Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Psalm 137:1-6
October 17, 2004
Several years ago, a member of this church for whom I have enormous respect walked into my office, shut the door, took a seat and shared his reason for coming to see me. “I know we know each other,” he said. “But given my lack of family to tell my story when the time comes, I wanted to tell you a little bit more about myself. Because the chances are pretty good that I am going to die on your watch.”
Well, he was wrong (or so it would seem). Time is running out on “my watch” faster than it is running out on his life. Which reminds me of the day, early in my ministry, when a family had me sit down at their dining room table and take copious notes about grandfather (“So as to get this little matter out of the way before Grandpa dies and things get hectic”). Several years later I moved from the area, and among the things I threw away were those notes for grandpa’s eulogy. Unused.
Funny word, “eulogy.” We don’t use it much, anymore. And few are those who understand it, anymore. Once upon a time, it betokened a speech at a funeral….often delivered by clergy. But not always. Sometimes a relative eulogized the dead. Or a coworker. Or a friend. Maybe all three (with clergy batting clean-up).
A eulogy is both personal and biographical….usually laudatory. It comes in the form of a tribute, often hitting the high spots while circumventing the low ones. Though not always. I’ve heard people go to the podium, adjust the microphone, and talk about what a scoundrel old Henry was. But usually with a twinkle in the eye. And never, so far as I could tell, with malicious intent.
To this day, people ask me to deliver eulogies. Or they ask me “if I’d be willing to say a few words.” In fact, the question is put to me in those terms more often than any other. Less often am I asked to “deliver a sermon” at someone’s funeral. “Sermon” being a word for insiders. “Eulogy” being a word for outsiders. Is there a distinction in popular culture? I think there is. The word “sermon” is most often associated with the proclamation of the Gospel. The word “eulogy” is more often associated with the personalization of a life. Unless, of course, one does both….mix biography and theology in the same message. Which is what I do. And always have. If I preach your funeral, I’ll talk about your life. And I will also talk about the Lord and his promises.
Though not everybody will. The very first funeral I ever attended was for my great aunt Emma. And if I hadn’t known I was in the right room (which I discerned because my father was on one side of me and my mother was on the other side of me), nothing her German Lutheran pastor said would have clued me in. Given that he didn’t say anything about Aunt Emma. He said a lot about the Lord (who, as I recall, was portrayed in terms more frightening than comforting….but, hey, what did I know? I was just a little kid.). But he said nothing about Emma. He did repeat her name in the prayer….mispronouncing it, as I recall (he couldn’t quite get his tongue wrapped around Michefske). But I don’t think he knew her. Although I did recall Aunt Emma and Uncle John once taking me to a sauerkraut supper at his church. Which I hated (the sauerkraut, not his church). But I am sure he was taught in seminary that the purpose of a funeral sermon is to glorify God, and that too much detail about any human life….even a very good human life….is too much like glorifying man and, therefore, dangerously close to that slippery slope called idolatry.
To this day, I go to funerals where the preacher will group personal remarks (presenting them at one point in the service), only to return later in the service with religious remarks….as if to suggest that putting them together in the same message might inappropriately mix things human with things divine. The fear being that things human are not worthy of being coupled with things divine.
Each of us has a story. And each story is significant. When we die, our story ought to be remembered as best as it can be remembered. And it ought to be told as best as it can be told. It ought to be told honestly. It ought not be airbrushed or cosmetized. People who knew the deceased should recognize the person they knew in the words I share. Which leads some to ask: “What if there were things about the deceased that were less the decorous….addictions not completely conquered….temptations not completely avoided….battles not completely won?” Well, if everybody knows those things, there’s no point in avoiding them. But I can talk about how hard the struggle was and how, from time to time, the individual transcended it.
One of my favorite lines comes from the pen of the late Mary Jane Irion. Who, as the time of her dying drew near, said to her pastor:
Tell my friends to remember that the good I did in this life did not have to be perfect to be effective….and that something of who I was will go on lending aid in this amazing human endeavor.
