A
Celebration of the Life, Death and Ministry of
Gwendolyn
Speight Tyson
11-9-51 -
3-4-13
All Saints
Church, Southern Shores, NC
Thomas E
Wilson Rector
March 16,
2013
People do not get what they
deserve and bad things happen to good people. The center of our faith is a man
named Jesus, a good man who had bad things happen to him. That presented a
problem for his followers because it was a scandal for in the old view of religion
was that if you were nice to God, God would be nice to you. If anything
happened bad to you then that was proof positive that God was turning God’s
back on you.
One of the people who
believed that old view of religion was a man named Saul of Tarsus; except Saul
had this experience with the Risen Lord
and he saw that God was present in the middle of everything, even in the middle
of the broken places of life. In the lesson for today he writes to the church in
Rome to tell them what he believes and says; “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in
all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am
convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord.”
One of the problems about
being my age, and I am a few years older than Gwen, is that we really wanted to
believe what we were being told when we were growing up in the 50’s. Our
parents and grandparents would say to us, “You children have it so easy. Well
back in my day ...“
In school and Sunday School
we were told to believe in progress. We were told that life was going to be
easier for us. Our parents had been through the Great Depression and World War
II and, so the idea went, all of the hard stuff was going to be behind us. The
way science was progressing we were going to be the generation that would have
it easy. All the major diseases would be conquered and we would all lead
healthy and long lives. We would have labor saving devises and so we would have
lots of time on our hands as houses would clean themselves, meals would cook
themselves, clothes and dishes would was themselves. We eventually would have
flying cars that would take us wherever we wanted to go. We would have so much
money we would not know what to do with it all. All we had to do was work hard,
lead an honest life, be a good person, believe in God, and everything would be
all right as we pass it on to a new generation and they will have it even
better.
The problem is that life is
not easy; it is hard. Our parents wished life to be easy for us and we wished
it for our children and grandchildren; but the reality is that life can be very
hard and unfair. Jesus knew that things
are rough in life so he sent out his followers two by two to help each other
not to be discouraged and to walk together through whatever comes their
way. Jesus said that “Whenever two or
three are gathered in my name I will be there in the midst of them.” Therefore
it was not one, or two walking alone but three, for the Christ was with them. When
the disciples went out two by two they had no idea that Jesus was with them and
it was only after his death that the disciples realized that distance or even
death does not end the connections.
Forty one years ago Mary
and Gwen stood together and heard a preacher say “Those who God has joined
together let no one put asunder.” God
joined them together and Jesus walked with them. In fact that is the place we
seem to find where God is most real in the space between two people. The church
gets so busy doing church stuff that we have to depend on people who get
married to each other to show what love looks like. Gwen and Marty have
demonstrated what love looks like and each step of the way there God’s living
spirit giving them strength.
We gather together to give
thanks for Gwen’s life and love. For those of us who are stranded on this side
of the shore, we ask for the strength to place her in the arms of God who
lovingly accepts her as God’s child and cradles her in the arms of Grace. We
also ask for the strength for you to find God walking in the sacred space
between each of you when you have been so used to seeing only Gwen. We also ask for the strength to help guide
the youngest generation to know that love does not die and Gwen’s love is still
walking with each of them.
Marty has this poem that he
likes called “Footprints” which he went to for strength which is a paraphrase
of this chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. In this poem Jesus answers a
dreamer’s question about where was God when things were rough?
“The
Lord replied,
|
"The
times when you have
|
seen
only one set of footprints,
|
is
when I carried you."
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