The Memorial Service for Holly Holden-Eklund

 October 31, 2022

St. Stephen’s, Episcopal Church

Fargo, ND

 

+ I have to say: I feel strange today.

It feels strange to gather here today on this beautiful Halloween afternoon to say goodbye to Holly.

Although she’s been gone for almost 2 months, there are moments when I think maybe she’s not gone.

I still expect to see her post something on Facebook, or like a post or to comment on something I post.

The world without Holly is a strange world.

It seems just a bit more…empty.

It seems a bit less wonderful.

But as strange as it to be saying goodbye to Holly, I am grateful today.

I am grateful for Holly and for her presence in my life.

And let me tell you: it was a presence.

And I think most of who knew her and loved her feel the same today.

Her presence in our lives was a big thing.

She was a true presence.

A strong presence.

And I am grateful for that presence n my life.

I am also grateful that I was able to be her priest.

And her friend.

It doesn’t seem all that long ago when Michael first started attending our Wednesday night Mass here at St., Stephen’s.

He attended several times before Holly attended.

When she came here for the first time, she was cautious to say the least.

This Irish woman from Worchester, Massachusetts who was raised Roman Catholic, but who put that behind her many years before, came here a bit wary about this unique little church with its well, unique priest.

I remember the first time she attended was around the feast of the Purification in early February because I remember she brought candles to get blessed.

She then began attending almost every Wednesday with Michael.

However, she wasn’t quite able to bring herself to come forward for Holy Communion.

Despite our regular invitation that all people here are welcome to receive Communion, she just couldn’t do it.

All that residual Catholic baggage just prevented her from coming forward.

But I remember so well that Wednesday night when finally she came up, knelt here at this altar rail.

She beamed up at me as I gave her Communion.

It was a special moment.

It was a holy moment.

And it is one I find myself cherishing to this day.

Over the years, St. Stephen’s became an important place for Holly.

It became her spiritual home.

And she was loved deeply here.

Our Wednesday nights usually consisted of 6:00 Mass followed by supper at a local restaurant.

I think over the years, we ate at every restaurant in Fargo and Moorhead, some good, and some…well…not so good.

And I think we experienced every kind of server one could ever experience.

God help the poor unfortunate server who just happened to call Holly “Ma'am.”

 But over those Masses and over those meals, we all bonded with each other.

And Holly and Michael became important and vital members of our parish.

I know these last years were hard on her.

As her health failed, as the pandemic hit, as she shuffled from hospitals to nursing facilities, she really struggled at times.

Of course, Michael was there to help her along the way.

But through it all, she remained fiercely strong and fiercely defiant.

Even over the last few days before she finally left, I was amazed at her strength.

And when she was gone, all of us who knew her felt it deeply.

I think it’s very appropriate that we are gathered here today, on Halloween.

Michael chose this day deliberately.

This evening of course is the Eve of the Feast of All Saints—a very important feast day for the Church.

But it is also a very important pagan holiday.

And for all of us it is a time in which the veil between this world and the next gets very thin.

It is a time in which we realize that right there, just on the other side of that thing veil, they are all there—all those who have gone on.

And at this time of the year, they draw close to us.

If we are spiritually aware, if we hone our spiritual senses enough, we can feel them, right here, with us.

Today we feel Holly right here with us.

And she is whole, and she is healthy, and she is beautiful and she is fully alive.

For Holly, her pains are behind her.

For Holly, she has finished with sad time.

She will never again shed another tear.

God has wiped away every tear from Holly’s eyes.

She will never cry another tear.

We…well, we are not so lucky.

At least right now.

We have not yet emerged from our great ordeal.

We will shed many tears for Holly Holden-Eklund.

But we know that, one day, our tears will be wiped away for good.

These tears we cry today will be wiped away.

One day that veil will be lifted for us, and we will move over to that other side, and we will be greeted by Holly and all those who are there waiting for us.

