FRANK SCRANTON DOREMUS

January 26, 1916 + April 5, 2003

 

            One of the blessings I treasure most in the service of God’s holy church is the chance to be part of the rites of passage of those who are part of my history, those who have helped define for me what it means to live. As difficult as it is to say good-bye to these old friends, still such moments are a means of grace. The funeral is not just an official duty but part of a continuum, one of the things we do for one another during the life we spend together as people of God.

            What I mean when I talk about such a life together has almost nothing to do with respiration and everything to do with inspiration—the animating indwelling of the creative Spirit that I believe is part of what Jesus meant when he talked about abundant life, the abundance God intends in creation. Clearly that is the kind of life we celebrate here today.

            We come together this afternoon in this holy place to remember Frank Doremus, to give thanks for his life. We do our remembering not just as those who have lost someone dear to us: a husband, a father, a teacher, a colleague, a friend. We remember Frank today as people of faith, people who are bound up together in this mortal life, a life beyond whose shore we too will one day slip. We come together as God’s people, the body in which Frank will always be alive, the community in which we and all those we love forever live and move and have our being.

            When someone we love dies, a little of us dies with him. I watched as his girls sang him into the arms of death, the ultimate healer, who received the life his body could no longer support. And then the music fell silent. The table of life that brimmed with food and laughter and talk now holds an empty chair.

            But death is not the end of the story. Grief is not all we feel at a time like this. Because we stand “both in the shadow of the cross and in the clear and glorious light of the Resurrection,” [1] we also feel a sense of joy. Even as we mourn, we celebrate. We celebrate the goodness of God in all creation: n the love of family and friends; in the gift of children; in the faithful care of parents. In the life of such a one as Frank: his gentle wit, his courteous ways, his faithful love through pain and loss. Clearly the psalmist was thinking of him when he sang:

                        The righteous flourish like the palm tree,

                           and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

                        They are planted in the house of the Lord,

                           they flourish in the courts of our God.

                        They still bring forth fruit in old age,

                           they are ever full of sap and green. [2]

            The psalmist sees the faithful life to be a reflection of God’s eternal faithfulness. We see in Frank, he says, the handiwork of God. And so it is that we celebrate the life of those we love through the worship of God. We worship a God who remembers us, who calls us by name, who loves us as the persons God knows us to be, in whose love we partake as we love one another. It is this life of love that has been received into the all-embracing love of God, that has left the world richer for his presence, illumined by his light.

            The light we knew in Frank is a reflection of God’s light, the light that holds back the darkness, that will not let us fall into nothingness. For our God is a Trinity of love, who creates and redeems and sustains us, in whom we hope even in the face of loss. Hope holds fast to the certainty that we can trust in the goodness of God, that we can depend upon God to bring us through, to east our suffering, to heal our grief, to dry our tears, to restore our souls.

            We Christians are accustomed to speaking of Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God. Jesus, we say, is what God looks like in flesh and blood. God with us in the intimate way we speak of that most intimate human friendship, marriage: for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. Except in God’s case without the finite human curtain, the ultimate parting of death. We pledge in baptism to seek and serve that incarnate God-in-Christ in all persons, but we sometimes fail to recognize it when we see it. We fail to remember what Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, that we ought to genuflect before one another as before the blessed sacrament, for we are all God’s holy people, created in the image of God.

            It’s people like Frank who help us remember. It’s people like Frank who so embody the love of God in their lives, in the way they go about living, that each encounter with them becomes a true sacrament of Christ, a remembrance of who we are all created to be, a glimpse of what authentic humanity is all about.

            And so what we feel in this room today as we remember Frank, as we celebrate his life, is that God is in the midst of us, “though the earth be moved, and though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof rage and swell, and though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same.” [3] Nothing, St. Paul assures us, nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God. [4]

            That is our hope. That is our faith. Even at the grave, we make our song:

                        Let every instrument be tuned for praise!

                        Let all rejoice who have a voice to raise!

                        And may God give us faith to sing always

                                    Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! [5]

 

                                                                                    Anne Knight Hoey

                                                                                    St. Michael’s Church

                                                                                    Austin, Texas

                                                                                    April 12, 2003