What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
These are the words of the Apostle Paul to the Christian community in Rome. They are also the words read at the June 20th funeral for our brother Fabricio.
When I sit down to plan funerals with family members, I offer this reading from Romans as one possibility but I often encourage the family to choose a reading from Jesus’ own words. “I am the resurrection and the life,” or “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” or “in my Father’s house are many dwelling places.” I am hopeful they will choose a reading in which Jesus’ own words speak to them. My efforts are in part because the Apostle Paul has always been a secondary figure in my faith life. However, after Monday, June 20, my opinion of Paul’s words has changed.
Paul’s opening question has been my question over the past weeks as our congregation, as a community and as each of us as individuals, has tried to come to terms with the loss of a beautiful young man full of life, sharing joy with every smile. “Dear God, what are we to say about these things?” I confess I am at a loss (and many of you know me to never be at a loss for words).
A Sunday sermon quoting Fabricio’s own word, “hermosa” (beautiful), brought a little light to our darkness, and the visitation, funeral, and reception, as Ascension offered hospitality in ways I could only have imagined, gave me pause for a moment of deep pride in this community that lives out its brokenness through the lens of the cross of Christ. I have been grateful for countless hugs and words of comfort and prayers. It has been my desire all long to remind all of us that Jenny and Carlos, Edwin and Sarah, and Paul and Shirley deserve that compassion long before the rest of us. I stand in awe of God’s presence and power through the junior high students who loved Fabricio as one of their own – how they have honored Fabricio’s memory and tended to each other. I was grateful for Pastor Walter and Pastor Michelle for their ability to share the promise of God’s love, their gift of interpretation of Spanish to English and English to Spanish, and for Pastor Walter’s tending of a family I was unable to tend in their own language. I am also grateful for Pastor Walter’s care and his tears shed at both the loss of Fabricio and the promised welcome and homecoming for Fabricio at the gates of heaven. I am thankful for the Bishop’s presence to honor the family and the great gift of Pastor Angela who spoke to Jenny and Carlos as only she could, as a pastor to the Aparicio family and as a parent who has lost a child. I am so grateful for her words of faith in God and the explanation of drinking double fisted from a deep well of grief in one hand and a deep source of joy in Jesus in the other. And finally, I give thanks for Tony, who put into words the deep grief felt by Pam and myself. To hear Tony speak of Fabricio as a student he loved as his own son was in some ways too much to bear. Yet, I saw in Tony’s eyes the deep love and pain for this loss and his inability to do anything but love Carlos and Jenny, Karlita, and Johnson.
It will take time for Carlos and Jenny to learn this new world where the voice of their son is no longer heard. And all of you, members of the family of Ascension, give yourselves time to honor this life and your own suffering in the midst of this loss. I have come to understand that Fabricio’s death has touched our congregation in ways I did not comprehend in the days leading up to the funeral. Fabricio and his family attended the early service. Most of the junior high students on retreat and their parents attend the late service. Pam attends the late service but has been a member for her whole life. And who among you does not know Tony or myself? Where the death of any member of the church tears the fabric of the community apart – Fabricio’s life and death have woven the fabric of our community all the tighter for the ways in which we have found a communal suffering in the tragic loss of this beautiful young life.
So, dear God, I ask the question again, “What then are we to say about these things?” Perhaps for now, the words are less important than the touch, the hug, the smile, the tears, the tending to the Aparicio Family and the Wehmeier family and to each other as the family of Ascension. And maybe, just maybe, in the tending, we will begin to see healing, and in the healing, we will see the glory of God.
Peace my friends, deep peace be with each of you; God’s deep peace be with us all,
Pastor Chris Marien
(This article first appeared in Ascension’s July 2016 newsletter).
One of my favorite authors is a woman named Jan Richardson. She writes in a way that shapes her words into pure inspiration. I find myself returning to her words again and again as I travel this journey of faith and life. A couple of years ago, Richardson lost her husband after a brief and complicated illness. Over the past couple of years, Richardson has explored her grief as she has wandered the path of love and loss and anger and sadness and resurrection. What I am most grateful for in Richardson’s words is her honest and straightforward heading as she has undertaken her own journey into the unknown, unplanned world she never expected to entertain. So…in celebration of the season of Epiphany – the appearing of the Magi and the overwhelming presence of the light of Christ upon the world – I leave you with these words, written by Richardson, as a blessing in these first days of the new year. May God bless your journeys – each and every step.