And it will be a great day.

All this reminds us that our goodbye today is only a temporary goodbye.

All that we knew and loved about Holly is not gone.

It is not ashes.

It is not lost forever from us.

All we loved, all that was good and strong and defiant and rebellious and gracious and beautiful in Holly—all that was fierce and amazing in her—all of that dwells now in a place of light and beauty and life unending.

And we will see that smiling face again.

We will see her again.

And it will be beautiful.

For now however, we need to celebrate her.

We need to remember her.

We need to commemorate and give thanks for all that she was to us.

To the end, Holly proved to be strong and independent.

To the end, she remained a strong, Irish woman.

She showed us all true courage, true strength, true determination.

She showed us what real courage was.

And we should be grateful for that.

The fact is, we will all miss her.

But I can tell you we will not forget her.

Holly Holden-Eklund is not someone who will be easily forgotten.

She is not someone who passes quietly into the mists.

Her fierce determination lives on in us.

Her strength, her dignity lives with Michael, and with her grandsons, and with her many friends, and with her priest.

At the end of this service, we will all stand and I will lead us in something called the Commendation.

The commendation is an incredible piece of liturgy.

As a poet, Holly would agree that it’s an incredible piece of poetry.

But it’s more than poetry.

In those words, we will say, those very powerful words:

All of us go down
to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia.

That alleluia in the face of death is a defiant alleluia.

It is fist shaken not at God, but it is a fist shaken at death.

It is the fist Holly shook at death.

Not even you, death, not even you will defeat me, Holly seems to say.

I will not fear you.

And I will not let you win.

And, let me tell you, death has not defeated Holly Holden-Eklund.

Even at the grave, she makes her song—and we with her:

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

It is a defiant alleluia we make today with her.

So let us be defiant.

Let us shake our fists at death today.

Let us say our Alleluia today in the same way Holly would.

Let us face this day and the days to come with gratitude for this incredible person God let us know.

Let us be grateful.

Let us be sad, yes.

But let’s remind ourselves: death has not defeated her.

Or us.

Let us be defiant to death.

Let us sing loudly.

Let us live boldly.

Let us stand up defiantly.

That is what Holly would want us to do today, and in the future.

Into paradise may the angels lead you, Holly.

At your coming may the martyrs receive you.

And may they bring you with joy and gladness into the holy city Jerusalem.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21 Pentecost

 

October 30, 2022

 

Luke 19.1-10

 

+ When I was a little boy at the Lutheran Church at which I grew up, we used to sing a little song in Sunday School.

 

I haven’t heard since then.

 

I bet James knows the song.

 

But it went like this:

 

Zacchaeus was a wee little man,

A wee little man was he.

He climbed up in the sycamore tree,

The Savior for to see.

 

In fact, I even remember an illustration of Zacchaus for us little kids.

 

It showed this little man in a tree looking at Jesus.

 

It must’ve been the fact that he was “wee little man” that made him so appealing to kids.

 

At the time, I was certain that Zacchaeus was a munchkin of some sort.

 

But his wee stature makes our Gospel reading a seemingly pleasant story.

 

We’ve all heard this story of how Zacchaeus climbed the Sycamore tree to see Jesus.

 

And on the surface, it really is a pleasant story.

 

It seems to be a story of faith and persistence and how, with faith and persistence, Zacchaeus invited Jesus to his home, which Jesus did and ate with him.

 

A very nice story.

 

But…(there’s always a “but”)  to truly understand this story we have to, as we always should, put it within the proper context of its time and its culture.

 

When we do that, we find layers to this story that we might not have seen at first glance.

 

The first clue that something more is going on in this story is the fact that Zacchaeus is identified as a chief tax collector.

 

And that he is rich.

 

The fact that he is rich is actually a bit redundant.

 

The chief tax collector is, of course, going to be rich.

 

But it isn’t that he’s rich that we might find something deeper going on.

