Reflections for A Celebration of Memories
Saturday, December 01, 2018
Cassaday-Turkle-Christian Funeral and Cremation Service
Let’s be honest with each other. In a perfect world, all of us would have something else to do today. But it is precisely because this isn’t a perfect world that we’re struggling. We’re here because someone that means something to us is missing this Christmas. Four years ago, our family buried my father just before Thanksgiving and this summer we unexpectedly lost my second oldest brother, Dean. But all of us are here because the world we live in is, obviously, not perfect. But even in an imperfect world, those of us who are struggling can come together and struggle together. In a lot of ways, struggling together can be a like a club for lonely people. When lonely people come together, they become just a little bit less lonely. Loneliness shared weighs us down just a little bit less. In the same way, people who grieve together, and share their grief with one another, discover that their burden has grown a little lighter, the room has become a little less dark, and the future filled with just a little more hope.
And so, I’m glad to be here with you, I’m glad that you could be here with me, and I hope that together we can shine some light into a dark corner of our lives.
I want to share a couple of stories with you this evening. The first begins with an American hero who served in both WW2 and in the Korean conflict, flying 100 combat missions in six months’ time, and earning the distinguished flying cross and the Air Medal with an oak leaf cluster before eventually becoming a NASA test pilot, Mercury and Gemini astronaut, and was ultimately killed in the Apollo 1 fire during launch testing. Of course, I’m talking about Gus Grissom, but that’s not the story that I want to focus on. Instead, I want to think about the widow of Gus Grissom, Betty Moore Grissom. But the funny thing is, I really can’t tell you a lot about her. I spent a considerable amount of time searching for information about what Betty did and how she lived after Gus’ death, but other than her obituary and a few comments about Gus’ infidelity, the only thing that anyone seems to remember about Betty is that she raised her two sons, got them through school at Gus’ alma mater, Perdue University, and that she successfully sued the manufacturer of the capsule that was responsible for the Apollo 1 fire. It’s quite possible that Betty got stuck but it might just be that she preferred to live her life in private. From what we know, Betty still raised two sons, kept watch over Gus’ legacy, and did what she could to make sure that people remembered the good that Gus had done. You see, when someone once asked Betty why she stayed with Gus even though everyone knew he had girlfriends on the side, she basically said, “I knew he loved me most.”
Just last year, only months before she passed away, Betty made one last trip to the annual memorial for the Apollo 1 astronauts. You see, after the fire and the ensuing investigation, some of the launch pad was torn down, but much of it was left intact, and officially classified as “Abandoned in place” as a memorial to the three men who died there. And every year, family, friends, guests, astronauts, NASA officials, and a few others visit the brass marker there, remember the legacy of those men, and honor their lives.
So, what’s my point in all of this?
Even if Betty Grissom got stuck in her grief, she knew two things. First, although Gus Grissom was human and had flaws, although he was far from perfect, Betty chose to remember the good. Betty Grissom never focused on the pain, but instead focused on Gus’ legacy, his memory, and on raising two sons that would make him proud. NASA, as an organization, did something very similar. Although NASA had disagreements and arguments with both Gus and with Betty, some very public, NASA didn’t focus on that, instead they chose to focus on moving forward into a brighter future while remembering the legacy of the Apollo 1 astronauts and their contributions to the program.
Honestly, this is healthy, and we do this all the time.
We remember that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, we remember that nearly half of the delegates to the first Constitutional Convention were slave owners, and we remember that Winston Churchill was a racist. But those aren’t the things that we dwell on. Instead, we choose to remember their legacies and their positive contributions to history.
We honor their lives and remember the good. We shouldn’t forget that our loved ones were flawed, but we choose to remember the best of them and keep alive the memories of the good that they did, the legacy that they left, and the reasons that we loved them.
Let’s take a break for minute.
Here’s what I want you to do.
Close your eyes and remember. Remember the people that you’ve lost. Picture them in your mind.
What did they do, what action did they take, what words did they say, that told you that they loved you?
What did they do that allowed you to experience joy?
What did they do that made you laugh?
What did they do that inspired you, or encouraged you, to become a better person?
If you had 30 seconds to tell me who and what they were, what words would you use?
Remember their love, remember their passion, their forgiveness, their laughter, remember those things that make their memories shine and which make your heart warm.
Scripture tells us that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. Our loved ones are watching and they don’t want us to get stuck.
