On December 31, 2013, Bill Scherer, father to Tara and father-in-law to me, entered the larger Life. He was a founding board member of Coracle, and instrumental in enabling Corhaven to come into reality, among so many other things. Below is the homily that I preached at his funeral. We miss him still in so many ways. On the third anniversary of his death, Coracle celebrates Bill and honors him!
A Good Man, A Good Life, A Good Death–a homily for Bill Scherer
We’re all here today because of our lives have been touched by Bill Scherer. The longer you knew him, the more you realized how remarkable of a man he was, how remarkable a servant, how devoted to his family, how loyal to his friends, how faithful to God, and how available he was to literally anyone who needed help. In these days in our society, one of the highest compliments you can give a man is the most simple thing to say and powerful when it’s said in earnest: “He’s good man.” “He’s a good man.” Bill Scherer was a good man. Bill Scherer was a great man. The folks who know that better than me are Gail, Tara, Trent, Todd, and Granny.
The list is long of good things, great things, we could say about Bill. Last week I jotted down just the first things that came to mind. It didn’t take long to make a long list, I won’t say them all, but here’s a few things about him we want to mark, highlight, articulate, and honor.
For over 50 years of courtship and marriage, Bill was nothing less than a servant husband, devoted to Gail’s best in every way he could. She often says, “He pampered me”, and he did.
Bill raised children who were as committed to him as he was to them. Trent and Tara both moved mountains to be with him as much as they could to be with him these last six months, and both held his hands as he passed. Bill was a successful father.
His six grandkids love him, and loved being with him, and knew he loved them.
He modeled so clearly what it means to love and care for your family and provide for them.
I’ve learned so much about being a responsible man from Bill, I hope I can serve others half as well as as he did.
For as long as he knew him, Bill followed Jesus as best he knew how, and was absolutely devoted to his Christian faith.
It’s also true, that Bill was absolutely not perfect, and he’d be the first to tell you that. His own imperfections bothered him deeply, too deeply actually. But still he modeled what it means to keep on trying to change and grow, even into old age when it’s hardest.
All these things are the important things that make for a good life. I’m not even mentioning his three successful careers, the church he helped start that now has thousands of people in it, or the many boards he served on, including mine.
Bill, a good man, led a very good life. And he was granted a good death. We had him for just six short months after his diagnosis at the end of June, and he made every one of those minutes count. When he passed, there was simply not one thing left undone. He created unforgettable experiences with each grandchild, and wrote each of them a long letter which will bless them for their whole lives. He had all the conversations he needed to have, shared his love and gave and received words of love and blessing from family and friends. About three months ago he was concerned that there may be someone out there he wasn’t reconciled with or tried his best, but he couldn’t think of anyone! And I don’t think there is anyone…
Then near the end he had a profound Christmas week with family, and was able to participate actually and enjoy it, sharing the same blessings as we opened our gifts and sang our carols together. Then last Sunday he was able to be blessed in a final little family church service in his own home, with prayers and Scripture and words of blessing and the Eucharist. Every one of his family was able to tell him that we loved him, hug him and kiss him, and say goodbye, and he did the same as best he could, and he did it. As he slipped nearer to that gateway to a Brand New and Better World, Real Life, and slipped out of consciousness, he had one member or another of his own family with him and touching him, so often Gail, for almost 48 hours straight. Then he died peacefully, in his own bed in the quiet of his own home with his own family and the thick presence of his own God. For the final days to the very end, not one nurse had to visit, except for his own daughter.
How else would you want to go?
In the Christian tradition, there is such a thing called “a good death”. My sister gave us a book that would come to be so helpful. It’s title comes from another phrase from the Christian tradition. It’s called The Art of Dying by Rob Moll, and in his own death, Bill painted a masterpiece. It will hang in our memories til we see him again like a Rembrandt or Van Gogh or Monet hangs on the wall of a museum, to be considered, and contemplated, and to be blessed by, and taught by.
It’s taken a while to get to this point of being able to appreciate anything about this. For the weeks following Bill’s initial diagnosis, my emotions alternated between sadness and madness, vacillating between sorrow and anger. We had Bill for 72 years, a lot, but not enough. Thinking at times about what Bill wouldn’t be present for made me literally nauseous, and at times still does. When someone you love is dying, what do you do? You get mad, and you cry. That’s what a human does.
But do you know, that in the face of death, that’s what God does too? God gets angry, and God weeps.
We heard the reading today from John 11, the story in the Bible about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. The text explicitly tells us that Jesus considered Lazarus a friend, and loved him very much. What other God would you want than one who loves us, and calls us friends?
We see two reactions and one action from Jesus Christ, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, God made flesh, God come to earth as a man, God with us, Emmanuel, Jesus of Nazareth.
One reaction is from the verse that we can all memorize this morning! It’s the shortest verse of the Bible, John 11.35. How did Jesus react to the death of someone he loved? “Jesus wept.” Jesus cried deeply. He didn’t just get misty, or shed a tear, or even just two. Jesus wept. He was sad, Jesus was really sad. I don’t know what your god is like or what kind of god you want, but I really appreciate a God who can cry, and knows what it’s like weep and mourn. I want a God who knows what it’s like to feel what I feel, a God who can comfort me because he knows. Jesus is that God.
