From the Pulpit:

 
Tag! You're It.

Just about every congregation is unique. Whether we are talking about Sunday morning church or any other gathering in the name of
Christ, I doubt that we ever get exactly the same configuration of people gathered, but not many are as distinctly defined as the one gathered here today. We are all here today because Bob Wormley touched our lives. His spirit left this earthly sphere last Saturday, his body finally gave out and his soul joined God in heaven, but we are here to celebrate all the ways that his life gave us life, all the ways that his spirit touched our spirits and all the ways he ignited in us the light of true Christ-living.

By the time I got to meet Bob, just a little less than five years ago, his physical liveliness was already a bit compromised, so I didn’t get to experience firsthand the vibrant, strong man that most of you knew and that you most lovingly have told me about. But I want you to know that his love of life and that special spark still glowed in him. The twinkle in his eye did not dim. I cherish the memory of the times I spent with him even when he couldn’t speak all that much or get around easily. The preciousness of Bob Wormley was still there.

I want to share with you a poem that has meant a lot to me. It is strange, but it is when we look most squarely at death that we learn the most about living. This was written by a woman who lives on Cape Cod , Mary Oliver, a no-nonsense person who speaks to my soul. It is called “When Death Comes.”

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

It is that last line that jumped out at me as I thought of Bob. He did not end up simply having visited this world. From his youth he seized life and showed it how he meant to live it. He claimed his right to be successful, not only in business but in his personal life as we can see in his devoted family and friends. He was a founding member of the church where I am privileged to serve, a parish that is still quirky and warm and diverse and infused with the Holy Spirit. He served as its first senior warden, a very high honor, and a very big commitment. He was devoted to his lord, Jesus Christ. He loved this earth, and that is a very big thing to say, that he rejoiced in God’s creation, which doesn’t get any bigger than it is in Texas and Alaska . And whatever he loved, he shared with the people he loved.  

In the gospel lesson we just read, the evangelist John reports Jesus’ teaching to his disciples that he is going ahead of them to prepare a home for them in heaven, a dwelling place suited especially for each of them individually. We are convicted that Bob is in that dwelling place right now, that he has found himself on the shore of a lake or the bank of a river with mountain peaks as a backdrop and trout jumping. Sounds like heaven to me. But the odd thing is that Jesus’ teaching is not all that much about heaven, as true and good as heaven is. When Jesus returned from the horizon of death and spent forty days with his dearest friends, he didn’t say a word to them about what death was like. Surely if he had, somebody would have written it down. No, he taught them how to live this life.  

You all have precious memories of Bob. Each and every one of you has a memory of something that nobody else knows about – a private fleeting moment, a joke, a gift, a meal, a conversation – I ask you, as you think about him in the coming days, to write it down, to share it with Trudy and his children. Nothing is too trivial. It will mean the world to them. It will help them round out their memories of him. There will be good time at the reception this afternoon to share these memories, or in the days and months to come, pick up the phone and say, I was thinking about Bob and I’ll bet you don’t know about the time….And what you will be sharing is what Bob taught you about being fully alive.  

Jesus said, I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly. God came to earth in the human body of Jesus to teach us what a precious gift it is for us to be alive, to teach us how profoundly we are loved, each of us as idiosyncratic and odd and imperfect as we might be, each of us fully loved and created in the image of God’s own self. The very big deal is not so much about our going to heaven as it is about God’s coming to earth. One wise theologian was asked about how to know if somebody was going to heaven or to hell, and he said, if you want to know where you are going, look at where you are. A great mystic of the church said, it is heaven all the way to heaven.  

I don’t know if Bob would have claimed to be a great theologian. But, knowing him, even in the limited way I was graced by, he showed me with his joy of living what it meant that God had come here to fill this life with his presence. I want to tell you that on the few occasions when his family and their helpers were able to get him up and dressed and in the car to come to church, when he got there, you would have thought Jesus himself had arrived. And he had. What Bob taught us with his generosity of spirit,

the glint in his eye, the fullness of his being, is that that Christ spirit has been given to all of us. That’s what happened when God came to earth. We are infused with it, and we are to live it, and living it, we are to teach others what it is to live abundantly. Heaven – well that’s simply what happens when we have lived this life in the fullness of gratitude and humility and joy.  

There is not the slightest chance that Bob simply visited this world, any more than that God simply visited this world or that Jesus simply visited this world. Bob was the bridegroom taking the world into his arms.  Bob, and Bob as he lives on in the heart of Trudy and his children and his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren and his friends, Bob was and is a living witness to Christ’s own presence to this day. We have so much to thank him for.  

And I thank you for being here today to be witnesses to that love embodied in his life.

I think Bob might very well say, with a twinkle in his eye, Tag. You’re it.  And because of what he gave you, what he gave you of himself and of his joy in living, with the grace of God, you are up to it.  

Pass it along.  

Amen.