Giving

It was a 21-year old American soldier, Nathaniel Hale, who reportedly spoke this line just before he was executed by the British in 1776: “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”

And then he died.

The line has been remembered and repeated many times across the centuries since then.

There is a photograph of young soldiers in Connecticut standing beside the statue of Nathaniel Hale before they shipped off for World War I.

It is an inspiring and powerfully patriotic scene.

But as strong and moving as it is, it is overshadowed by the power of another scene, on a hill outside Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

It was an unjust execution, of an entirely innocent man, for the sake of us all.

Jesus died for all the mess we have made of things, and shows the way through death to life remade and renewed in the resurrection.

And because that has happened, when he makes promises to us, he is able to keep them, because nothing, not even death, can now stand in his way., as Paul says in Romans.

“I prepare a place for you” Jesus says in the Gospel of John, ...and it is so.

“I will take you to myself”... and it is so, because it is Christ who promises.

“where I am, there you may be also...” and it is so, and will be so, not because we are so wonderful, but because of the wonder and power of Jesus, the one who makes the promise.

Hold onto this, for it is the truth, the final truth that matters.

Hear it through the tears of our sorrow and grief.

Hear it in a way that will bring us finally to joy despite the sadness.

Paul says that we have Jesus speaking with the Father for us and with us.

The conversation is about life and all things put into their proper relationships with God and with each other.

The conversation goes on with the Spirit speaking when we cannot, speaking to the Father of our anxieties and problems when we can only cry; and speaking Jesus' promise of hope and expectation to us whenever we can hear it, even just a little.

With the Spirit on the job, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, Paul reminds us.

That is the faith that was stirred up in us in Holy Baptism, a faith that will endure by the grace of God.

It is easy for a funeral service to go off-track and turn into an event lauding the wonderful deeds of the deceased, whether that be Nathaniel Hale or our Shuman Miller.

But the subject of a worship service is not any great person, but the Lord God, and his love and mercy.

Lots of persons here today know the many helpful, loving, and useful things that Shuman did.

We have heard some of them named already, and there will be opportunity to speak of many more of them in the fellowship time after the committal service.

But how is it, and why is it, that he was enabled to tackle those challenges?

It is more than that he saw a need and filled it, more than that he recognized that he had the abilities and the opportunities and used them.

It is that the love of God in Christ Jesus reached him in Holy Baptism and the life that flows from Baptism, and consciously or unconsciously he was enabled to copy just a portion of that same love in his many activities.

Jesus is the pattern, and we are bid to follow it, joyfully.

Some have imagined that this means that a true Christian will have a good, easy, and fun time in life.

Jesus never said anything like that.

We can have a victorious life, but there is no guarantee about it being easy.

Like the rest of us, Shuman had plenty of troubles, including two terrible accidents that changed the course of his life.

But how many blessings did he have, and do we have, anyway?

There is a story from a WWII concentration camp.

When it came time for Passover, there was nothing for a celebration meal in that ghastly place.

The father took a thread from his coat and formed their only pinch of butter around it to make a candle of sorts, and lit it to begin the prayers.

“Why are you wasting the one of the few morsels of food we have left?” demanded his son.

He replied, “We can manage somehow with little food, but we cannot live at all without thankfulness and hope.”

And the father continued the prayers of Passover.

So we do give thanks today for many blessings, tangible and intangible, some of which have been passed to us from God through Shuman.

And what will we do with them?

It will be one thing to recount them, laugh about the amusing ones and cry over the sad and painful ones, but what comes next?

If we are to follow the pattern of Jesus, we will give away a whole life, not foolishly trying to hoard for ourselves what is not our own anyway, but to give a whole life in service thankfully.

The measure is not whether one has many objects or few, many skills or can only do one thing well.

The measure is love and mercy received and shared.

Memories fade as the years go by; I know only a couple of facts about my great-grandfather and where he is buried, nothing more...and I would guess that is the same for most of us.

The crucial thing is that the love of God that raised Jesus from death is available to us, generation after generation, and that we can choose to receive it, treasure it, live in it, and share it,

and be enabled to say, “I rejoice that I do have one life to give to the glory of God the Father.”

That would be the best way to honor the memory of Shuman as spouse, father, grandfather, companion, friend, and brother in Christ Jesus.

Let all say Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.