A Reflection on the
Occasion of a Celebration of Life for Scott and Buckley Kuhn Fricker
All Saints’ Church,
Southern Shores, NC. January 27, 2018 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
The first reading is
from the Book of Ecclesiasticus, sometimes called the Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sira,
or Sirach. If you are Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox, it is part of your
Bible, and for Episcopalians and other Anglicans, it is part of the Apocrypha
which can be used for moral instruction. The Book is a collection of writings
by a Jewish Rabbi in Egypt and was translated into Greek by his grandson in the
2nd Century before the Christian era. It was a very popular book in
the early church and was quoted often by the early church leaders as they tried
to answer the questions “What is wisdom?” and “What makes the kind of life worth
living which can be passed on to generations yet unborn?”
The Supreme Court was given the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio
after Louis Malle's 1958 film, The Lovers, was ruled obscene by the
censors, and Justice Potter Stewart said of the majority opinion's definition of
obscenity: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I
understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I
could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”
I find myself in that same kind of situation where words to
describe Buckley and Scott Fricker's relationship with each other, their
families, and their communities are so hard to say intelligibly, but I know it
when I see it for it was in the love and compassion with which they treated
each part of their lives. I baptized Elliot years ago in this church as an
invitation for a deeper involvement in organized religion. In that I was a
failure, but their spirituality was a success as they worked on keeping the promises
they made in Eliot's name - “loving your neighbor as yourself” and “strive for
justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human
being”. They were people who showed loving grace without religious trappings.
Roman Catholic Jesuit German Theologian Karl Rahner set a
tone for the 2nd Vatican Council in addressing this kind of
situation: “"Anonymous Christianity" means that a person lives in the
grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted
Christianity.”
14 billion years ago God spoke the Word, which the writer of
the Gospel of John identifies with the Christ, whom the Christian community
experienced in the person of Jesus. The Word was the beginning of all creation
and the energy behind that Word exploded to create all that we know in the universe
- and so much more that we do not know. Every atom of the universe is connected
to that explosion – stars, planets, galaxies, rocks, seas, animals, humans,
families, enemies, strangers, you, and me are all made of the same residual
stardust. Spirituality worth its name is the one that recognizes how utterly
connected we are with the very ground of our being and with each other and
strives to make that union one that sees Holy Ground all around us. Many times
that Spirituality is found outside of organized religion and the genius of 12
Step recovery programs is that they use the phrase “Power Greater than
ourselves” as a way to help people damaged by toxic religion find the strength
of who we, for convenience sake, call God.
For part of my life I felt unconnected to God and one of the
openings I found was in the help of my thesis advisor in Grad school for Social
Work, Dr. Alan Keith-Lucas. Keith had written a book, Giving and Taking Help, which was required in the Introduction to
Social Work class I took. I skimmed the book and ignored the final two
chapters, A Short History of Helping
and Helping and Religious Belief,
because they had so many references to religion. After Keith helped me do my
final thesis two years later, I went back to read those chapters to find out
what made this man so helpful to me and where he found his patience and
strength. They were found in his faith in the Prophets’ message: “What does the
Lord require of you; to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God”.
Faith was found in this formula for the basis of all helping - a Trinity of
Reality, Empathy and Support.
For Keith, Reality was a metaphor for the Creator God, the
one who set the limits of the universe. Helping was to set the limits of the
possible, and the work was to make the “good enough” better in the facts of
human existence.
I remember 20-some years ago at another church where I had a
habit of sitting on the chancel steps with the children sitting around me,
looking up at me as I told an interpretation of one of the lessons which would
form the basis of the sermon I would preach later for the adults. Children keep
interrupting and that day was no exception as little Hannah Ackerman piped up:
“You know what? You know what?” I smiled and said, “No, Hannah what?” And she
replied, “You got boogers up your nose.” I was embarrassed but she was talking
about the reality of life, speaking truth. We do not pretend but we live into a
deeper and at times painful reality.
We do not enter into wishful thinking but ground ourselves
in the truthful hard work of being the best persons in the best families in the
best communities in which we find ourselves. I saw this in the work of both
Scott and Buckley as they worked to make life more understandable for people -
for Scott in Labor Statistics and for Buckley in helping people to understand
and cope with aging. They both worked in teaching their children about the
responsibilities in life. They both worked on finding help for their children
instead of wishing it away. They both decided that hate had no part of a just
society and in their family. It was that loving reality that undergirded the
making sense of their lives and their
courageous commitment to this reality that led to their death.
For Keith the second part of the Trinity was Empathy, a
metaphor for Christ. It meant getting involved and not staying at a safe
distance away. It was not sympathy
where one feels “sorry” for someone but feeling along with someone as an act of
imagination and entering into the life of the other without losing one’s core
identity. It was to enter boldly and vulnerably into the pain and joy of life. It
was that courage not to enter into denial but to enter into the brokenness of
lives that typified Scott and Buckley’s lives. It was that loving gesture of
Christ to become the human Jesus that led to his birth, death, and resurrection
This last week I was coming out of the office area onto the
gazebo to make a home visit, and there were some children from the All Saints
School playing there. As I came out, I was greeted with calls of “Hey, Father
Tom!” They came up to tell me about their joys, such as one little girl had
painted fingernails, and their difficulties, as a series of kids pointed out
their “boo boos.” That is what we do in life - share the joys and enter into
solidarity of the “boo boos” of all sizes and magnitudes. It is why we are here
to weep with families and to share the joys so present in the lives of their
children.
For Keith the third part of the Trinity of the helping
relationship was Support; the “I will be with you to share strength with you. I
will not do it for you but I will walk with you each step of the way. As Jesus
said; “Lo I am with you even to the end of the ages.”
No one part of the Trinity can exist without the others, and
when we enter into helping relationships of Reality, Empathy, and Support is
when we begin to live into being an image of God.
In all of that we come back to the promise from the passage
from the Revelation to John for today "See, the home of God is among mortals. He
will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself
will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no
more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have
passed away."
Today we hold on to the reality, empathy, and
support of that promise and give thanks to God for sharing Buckley and Scott
with us.
Scholars tell us there was no historical
evidence of Bible's Slaughter of Innocents
in Bethlehem from Herod's fear,
and it was only a myth to have
Jesus come across as the new Moses
by Matthew's church finding solace
when their friend died before his mother.
Burying child is obscene, a perversion
of all we have tried to do as parents
when we used to put them to bed
kiss them good night, sleep tight.
All the worry we did, all the advice
all the cheering, the yelling,
sighing and crying
all the mistakes,
all the missed opportunities we wasted,
all the hugs deferred and missed again,
all the secrets shared and kept,
all the birthdays still to come,
all the joys still to be found,
all the what-if's crowding in.
We were not able to fully protect them
from all the threats of inattention,
disease, broken hearts and violence.
Yet we give thanks for all the love given
and received to and from products of love,
hope and grace of these precious gifts
in this, our fleeting gifted universe
where it is no myth to join Rachel weeping in Ramah.
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