 

The really big deal to this story is that he is a tax collector.

 

That’s important.

 

The reason Jesus uses tax collectors in this way is important.

 

It’s important because a tax collector at that time, in that culture, was one of the worst people one could imagine, if you were a good Jew, that is.

 

On one hand, he was seen as a traitor.

 

He had sided with the occupying government—the Roman government—and collected taxes from his own people to pay the Roman government.

 

These tax collectors were also notorious for lining their own pockets.

 

And this might be why there is mention of the fact that he is rich.

 

He, no doubt, was rich because he stole money from the people.

 

It was easy for tax collectors to skim the coffers so they could keep what they wanted for themselves.

 

And even if they didn’t resort to such underhanded dealings, they were usually judged by the general population as doing so.

 

Certainly, no one trusted and certainly no one liked tax collectors.

 

But this wasn’t the end of Zacchaeus’ troubles.

 

Probably worst of all, Zacchaeus was seen as ritually unclean by his fellow Jews.

 

After all, he handled the money of the Romans, which had on it, an image of the Emperor.

 

Since the Emperor was viewed as divine, as a god, what Zacchaeus was handling then was essentially a pagan image and to handle it was to make one’s self unclean according to the Jewish Law.

 

So, Zacchaeus—poor Zacchaeus—was in a lose-lose situation.

 

He was despised as being both a traitor and as being religiously unclean.

 

And Jesus knew full well who Zacchaeus was and what he stood for in his world when he called up to Zacchaeus in that tree and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”

 

Jesus knew full well that Zacchaeus was unclean—nationally and religiously.

 

Zacchaeus was an outcast.

 

He was living on the fringes of his society.

 

He probably had few friends—and the few friends he had were no doubt friends with ulterior motives—friends who knew they could get something out of Zacchaeus.

 

When we re-examine our Gospel story again knowing what we know now, the story takes on a very different tone.

 

It becomes less of a sweet, Sunday School story about a short man and becomes quite a radical story.

 

It shows us that Jesus truly was able to step outside the boundaries of his day and reach out to those who truly needed him.

 

Now, for Zacchaeus, he does the right thing.

 

He says to Jesus that he will not only pay back half of his possessions, but he even offers to pay back four times the amount he stole.

 

This is really incredible because Jewish Law didn’t expect anything close to four times the amount being paid back.

 

In the 6th Chapter of Leviticus, whenever anyone commits a trespass against God by deceiving a neighbor in the matter of a deposit or pledge or by robbery or if one has defrauded a neighbor, the one who defrauded shall pay back the principal and add one-fifth to it. (Leviticus 6.1-7)

 

But we know why Zacchaeus makes the offer he does.

 

For those of us who are truly repentant, that’s what it feels like sometimes, doesn’t it?

 

I often hear from people about how sorry they are for this and for that.

 

But on those occasions, when I am truly sorry—truly repentant, truly striving to make right the wrongs I’ve done—I find myself wanting to go above and beyond the call of duty.

 

I want to make right the wrongs I’ve done and feel as though it is truly right again.

 

That is what Zacchaeus is truly saying to Jesus.

 

And that is what we should be truly saying to God as well when we turn away from the wrongs we’ve done and attempt to do right again.

 

The story of Zacchaeus shows us that sometimes Jesus must violate some social norms and even the popular interpretation of scripture.

 

Just by going to Zacchaeus’ home, Jesus has made several major faux pas.

 

He has talked with an unclean person.

 

He has gone with this unclean person to the house of the unclean person—a household which according to Jewish Law is unclean as well.

 

That means the building, the wife, the children, anyone who enters it, is unclean.

 

So Jesus enters the unclean dwelling of an unclean person.

 

And what does he do there?

 

He goes there and he probably eats there.

 

Again, yet another thing the Law was clear was wrong.

 

Eating food prepared and served by unclean people made one unclean as well.

