily life—was a wonderfully powerful, yet wonderfully quiet, statement of faith.

Sometimes we meet people who like to share their faith with us..shall we say…a bit too verbally. We all know them. They sometimes like to preach at us and wave their Bibles in our faces and tell us about how important it is to know Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior. Dolores was not one of those people. But obviously her faith in Christ was just as real and just as deep.

And that’s maybe the greatest lesson she has to teach us. Being a Christian does not mean always standing on the street corner, preaching to strangers. Sometimes we can be the best witness of our Christian faith simply in our living, in our day-to-day lives. That diary, next to those scriptures, seemed to attest to that fact. She quietly and diligently lived her life with dignity and purpose, centered squarely and fully in Christ. Sometimes we can simply tell others about Christ more by our actions than with our words. Dolores did that very well. She was the embodiment of a Christian person. That love of God, that joy in living, that glow of spiritual strength exuded from her. And when you were with you, you knew, even if you might not be to articulate it, that you were in the presence of someone special—someone good. You knew you were in the presence of someone through whom the light of Christ showed. And when I think of the cloud of witnesses we often hear about in scriptures—those people who are awaiting us beyond this life in the presence of God, I can very easily imagine that smiling, welcoming face of Dolores in that number.

For us Christians, these times of loss are painful, yes,--we feel pain at the temporary losses we experience at death. But this time of loss is not a time for despair. That is what being a Christ is all about for those of us who, like Dolores, clung to our faith in Christ, who clung quietly but confidently to that rock of Christ, who found inner strength to live in the midst of sorrow and pain. That’s what makes us Christians a little different than others. We are able to find strength and purpose and meaning even in the face of darkness and loss and pain. For us, as Christians, life is full of such paradoxes. There are times when, to everyone else, all seems lost. But for us, we can look at the losses of this world as gains. The cross is not only an instrument of torture and death to us. It is also the gateway to eternal life.

Dolores knew this and clung to this in her life. And we know it too and we can also cling to this faith. We know that this faith can sustain us and keep us going until we finally arrive at that place to which we are all headed.

In our reading from Revelation this morning, we get a glimpse of that place. We get to see, in beautifully poetic language and images, that place in which Dolores now lives and to which we too are headed. There, before the throne of God, we find the souls of the righteous worshipping God day and night. But even more than that we find that the one sitting on that throne—Christ—shelters them and in that sheltering presence, in that place of protection and comfort, we find all those things of this life that we found so difficult simply eliminated. There, hunger and thirst will be vanquished. The sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat—comforting words on a hot day like today. For at the center of their lives will be the Lamb who will shepherd them and guide them to the waters of life where all our unresolved desires and hopes and dreams and longings will be quenched. And then we hear that wonderful line:

“…and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
It is an echo of what we heard just a bit earlier in our reading from Isaiah. In our reading from the Prophet Isaiah, we get another glimpse of that place in which God dwells. In that place, we find God doing wonderful things for those who hope in God. It is in that place Dolores now dwells and it is that place to which we are all headed. It is in that place, we find that God has “swallow up death for ever.” And with death swallowed—with death vanquished, with death finally defeated,

“…the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces…”
Every sadness, every loss, every pain will be done away with. God will take them from us and we will arise into our lives, as Dolores as done, exuberant. We will rise into our new lives with joy.

As terrible as it is to cry, do you ever notice that when you do, as soon as you’re done crying and you’ve gone in and washed your face you feel strangely better. You feel almost purified and cleansed. That line, “..and God will wipe away every tear…” is what I think that line of thought is getting at. In that place toward which we are headed, in that place in which Dolores now dwells, we will emerge into it purified and cleansed. We will feel, on a much grander scale, very much as we do after a long, hard cry. And we will emerge into that place in which there are no more tears. And we will know that there will never be a reason to cry again.

Dolores is in that place. Her tears have been wiped away by the God she hoped and believed in, by the God who held her up and helped her along her journey. She is in that place in which she will never shed another tear, except maybe—just maybe—tears of joy and gladness. Just as in her life, she led the way in strength and quietness and determination, so in death she leads the way for us as well. She helps us, even now, in this moment, to see ahead, to look forward to that place of refreshment and life unending.

So, yes, today, we are sad because we are living in the midst of this temporary separation from Dolores. But even in the midst of this sadness, we can rejoice. We can rejoice in the knowledge that Dolores is in that place in which she is happy and peaceful and full of joy. She is in that place with Christ the Lamb, who has shepherded her to waters of refreshment. And we can rejoice in the fact that we too shall one day be there with her.

I, for one, look forward to that day when I will look upon her smiling face once again. I’m sure all of who knew her and loved her look forward to that day as well. Just imagine how wonderful that day will be.

Amen.

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