Worse comes to worst, I could probably say the same about you. But when the time comes, how will I tell your story if I don’t know your story? I once had one of you approach me in Fellowship Hall following a funeral and say: “I can’t wait to die and hear what you’re going to say about me.” Which I took as a testimony rather than a longing. Truth be told, however, I don’t know all that much to say about her. But, when the time comes, her family will tell me. As will her friends.
In planning a service, one of the best things I do is sit down with as large a group of survivors as I can gather. I ask a few questions. I start a few conversations. Then I take detailed and careful notes. Families always approach such moments reluctantly. But everybody leaves the experience gratefully. They find such conversations helpful. We start with bare facts. Then we share stories. One story sparks another….complete with lots of tears, but more than a little laughter. And now that I’ve been here a while, I’ve got many of you trained. To whatever degree you know something about the deceased I might be able to use, you call me and tell me. My job is to gather it all and tell it well.
Each story is important. Why? Because God loves us in our particularity, that’s why. How many times have you heard me say: “Each of us is a unique, unrepeatable miracle of creation”? Which means I should say “Goodbye” to you in your uniqueness. At the moment of your departing, it is not my job to judge your life, but to give thanks for it.
Although if that’s all I did, I would be shortchanging you. For your story is set within the context of a greater story. God’s story. Meaning that when death closes your chapter (long or short), the one thing death cannot do is take the pen from the Author of life. Meaning that there is more to be written. And more that will be written. Which is both a promise offered by me and a mystery that is beyond me. So I articulate it with caution and passion. Yet when people comment on my funeral sermons, they are more likely to focus on the part that was personal than on the part that was theological.
Yet in those conversations, a funny thing happens. You who knew the deceased well….through many experiences over many years….will often say to me: “Thanks to you, I learned a lot of things about Fred I never knew before.” And I find myself wondering: “If you knew Fred for thirty years and I put this together in an hour and a half, how can that be?” Unless Fred didn’t share all that much. Or you didn’t listen all that well.
In a world where teenagers now put their deepest thoughts into online journals (for the uninitiated, they’re called “blogs”), I think there is both a hunger to share and a fear of sharing. When Lynn Hasley preached her first sermon this summer, she talked about the value of persons and the importance of stories. In reality, she was making an appeal. New, as she was….green, as she was….strange, as she was….Lynn was saying: “I’ll give you a part of me if you’ll trust me with a part of you, and ‘church’ ought to be the kind of place where that can happen.”
Well, Damian Zikakis….my favorite skinny Greek (who has lived some wonderful stories and who tells some wonderful stories)….came up to Lynn and said: “I hear you. I’m with you. Let’s get together and brainstorm what kinds of ministries we could develop that involve story telling and story sharing.” And they’ve come a long way since that sermon. Better yet, they are close to going public with that ministry. I don’t know what form it will take. But it could be wonderful. I mean, why should we wait till we die to have someone know who we were?
Although, no story is just about us. Every story is full of other people who have journeyed with us. And full of the God who has journeyed with us….perceived or unperceived.
I love Psalm 137 because it is so wonderfully honest and gut-wrenchingly human. It is about the people of Israel. But, at the time of the writing, they are not in Israel. They are in Babylon (Iraq). They have been exiled there….a forced deportation, if you will. And they do not have the faintest idea when, if ever, they are going to get back.
Once they were a singing people. Now they are a weeping people. Where are their instruments, you ask? Hanging in the trees, that’s where they are. And where are their songs? Stuck in their throats, that’s where they are. But it gets worse. The people who have captured them are making sport of them, saying (in effect):
You guys sang once.
We don’t hear you singing now.
What’s up with that?
Let’s have a little music.
Sing, you stupid slaves.
Sing! Sing!
Well, they have a defense. They sang when they were the home team. Now they’re the away team. “We can’t sing when we are the away team,” they say. “No way can we sing when we’re the away team.”
But then one of their own says, “Oh, but we have to. Sing, that is. Because if we don’t sing of the days that were, we’ll never survive the days that are. We don’t know what’s going on now…. how it’s going to turn out now….whether we’re gonna live or die now….or where in this hell God is now. But if we don’t sing the songs and tell the stories of a time and place when we knew the answers to those questions, we’re gonna shrivel up and die now.”
