For Kimberly
The Rev. Dr. Harold H. Weicker
Associate Priest, St. Paul's Church[Ed. Note: Kimberly Ramming, the daughter of Carol and Harold Weicker, passed away on July 7, 2002 at the age of 35. This is the homily Fr. Weicker delivered at her memorial service at St. Paul's on July 15.]
Reading: 1 Corr. 15:50 - 58
Dear Right Reverend Father In God, Dear Family, Dear Clergy and Dear Friends:
On behalf of my wife, Carol, and our children Richard and Mary, Mary's husband, Cael, their sons, our entire family and myself, I want to thank you with all our hearts for the honor you bring to Kim by your presence at this service today. By taking your valuable time and making the effort to be here, you affirm Kim's great value and dignity as a fellow child of God. For all the difficulties Kim had in her life, we all know that, like us, she was very precious in God's sight, especially because of her many problems.
When disasters happen in our lives - directly or through the lives of those we love - the heart desperately tries to engage the mind in an effort to make sense out of what is happening. As the profound psychiatrist, Dr. Victor Frankl, was to clarify in one of the great books of all time, Man's Search For Meaning, it is in finding meaning in our suffering that despair is defeated and healing begins.
So often we try to avoid the soul work that is required to claim a deep and sustainable meaning in our suffering. It is easier to believe that the personal meaning in tragedy is out of our hands. "Oh," we say, "it was God's plan." Or "God needed our loved one more than we do." Or "all we need to do is to have faith in the mystery of The Almighty." Or "she is better off where she is now"-- which, though true, fails to get down to cases with our agony and deep grief over all of what Kim had to endure in the last several days of her life.
When the energy required to sustain belief in these platitudes and miserable theology ultimately exhausts us, and this irresponsible faith turns into a deep resentment and anger which blocks our admission that we have a desperate need for a God of hope and justice, then we would be truly lost.
How can we overcome this sense of disconnectedness and despair?
First - above all things - we must remember that God is our answer, not the enemy.
Thinking about the ultimate insult to God - namely that God, in anger against humankind, would kill the son to make things right, or would abandon or sanction the death of any of God's children- a former Bishop of this diocese, Jim Pike, was to say out of the agony of his spirit (pushed by the tragic, untimely death of his son), "God has to be at least as good as the best person I know!" Today I would recommend this simple litmus test to our understanding of the role of God in Kim's life and ours as we grieve over the sadnesses of Kim's life, and the horror of her end in this world.
There is no ultimate answer to the question, "Where was God when the lights went out," because the very question assumes an unworthy God.
"God has to be at least as good as the best person I know:" we have to start with that as a beginning point and make this simple truth the basis of everything else that follows. What would our best friend wish for Kim and us? God has to be our best friend and not an unengaged deity, or we will never find peace, or hope, or justice in this world- or the next..
When we are faced with tragedy, we are challenged to stretch to a more mature and responsible faith, not to abandon our experience of the presence of God in our lives. Our spirit cries out for the refreshment of a renewed vision of life through a deeper understanding of God in this world and beyond.
This is hard because- for the most part - those of us who have lived relatively comfortable lives have an insufficient understanding of the bottomless depth of the dark side of this life, and therefore, we tend to hold inadequate perceptions of the role and value of God and life. To quote Dr. Frankl again, "[some] people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning. . . . [A] human being is not one in pursuit of happiness, but rather in search of a reason to become happy." And this opportunity - at least for inner peace - Dr. Frankl says happens when we actualize the potential meaning inherent and dormant in any given situation. What is the meaning in Kim's life and death? This will vary for each one of us. It all depends on how we see similarities in Kim's life and ours and can say, with deep honesty, "There but for the grace of God, go I."
When we do not understand and accept Jesus' priorities on how to achieve true life in this world, our misconceptions of life- particularly our desire to have a self-organized and undisturbed life- get in our way emotionally and spiritually. Try as we might to bend God to our wishes and desires, when we do not have an understanding of life as it is, and how we should respond to what happens, it is hard to have faith in a god who does address the needs of the true human condition- because we want something from God and life that is more reasonable, more predictable, more controllable, more comfortable and less challenging.
But, dear people, all through our life in this world - and especially in the agony of dark times- though we play with God theologically, we eventually have to encounter God (and therefore life and death) as God is, even if we only (as St. Paul said) have a partial vision.