You can open your eyes now.
But that isn’t all that there is. There’s another message that we need to remember, and for that I want to tell you the story of Elisabeth Elliot. Some of you may have heard of her, but the odds are that many of you haven’t. Back in 1956, Elisabeth Elliot’s husband, Jim, along with five other missionaries, made contact with the Huaorani people in the jungles of eastern Ecuador. While they had spent months exchanging gifts and building trust between them, at one meeting along the river, tribesmen attacked the five missionaries and killed all five men.
Elisabeth Elliot was faced with a choice. She could, along with several of the other widows and their families, take her daughter and return home to the United States or, she could stay and do what she could. Despite the urgings of her family and many of her friends back home, she chose to stay. Two years later, Elisabeth and her daughter Valerie moved into the Huaorani village with the same men who had killed her husband and she eventually befriended them. In 1969 she remarried, in 1974 she became an adjunct professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, about the same time, she also worked as a consultant on the project to write the New International Version of the bible, and from 1988 to 2001 she could be heard across the country on her syndicated radio show, “Gateway to Joy.” If that wasn’t enough, in 1957, Elisabeth Elliot wrote a book, “Through Gates of Splendor” about their missionary journey and her husband’s killing, and over the course of her life followed that up by writing more than twenty more books, as well as making book tours and public speaking engagements all over the world until her death in 2015 at the age of 88.
So why am I telling you all this? Why should we care about the widow of a missionary who died in 1958?
Because Elisabeth Elliot knew something important.
Elisabeth Elliot knew that despite her loss, and despite the trauma that she had suffered, that her work wasn’t finished, that there was more that God intended for her to do with her life. It wasn’t always easy. When I heard her radio show, I remember her telling someone who was experiencing grief and loss that during some of the hardest times of her life, when it she didn’t know how she could go on, she remembered a piece of advice that had been given to her. She remembered to “Do the next thing.” Don’t stop. Don’t get stuck. Do something. Do the next thing. In fact, so important was this piece of advice, that Elisabeth Elliot often quoted a poem about it entitled, not surprisingly, “Do The Next Thing.”
Do The Next Thing
(a poem quoted by Elisabeth Elliot)
At an old English Parsonage down by the sea,
there came in the twilight a message to me.
Its quaint Saxon legend deeply engraven,
that, as it seems to me, teaching from heaven.
And all through the hours the quiet words ring,
like a low inspiration, “Do the next thing.”
Many a questioning, many a fear,
many a doubt hath its quieting here.
Moment by moment, let down from heaven,
time, opportunity, guidance are given.
Fear not tomorrow, child of the King,
trust that with Jesus, do the next thing.
Do it immediately, do it with prayer,
Do it reliantly, casting all care.
Do it with reverence, tracing his hand,
Who placed it before thee with earnest command.
Stayed on omnipotence, safe ‘neath His wing,
Leave all resulting, do the next thing.
Looking to Jesus, ever serener,
working or suffering be thy demeanor,
in His dear presence, the rest of His calm,
the light of His countenance, be thy psalm.
Do the next thing.
Sometimes, in the midst of our grief, all that we can manage is to… do the next thing, to survive. But the thing that the life of Elisabeth Elliot should teach every one of us is that as long as we draw breath, our life isn’t over. Our grief isn’t the end. We cannot get stuck and wallow in our grief.
Do the next thing.
And keep on doing the next thing, and the next thing, and the next…
God has plans for you, your family has need of you, your life still has purpose, there are still things for you to do. Yes, we should honor the memories of the ones that we have lost, but we don’t honor them by getting stuck. We also need to explore and to discover what’s next. What does God, what does life, have in store for us? Regardless of the past, regardless of our grief or our suffering, we hold in our hands the keys to our future and it is never too late to begin writing the next chapter.
You are the hero of the story that you are writing every day by living your life. The next chapter of your life has not yet been written. Don’t you dare write a story about a hero who got stuck and stayed at home and never did anything interesting ever again. Don’t write a story about a hero who got stuck. Discover, explore, become who you were made to be tomorrow. Imagine who you could be, imagine what the hero of your story would do, imagine what your legacy could be, imagine what you would like to be remembered for. Get out there, travel, explore, write books, tell stories, paint pictures, dance, live life, invest yourself in others, and don’t forget… to love.
Merry Christmas.
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Pastor Partridge 