Rick
Holbrook
(Aug. 9, 1940-Jan. 7, 2015)
Jan. 16, 2015
+ I
am going to brutally honest with you this morning. I don’t want to be here. None
of us want to be here. I hate the fact that I have to be here this morning,
saying goodbye to Rick Holbrook. And I
can say, in all honesty, I’m angry.
I am
angry at an illness like ALS. I am angry and frustrated over the fact that
there is an illness like this. And I am very angry that ALS is what took Rick. I
can be angry. I can say I don’t want to be here. I know many of you are angry. And I know Rick
was angry about this disease.
But,
as Rick showed in his life, and we should all learn from his lesson, we can’t
let our anger get the better of us. Anger did not get the better of Rick.
And
as frustrated as I am over his disease, as sad as I am this morning about the
fact that Rick is not here with us, I am able to take consolation, as we all
are. Our consolations might seem few and
far between in this moment. But they are
there. We find consolation in the fact
that Rick did not have to suffer more than he did. There were much harder days
ahead. Rick knew that. Sandy knew that. We all knew that. And Rick was spared
those harder days.
We
also find consolation today in our faith—a faith that Rick certainly held close
to him, even in these last months. For
Rick, his faith was strong. He was
committed. His faith, in many ways, was like him. He didn’t make a big deal
about it. But quietly, strongly, firmly, it was there.
As
Sandy and I discussed this service, we went through our scripture options which
the Book of Common prayer suggests to us. And none of them seemed right, as least our
Gospel readings didn’t seem right for this particular occasion.
Finally,
after all of our discussion of Rick’s deep passion or birding, I thought of the
Gospel we actually heard this morning from Deacon Charlotte. It’s a great Gospel reading. It is Jesus the
Poet as his poetic best (he sounds almost like Walt Whitman):
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat
or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not
life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of
the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly
Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
Rick definitely understood this scripture. He saw it lived out in his own life. He saw
those birds, who were fed, who were provided by their loving God. And, ultimately, we can say, that
Rick was provided for. He was taken care of. And
all of us here, this morning, know that his value to all of us was truly great.
Rick
was a strong, independent person, to say the least. We saw it in his life. And
he was saw it in his death. We can be
angry about his death today. We can say, it was unfair. Because it was.
But
what we can’t say this morning is that the ALS was somehow victorious in all of
this. Because it wasn’t. It didn’t win out. The fact that Rick is beyond all of
that—beyond the disease, beyond the suffering, beyond the steady, consistent
loss of that disease—that is the true sign of victory. ALS was not victorious.
Who
is victorious? Christ was and is victorious. And Rick, in Christ, bolstered by
his faith in Christ, is victorious as well. In this moment, and Rick has no losses. But
only gain. Glorious, wonderful gain.
See,
that Gospel reading is right on. Do not worry about this life, and all that
this life can throw at you. Even if it is illness, and loss, and death. Don’t
worry. Because we are provided for. We are cared for. We are loved—and loved deeply.
Because, to our God, we are valuable.
That
is the lesson we take away from today. That is the lesson Rick is teaching us ,
even now, in this sad moment.
One
of the thing I loved about being an Episcopalian, is our great liturgy. The
words of our worship services really do a great job of getting right to heart
of the matter. And this funeral service
is no exception to that rule.
At the
end of this service, we will hear those wonderful words of defiance in the face
of death.
All of us go down
to the dust; yet even at the
grave we make our song: Alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia.
Now those words might seem
archaic to some people. We’ve heard those words so many times probably that
they don’t mean anything anymore. But,
if you listen closely, they are words of defiance. They are words of victory. They are words that say, for us, we are cared
for, and provided for and loved, just as Rick was. Those words speak to us and tell us that, even
in the face of all this, we can, like Rick, carry ourselves with integrity, bolstered
by our faith.
Even in the face of whatever life
may throw at me, we can almost hear Rick say, I will not let those things win. I will not let ALS
win. I will not let even death win.
“…yet even at the grave we make
our song: Alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia.”
Even you, death, will not win out
over me. Even in the face of these awful
things, I will face you with strength and a sense of victory. And, because I have faith, because I am loved
and I have loved, you will not defeat me.
Today, all that Rick Holbrook was
to us—that man of quiet strength and integrity—all of that is not lost. It is not gone. Death has not swallowed that up. Rather all of that is alive and dwells with us
who will miss him. And it dwells in Light inaccessible. Rick dwells in a place
of peace and joy, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life
everlasting. And for us who are left, we know that it awaits us as well.
See, Rick is still showing us the
way forward. He is showing us by his
very life and faith, and even his death, how to face these hardships life
throws at us. He is even showing us how
to meet these days ahead—these days in which we now must struggle with a life
in which Rick is not here with us physically any more. He is showing us to face it all with our heads held high,
bolstered by our faith and our integrity. He is showing us that, in the midst of all of
these hardships, we must do so with class and dignity and strength.
So, today, yes we are sad. Yes,
we are in pain over this loss. Yes, we ache deeply in our hearts and in our
souls. But we are also thankful today. We
are thankful for this man whom God has been gracious to let us know. We are grateful for all he has given us in our
own lives.
See, even we too, today, are
defiant. We too are loved, and taken care of. We too know that we are of great
value and, like the birds of the air, we will be cared for. There is no need to worry. Nothing this life
throws at us will defeat us.
But rather, with all this
sadness, with all this pain, we can still, like Rick, hold ourselves in
strength, Yes, even now, even here at
that grave, here in the face of sadness and loss, we sing victoriously:
Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
No comments:
Post a Comment