 

And yet, as we know, Jesus was not made unclean by any of this.

 

What in fact happens?

 

Something amazing.

 

Jesus goes and shows them that this man is not unclean anymore because God has forgiven him.

 

Jesus goes and shows that this man, his family, his house, his food—his life is no longer unclean.

 

God has forgiven him.

 

Jesus’ actions speak louder than words here.

 

Jesus’ actions shows that God’s forgiveness was bigger than anything anyone at that time could possibly understand.

 

And even for us—now.

 

God’s forgiveness turns the uncleanliness of that place into a place of redemption and joy.

 

And that is how this story for today really ends.

 

It’s never mentioned outside of the fact that Zacchaeus is “happy to welcome” Jesus, but there seems to be an almost palpable joy present in this story.

 

The word Joy is never even used.

 

But we know—we feel—that as this story ends, there is a true and wonderful joy now living in that house of Zacchaeus because of he has been redeemed.  

 

The lost have been saved.

 

The unclean have been cleansed.

 

The wrongs have been righted.

 

God’s love has broken through.

 

See, this is what want for our story as well.

 

No matter what we’ve done, no matter how unclean we or the standards of our own day or society, the forgiveness and love of God in our lives redeems us.

 

With God’s love and forgiveness, we have been found.  

 

With God’s love and forgiveness, joy has replaced whatever dark emotions lived within us at one time.

 

Those of who have climbed the sycamore tree searching for something,  who have gone here and there searching for something among the crowds, have not found salvation in those places.

 

Where have we found this forgiveness of God? Right here. In our own homes—in our own place.

 

God’s forgiveness and love comes to us in a familiar place and we are better for it.

 

God’s love and forgiveness comes and fills our familiar places with joy.

 

Jesus is still saying to each of us today, “hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”

 

He says that because he knows that God has forgiven the sins of Zacchaeus and has freed him from his uncleanliness.

 

And Jesus knows this in our lives as well.

 

Our house is this life that we have.

 

It is this house God’s love enters and dwells within.

 

And by God’s love, by God’s forgiveness, we are purified.

 

And realizing that fills us with a truly palpable joy!

 

And when we leave here and go into the world, we do so knowing God has redeemed us and made us whole so that we can share that joy we feel with others.

 

And most importantly, as people cleansed, as people truly loved by a loving God, we no longer see the uncleanness of others.

 

We only see other people truly loved and truly forgiven by a loving God.

 

So, let us listen to Jesus’ words to us.

 

“Today salvation has come to this house.”

 

That salvation of God is with us.

 

Here.

 

Now.

 

Let us rejoice in that salvation.  

 

And let that implied joy we find in our Gospel story come bubbling up within us at this news so that we can go out and make the world a better place by our joy.

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy and loving God, fill us with the joy at knowing that your love and forgiveness has entered into our homes and that you dwell here with us. Let us live this holy joy in our lives so that we can share this joy with others. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

 

 

20 Pentecost

 

October 23, 2022

 

Luke 18.9-14

+ Since I’ve been your priest here at St., Stephen’s of quite some time now, you have gotten to known some of my pet peeves.

 

Let’s open it up.

 

What are some of my pet peeves?

 

Well, certainly only one of the big ones as a priest is none other than: triangulation.

 

If you want to set me off like a rocket, try to nudge me into that fun catch-22.

 

Here’s essentially what triangulation is:

 

Sometimes people come to me as a priest and, because they have some issue with another parishioner, they want me to go to that other person and deal with the situation this other person is having on their behalf.

 

The excuse here is that, since it is a church issue, the “church guy” should take care of this issue for them.

 

After all, I must be on their side of this issue, right?

 

Now, to be clear, THEY don’t want to confront the person.

 

But they seem to think it’s somehow the priest’s job to confront that person for them and for this particular issue that they themselves see as something that needs to be confronted.

 

Now, before we go on from here I just want to be clear:

 

It is NOT the priest’s job to do this.