Just as the debate rages in seminaries about whether preachers should talk about your life at a funeral, there is a similar debate about whether preachers should talk about their own lives in sermons. Some preachers are opaque, revealing little. Others are transparent, revealing much. The challenge for the transparent ones is to get beneath the surface. If inserting “self” into the sermon means regaling the congregation with the cleverness of your grandchildren or detailing your most recent trip to the Canadian Rockies, you will entertain, but not illumine. But if you go down deep enough, you will touch a common core of humanity that will involve everybody. Then, as Frederick Buechner writes so eloquently, you ought to “speak of such things….not like the essayists or propagandists….but like human beings speaking their hearts to their dearest friends. Who, at any given point, will unerringly know whether you are speaking truth or just parroting it.”
It would probably surprise you to know that, at the core, I’m a relatively private person. I have had to cultivate transparency. Which I have done. In part, because I never know how passionately I feel about something until I hear myself say it. And, in part, because if it is not a truth that is saving my life, what leads me to believe it might save yours?
In the dozen years I have been here, I have ridden the mountain-to-valley train and back several times. And made most of the stops in between. Along the way, I have tried to describe the scenery (from bleak to beautiful) and the company (from human to divine).
The last couple of weeks have found me at the “mountain end” of the line. Some of you are probably tired of hearing about Julie and the wedding. Yet, in the Fellowship Hall this morning, are some published words from the valley. And others of you are probably tired of hearing about Bill and the funeral. A shipment of the book….the first shipment of the book….750 copies of the book (Take the Dimness of My Soul Away: Healing After a Loved One’s Suicide) arrived in the church office at 4:30 a week ago Friday afternoon. We’re talking 30 minutes before Julie’s wedding rehearsal. Life’s like that….if you didn’t know. Fortunately, Linda and Tina put them in Janet’s office and closed the door. Then they said nothing till Monday. After the wedding. Which was just one more in a series of wonderful things people have done and keep doing for us.
Over and over again, people say to me: “I wish I had your faith.” To which the answer is: “You probably do.” But you aren’t going to know how much alike we really are unless, of course, you know the story.
Note: The idea for this sermon began with a request from one of our newest staff members, Rev. Lynn Hasley, to sow some seed for a story-telling ministry. It continued with the discovery that a book of sermons on the suicide of our son was about to be released by Morehouse Publishing Company and would be available for sale in Fellowship Hall.
The October 17 issue of Steeple Notes (the church’s weekly mailed newsletter) contained the full quote from Frederick Buechner, which can also be found in the frontispiece of the book. Reprinted, it reads as follows:
If preachers are going to talk about hope, let them talk as honestly as St. Paul did about hopelessness. Let them acknowledge the darkness and pitiableness of the human condition, including their own condition, into which hope brings a glimmer of light.
And let them talk with equal honesty about their own reasons for hope….not just the official, doctrinal, biblical reasons, but the reasons rooted deep in their own day-by-day experience. They have hope that God exists because, from time to time, they have been touched by God. Let them speak of those times with candor and contriteness and passion, without which all the homiletical eloquence and technique in the world are worth little. Let them speak of those moments, not like essayists or propagandists, but like human beings speaking their hearts to their dearest friends….who, at any given point, will unerringly know whether they are speaking truth or only parroting it.
As to the 137th Psalm, I have preached it before. I first became acquainted with its phrases at Albion College, thanks to a moving choral anthem, “By the Rivers of Babylon,” by Professor Anthony Taffs. Purists will note that I said nothing about verses 7-9, which are among the most vengeful lines printed in holy scripture. These are the lines that conclude: “Happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.” Obviously, the psalmist is willing to “let it all hang out,” feeling no need to conceal the raw edge of human emotion from the reader. As I said in the sermon, Psalm 137 is gut-wrenchingly honest. I did not say that it is pretty. Having spoken of such things before, I felt no need to plow that ground again.