In the face of death, Jesus didn’t only cry, and here’s his second reaction: He got mad. John 11.33 reads that Jesus was “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.” Here’s the image in those words. I’m going to let a friend of mine tell us, “It says three times in that chapter in John 11 that Jesus was angry. Two of the words are the same, and they are the strongest Greek word for furious indignation, referring to the fury of stallions about to charge into battle in the cavalry, rearing up on their hind legs, and snorting through their nostrils and charging. That word, to snort in spirit, the strongest Greek word for anger, is the word used of Jesus. Face to face with evil, in this premature death of his good friend, he does not give God thanks….He is outraged. Why? Evil is not normal. He’d made the world good and true and beautiful, for justice and fulfillment, and he’d entered his Father’s world that had become ruined and broken. And his reaction? He was furious.” (Os Guinness)
Others say of this verse that a better translation would be that Jesus “became angry in spirit and very agitated.” Another writes that “[When these words are] applied to human emotion it invariably refers to an outburst of anger…Jesus trembled with indignation. He shook with suppressed fury.”
Jesus is the God who knows how to weep, and he knows what it’s like to be viscerally angry at things that just aren’t right.
A few weeks ago I said at another funeral that I hate death. Because death comes to us all, we may think of it as normal. But it is NOT. Death is abnormal. Death when it comes is always an aberration. Death is not the way it’s supposed to be. Every person born from the beginning of the world was made for eternal life, made perfect, lived in a very real body of very real and warm flesh that you can touch and see and talk with, eternal life lived with others, lived with God, in a very real and physical world. This was what God intended at the creation of the world and when he created human beings, and one day it will be like that. But not yet.
So when Jesus confronted death, he hated it. Two reactions and one action: He got mad, he was sad…and then he conquered it’s finality. The Bible says that Jesus said, “Lazarus, come out!”, and Lazarus was raised from the dead, and came out. This is foreshadowing what Jesus himself is about to go through himself, and is a clear picture of the hope that Jesus holds out for all of us who will die, and we all will, and for those of us who have lost ones, like we’ve lost Bill.
Friends, this is a critical and clear part of the Christian message and the teaching of the Bible, that Jesus Christ has power over death, and that he himself went through it, and conquered it through his own resurrection, so that death doesn’t have to have the last word, that death doesn’t get the final say, that it is not in fact the final separation from those we love, nor is death the final separation from the God who loves us. This is a Cliff Notes version of our reading today from 1 Corinthians 15.
As often as I’ve been angry or sad in these last months and weeks, I’ve been grateful beyond words. As often as I’ve cried I’ve said, “Thank God for Jesus.”
Oh, there is sting here. Yes, there is sting.
But our hope in Jesus, and Bill’s hope in Jesus, and now Bill’s presence with Jesus, makes that sting so much easier to bear. As St. Paul says, “We grieve, but not as those without hope.” Yes, we grieve, but deeper than that is hope, and it is strong, like love, as strong as death.
As Tara wept over Bill’s body, she said through her tears, “Great love and great pain go together…you can’t have one without the other I guess”. Our great pain today over Bill’s passing is precisely because we loved him greatly, and he loved us greatly. But he’s no longer in pain.
This is not the sort of occasion to tell anybody what to do. Still I think there are a few things we can learn from the good life of a good man who had a good death.
One is simply that: Let us live in such a way so that when we too come to die, we too can paint a masterpiece, that we can have a good death precisely because we’ve lived a good life.
Another lesson from Bill is this: Let us love our families really really well. There are many things I want my children to know, but few more than this, that their daddy loves them. I want them to know this beyond words in the marrow of their bones, in the darkest corners of their own self-doubt, through whatever storms life throws at them. Bill’s children know that, and his grandchildren, and his wife. And it’s a treasure, isn’t it?
Another lesson from Bill is this: Let us serve others with as much as we’ve got for as long as we can. Bill’s servanthood is part of his legacy, a broad and deep and rich part. You remember at the end of the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life”, when the angel Clarence gives a note to George Bailey, otherwise known as Jimmy Stewart? The note reads, ‘Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.” On this count, Bill was fantastically successful.
And the last learning for today from the life of Bill Scherer, and I include it because he explicitly asked me to. He wanted me to be clear about the hope for salvation that he had in Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ is the hope that we all have for salvation. God loves you, he hates death, that’s part of why Jesus came, and he did something about. It’s a good day for all of us to give Jesus more of our lives.
As we do these things, serving others, loving our families well, loving Jesus more and more, and living a good life in preparation for our own deaths…it’s our opportunity to paint our own masterpieces. And these will be a most fitting memorial to the man we loved and called Bill, or Grandaddy, or Daddy, or Sweetie.
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“Joy and sorrow are never separated. When our hearts rejoice at a spectacular view, we may miss our friends who cannot see it, and when we are overwhelmed with grief, we may discover what true friendship is all about. Joy is hidden in sorrow and sorrow in joy. If we try to avoid sorrow at all costs, we may never taste joy, and if we are suspicious of ecstasy, agony can never reach us either. Joy and sorrow are the parents of our spiritual growth.” Fr. Henri Nouwen