It’s been a rough week.
As I write, it’s been exactly one week since George Yohe died, the result
of a motorcycle accident on US 31. As consuming as it was for his family and
friends and coworkers, as consuming as it was for his church, we still find
folks who did not know he’d died. You can’t help but wonder how
that can be. We group-emailed everyone in the congregation. There was an obituary
in the Holland Sentinel and articles in both the Sentinel and the Grand Rapids
Press. The Corpus Christi chapel was beyond capacity for his memorial service
- we ran out of worship folders and hymnals and even chairs. Everyone must have
known.
But everyone didn’t know. Some of us don’t have email or get the
paper, and sometimes messages left on answering machines aren’t clear.
Some of us knew George’s face but never connected his face with a name,
and some of us didn’t know him at all. Some of us were out of town and
don’t know yet. Not everyone was in the right place at the right time
to hear of his death. We’re just not always connected.
Grief has washed over us, and washes over us anew every time we realize he’s
gone, every time we must explain George’s death to someone new. It is
grief we feel for his wife and children and grandchildren, grief we feel for
a life cut short, grief we feel at losing him and missing him. It is grief we
feel for our own selves, as George’s death makes surface memories of sudden
death some of us know far too well, and the grief of facing the certainty that
one day we each lose our lives and travel this same path. It is grief that leaves
us feeling disconnected - disconnected from George, from his family, from one
another, from our God.
So what do we do? We do what we have been doing for 2,000 years - we do church.
We remember that grief is the price of love, that it is our very grief that
connects us and grief we dare to face. When someone new says they haven’t
seen George in awhile, we tell them about his death; and when they weep, we
dry their tears. Most of all, we celebrate the victory over death that belongs
to George - the daily victory of a friend who gave himself away like there was
no tomorrow, who gave away his time and his treasure and his love and finally
his life, for the sake of Jesus Christ. It is the victory that belongs to each
of us, a victory won by the cross and given in our baptism. It is the victory
that challenges us to give our lives away whenever we face death, and laugh
through our tears.
Pastor Jim
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into his death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Romans 6:4-5
From the Shepherd's Song Newsletter -- August 2008
Copyright 2008 by Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
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E-mail your comments and questions to Pastor Jim in care of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church at gslc@sirus.com.