On the Occasion of a Service of Celebration of Life for Otis Hurd January 11, 2020 St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, NC Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy
On Occasions of Remembering
Ecclesiasticus
2:1-6,11 2nd Timothy 4: 6-8 Luke
24 13-16, 28-35
We have been blessed today to have two friends who spoke about their friend who has died. They shared their love for this man and they thanked God, and the Hurd family for sharing him with this community. Otis Hurd made a difference in people’s lives. In the words of Arthur Miller, “Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a man.”
In the Gospel Story for today, two Disciples are walking to Emmaus with the Risen Christ, but they do not recognize him, they do not pay him close enough attention. They talk with him about their friend Jesus and the difference he had made in their lives as if they were talking to a stranger. They were so busy talking they did not even notice that the person they were talking about was right there. They asked him to stay with them, “Stay with us for it is almost evening and the day is nearly over.” Luke is telling us that it is only when we slow down that we are able to see the Spirit of the Risen Christ in our lives. We get so busy with our own agendas that we cannot see who is walking with us.
When we get through with this service, all of you are invited to the Lone Cedar to gather for some refreshment: “Stay with us for it is almost evening and the day is nearly over.” The task will be to relax and tell stories of Otis Hurd, for his spirit had been already with us as we had communion together and heard stories told here.
The prophet Micah said: “What does the LORD require of you? To do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” In my own theology, the purpose of life, no matter how long we live, is to have a life haunted with an awe of creation, to laugh deeply, to love extravagantly and to change the world with a compassion for others in such a way that people will laugh and tell loving stories about us and others, before and after we die.
I try to take a walk every morning before the sun comes up so I can slow down from all my busy work for the day. It is in those moments that I can listen and know without reacting. Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “People say that walking on water is a miracle, but to me, walking peacefully on the earth is the real miracle.” On clear days the stars shimmer with the light years that have travelled from the edges of the universe. I am aware the planet on which my feet touch is hurling through space at a speed of thousands of miles an hour and I have not fallen off. I walk solo, but I am never alone. The stories walk with me. In what can be loosely called “prayer,” I remember with thanksgiving the people who have touched my life, those with whom I share this speeding earth and those whose feet no longer walk on this earth.
I am still practicing to be a human being, and my friends, alive and dead, tell their stories in my imagination, as I learn from them on how to love, how to laugh, how to be reverently in awe of what God is doing in our lives and how to make a difference in a world which seems so busy with ego driven agendas that we avoid the task of doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God. When I walk in silence, I am awash in their stories. It is not like a standard committee meeting where everyone doesn’t really listen, but rather they just wait so they can throw in their own opinions. Rather, it is a holy stillness attuned to the wisdom that is being passed on by people I have encountered.
One of the highpoints of my job is to sit down and ask people to tell me about someone they have loved. Many times something changes in the room and we are not alone, for the other person’s spirit is there as well in the telling. When I do pre-marital or marital counseling the other person is there in body. When I am preparing for a funeral the spirit of the person who died is there in the Holy Space between us.
Sometimes, they will share things that they think is really strange, or they might be going crazy: for after all, the other person is dead, as dead can be. My mother used to do that, after my father died, for years she would think of something and then she felt she needed to tell my father, Bill. She gets his name out, and the first couple words, and then feels crazy. Sometimes she would think about something and wonder what Bill, my father, would have to say about it. She stops, listens and in her silence, she has a conversational encounter without words, and she, in her heart can hear what he might have said. I don’t think she was crazy; she loved him until she died many years later; and even then, the love did not die but it had been passed on to her children, and through us to others.
In the Communion service we have a phrase which the Priest says: “Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven . . .” Heaven is not a geographical space; it is a state of being connected with God and others, in this life and the next. Sometimes we get so busy with our own inner committee work that we just never get around to catch anything but a mere fleeting glimpse of heaven. Sometimes, we have to wait until after we die, because it is only then that we slow down enough.
Today I am asking you to slow down and remember Otis Hurd. Listen to what the remembrance tells you about how you are living your life, how you might laugh and love and act with compassion to help a neighbor. Have an occasion of remembering.
In pre-dawn walks, I talk with friends
who have touched my life over years,
giving me occasional laughs and tears,
uninterrupted by beginnings and ends.
They are all there; like Tom, Jack, Jim,
friends with strong surrounding arms,
holding me so tight that I hear yarns
whispered in ears behind time's scrim.
There are others who I never met in life,
yet whose earthly friends shared stories
of people who shared with them glories
while walking with them in joy or strife.
Moon casts only one shadow on my walking,
but not on those shades with whom I’m talking.
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