 

Nowhere in my contract does it say I am to do this kind of a job.

 

What this triangulation does is it puts the priest not in their rightful position as priest, but only puts them in an awkward situation in which they can’t win.

 

Stuck right in the middle.

 

To be clear, it is not the priest’s job to be THAT PERSON.

 

Triangulation, as you can guess, is one of the quickest “clergy killers” out there.

 

You want your priest out, all of you have to do is try to draw them into an ugly triangle like this. 

 

Actually, I luckily, have not really had to deal with triangulation much here at St. Stephen’s very often.

 

And those times when it has come up, I have reacted pretty strongly against it.

 

One of the great aspects of St. Stephen’s has been the self-reliance of the parishioners.

 

But, in other congregations I’ve served, let me tell you, they do attempt to resort to triangulation quite often.

 

And…I hear many fellow clergy share stories in which they have found themselves trapped in the middle of those situations.

 

In the past, when I have found myself being nudged into such a situation, I finally have had to ask a question.

 

I, of course, tell the person: you need to talk to this person if you have an issue with them.

 

You’re talking to them will probably be much more successful than my talking to them on your behalf.

 

But, if that doesn’t work—and it usually doesn’t work—I ask those people: “have you tried praying for them?”

 

And I’m not saying, praying for them to change, for them to be more like what you expect them to be.

 

Have you just prayed for them, as they are?

 

Because when we do that, we find that maybe nothing in that other person changes—ultimately we can’t control how other people act or do things—but rather we are the ones who change.

 

We are the ones who find ourselves changing our attitude about that person, or seeing that person from another perspective.

 

However it works, prayer like this can be disconcerting and frightening.

 

Let me tell you.

 

I have done it.

 

I’ll be honest: I have had issues with people who do not meet my own personal expectations.

 

But I do find that as I pray for them, as I struggle before God about them, sometimes nothing in that other person changes.

 

(God also does not allow God’s self to be triangulated)

 

But I often find myself changing my attitude about them, even when I don’t want to.

 

Prayer, often, is the key.

 

But not controlling prayer.

 

Rather, prayer that allows us to surrender to God’s will.

 

That’s essentially what’s happening in today’s Gospel reading.

 

In our storyw e find the Pharisee.

 

A Pharisee was a very righteous person.

 

They belonged to an ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism that placed utmost importance on a strict observance of the Law of Moses—the Torah.

 

The Pharisee is not praying for any change in himself.

 

He arrogantly brags to God about how wonderful and great he is in comparison to others.

 

 The tax collector—someone who was ritually unclean according the Law of Moses— however, prays that wonderful, pure prayer

 

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

 

It’s not eloquent.

 

It’s not fancy.

 

But it’s honest.

 

And it cuts right to heart of it all.

 

To me, in my humble opinion, that is the most perfect prayer any of us can pray.

 

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

 

It’s a prayer I have held very, very dear for so long.

 

And it is a prayer that had never let me down once.

 

Prayers for mercy are probably one of the purest and most honest prayers we can make.

 

And what I love even more about this parable is the fact that the prayer of the Pharisee isn’t even necessarily a bad prayer in and of itself.

 

I mean, there’s an honesty in it as well.

 

The Pharisee is the religious one, after all.

 

He is the one who is doing right according to organized religion.  

 

He is doing what Pharisees do; he is doing the “right” thing; he is filling his prayer with thanksgiving to God.  

 

In fact, every morning, the Pharisee, like all orthodox Jewish men even to this day, pray a series of “morning blessings.”

 

These morning blessings include petitions like

 

“Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the Universe, who made me a son of Israel.”

 

“Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the Universe, who did not make me a slave.”

 

And this petition:

 

“Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the Universe, who did not make me a woman.”

 

So, this prayer we hear the Pharisee pray in our story this morning is very much in line with the prayers he would’ve prayed each morning.