Reflecting on the horror of life in the death camps, Dr. Frankl wrote, "What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude towards life. We needed to learn ourselves, and therefore, we had to teach to the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected of us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly." Our answer (he said) must "consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."
For me, this is the living gospel of the living God.
The readings today were chosen in the hope that the light of the real Jesus, as a clear window of God, might lighten the darkness that engulfs us- even though the challenges the Master presents are enormous.
Many of us remember that when two of John the Baptist's disciples asked Jesus if he was the expected one, Jesus asked them to consider how he was living. And in doing this, Jesus gave us, for all time, his perception of our purpose and role in this world.
"And Jesus answered them, 'go and tell John what you have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight; the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed; the deaf hear; the dead are raised; the poor have good news brought to them. . . .'' And realizing that this was not the popular view of what the Messiah should be doing, Jesus concludes "and blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me." Many of us might not realize it - and that is not necessarily all our fault, for I believe the church shares some of the blame - but we too are easily offended when what the true Christ offers us often differs from our convenient expectations of a non-confrontational God. Jesus teaches us: "If you open your life to me, I will heal you, and then you need to join me in making your life an urgent blessing to all you meet and a message of hope to all those who also are knocked down in their life." We all are the "poor" who, in the hour of our dire need, have to be open to hear the good news that ours is the realm of heaven. Many times in our life, we will be those who mourn, and especially then we need to know that we are not abandoned; we are blessed and we will be comforted.
Kim had deep personal problems, but she found meaning in being meaningful to others. She ministered as a member of our family as one who wanted to be helpful. She was a good registered nurse, but she felt she was a lost child because she could not nurse, and love, herself. She suffered great pain, emotionally and physically, because she could not accept the truth that through it all, in God's view, she was a personal and valuable child of God. I'd like to believe that there were times when she knew the blessings of her God-given uniqueness, and I know that she now knows how truly lovable and loved she is. In his landmark book, The Courage To Be, the eminent theologian Professor Paul Tillich described the essential "courages" we must have to accept in order to become the wonderful being that each of us truly is. The last courage, the one that Dr. Tillich said was our most difficult - and therefore our most important hurdle - was the "courage to accept acceptance." Tillich knew the secret to the converted life. If we could accept the fact that just as we are, we are acceptable to God, then all the walls of denial and isolation fall down, and we can fearlessly - as Isaiah said - let the Great Potter mold us and fashion us, once again, into the image of God. We always have the potential to become what we are- a child of God- and the doorway Dr. Tillich knew, the only doorway to this transformation, is for us to accept our unconditional acceptance by God. As the old frontier altar-call hymn says, "Just as I am, I come."
If Kim could only have accepted the truth that she was ultimately acceptable and loveable, she would have found the pathway to her Godly transformation- and we would not be here, at least today. For God's sake, the greatest honor we can give Kim, and the greatest break we can give ourselves, is for each of us to personally take hold of this unconditional love and acceptance of God, right now, as the starting point for our unique renewal.
This world and her view of herself have done their worst to Kim, but now it is over, and there is nothing left but the incredible love that always was hers if she but reached out to claim it. It is this same love of God that holds each one of us in such high esteem, that we want to make it our life by claiming it for ourselves as we pass it on to one another.
The old jazz song is true, "Tears and Laughter. Love forever after." And as the great German spirit, Goethe, wrote to his loved ones at the end of his life in this world: "Now, remember the best in our past and forget the rest, and to where I wait come gently on."
My dear friend and mentor, the great Episcopalian evangelist Samuel Moor Shumaker, liked to encourage us with the truth that whereas faith in God did not necessarily guarantee us freedom from problems, it always guaranteed us freedom from defeat.
We are not defeated, because in God, Kim has not been defeated. Kim thought she was a lost child, but she was never lost. When we feel that we are alone in a desert, we need to remember that we always are swimming with God and each other in a crystal sea of infinite love. We deeply need to love a God who loves and accepts us. I pray that we all will accept this truth, so that our lives here will be victorious, and we will find, when we move on, that this affirming and redeeming love of God was, and is, always there for us- as it is for Kim.
Let us pray.
Dear God, thank you for Kim. Thank you for bringing her into this world and into our family. Thank you for the good and the flawed. Thank you for the opportunities you gave us in happy times and in the hard times. Thank you for your love, which fashioned Kim from the foundations of your creation and surrounds her now, as she is, once again, one in you. Grant to her your peace, O Lord, and lead her into the fullness of your life and glory!
Amen.
Amen.
Return to Top Return to Sermons Page