 

Again, we should be clear: we should all thank God for all the good things God grants us.

 

The problem arises in the fact that the prayer is so horribly self-righteous and self-indulgent that it manages to cancel out the rightness of the prayer.

 

The arrogance of the prayer essentially renders it null and void.

 

The tax collector’s prayer however is so pure.

 

It is simple and straight-to-the-point.

 

This is the kind of prayer Jesus again and again holds up as an ideal form of prayer.

 

But what gives it its punch is that is a prayer of absolute humility.

 

And humility is the key here.

 

It gives the prayer just that extra touch.  

 

There is no doubt in our minds as we hear this parable that God hears—and grants—this prayer, even though it is being prayed by someone considered to be the exact opposite of the Pharisee.

 

Whereas the Pharisee is the religious one, the righteous one, the tax collector, handling all that pagan unclean money of the conquerors, is unclean.

 

He is an outcast. 

Humility really is the key.

 

And it is one of the things, speaking only for myself here, that I am sometimes lacking in my own spiritual life.

 

But, humility is important.

 

It is essential to us as followers of Jesus.

 

St. Teresa of Avila, the great Carmelite saint, once said, “Humility, humility. In this way we let our Lord conquer, so that [God] hears our prayer.”

I think we’re all a bit guilty of lacking humility in our own lives, certainly in our spiritual lives and in being self-righteous when it comes to sin.

 

We all occasionally find ourselves wishing we could control and correct the shortcomings and failures of others.  

 

Oh, let me tell you!

 

When a person fails miserably, or is caught in a scandal, I find myself saying: “Thank God it’s them and not me.”

 

Which is terrible of me!

 

And maybe that’s also an honest prayer to make.

 

Because what we also say in that prayer is that we, too, are capable of being just that  guilty.

 

We all have a shadow side.

 

And maybe that’s what we’re seeing in those people we want to correct.

 

There’s no way around the fact that we do have shadow sides.

 

But the fact is, the only sins we’re responsible for ultimately—the only people who can ultimately control—are our own sins—not the sins of others.

 

We can’t pay the price of other’s sins nor should we delight in the failings or shortcomings of others.

 

All we can do as Christians, sometimes, is humble ourselves.

 

Again and again.

 

Sometimes all we can do is let God deal with a situation, or a person who drives us crazy.

 

God, have mercy on me, a sinner

 

We must learn to overlook what others are doing sometimes.

 

Doing so, exhausts me.

 

And so I don’t know why I would want to deal with other’s issues if my own issues exhaust me.

 

There are too many self-righteous Christians in the world.  

 

We know them.

 

They frustrate us.  

 

And they irritate us.  

 

We don’t need anymore.

 

What we need are more humble, contrite Christians.  

 

We need to be Christians who don’t see anyone as inferior to us—as charity cases to whom we can share our wealth and privileges and whom we wish to control and make just like us.

That is true humility.

 

In our own eyes, if we carry true humility within us, if we are our own stiffest and most objective judges, then we know that we are the most wretched of them all and that we are in no place to condemn others.

 

In dealing with others, we have no other options than just simply to love those people—fully and completely, even when they drive us crazy.

 

 Sin or no sin, we must simply love them and hate our own sins.  

 

That is what it means to be a true follower of Jesus.

 

It is essential if we are going to truly love those we are called by Jesus to love and it is essential to our sense of honesty before God.

So, let us steer clear of such self-righteousness.

 

But, in being humble, let us also not beat ourselves up and be self-deprecating.

 

Rather, let us work to overcome our own shortcomings and rise above them.

 

Let us look at others with pure eyes—with eyes of love.

 

Let us not see the shortcomings and failures of others, but let us see the light and love of God permeating through them, no matter who they are.

 

And with this perception, let us realize that all of us who have been humbled will be lifted up by God.

 

All of us will be exalted in ways so wonderful we cannot even begin to fathom them in this moment.