From the memorial service earlier this week...

Isaiah 25: 6-8a
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.

Abundance

I think most gathered here would agree that Dad was a man who appreciated details….and so here is a detail….40,752,000…Give or take a few hundred…that’s the number of minutes that Big Daddy blessed the earth….40,752,000…It seems like so many….So many more than we might be able to imagine. And yet…most of us sitting here, I imagine, wish there could have been a few hundred thousand more healthy, pain free moments for him…We wanted more than the 23,500,000 million he spent as a husband and father…even though we had so many….we wanted more.

And that’s only natural…but today our scripture passages (Also the end of John 6 and Psalm 34) remind us that those almost 41 million minutes are but a part…a small part of the life of the child of God F___ and A___ named (Big Daddy) so many years ago…For the life we gather to celebrate today is not a life that ended on Wednesday…but a life that is eternal...a life that, in the arms of our loving God, stretches beyond any time that we can imagine…That is the promise of the resurrection that K read about in the John passage a few minutes ago…and as difficult as it may be for those of us he leaves behind…our faith tells us that that is a reason to celebrate…not with smiles and cheers perhaps…but with confidence that despite the pain of loss we feel, he is beyond that pain and loss…beyond the frustrations and struggles of this terrible disease that took him from us…

Dad is in that place of mystery that none of us can claim to fully comprehend…but we can hear the promises and believe…the promise that Dad claims his place in the Resurrection…the promise that for Dad and so many we have loved and lost….there is a feast laid…a feast Isaiah says is beyond the most amazing celebration we can imagine…And that some day in God’s good time, when at last the shroud of death is indeed no more, we will join in that feast…for all eternity…and counting our days, or our minutes, no matter how many millions, will seem laughable…

The image of that feast has resonated with me so many times in the past months…As Mom and the doctors sought after ways of making sure that Dad got the nutrition he needed….I couldn’t help but reflect on the place that bounteous meals have had in our lives together…

Think about if for a moment…those of you who cherish memories with Dad….How many of them involved sharing a table…breaking bread together…and, okay, let’s admit it, for some of us…sharing some of those well aged wines that Isaiah speaks of….

So many memories of Dad are memories of abundant meals, plentiful celebrations….Dozens of Thanksgivings where he hosted, carved the birds and made the toasts---including toasts to new families formed and children welcomed…. Or the parties…those amazing parties that he and Mom would throw for the extended family or the (Company) gang, or Bridge Club, or PTA, or (My Mom’s Posse)….or let’s face it…any group that Mom and Dad could think of to bring together for food and fellowship—for the sharing of lives that only happens over a shared meal.

But the abundance that was central who Big Daddy was didn’t stop at the table…It was integral to who he was…central to his vision of God and God’s Creation…and particularly in these last few years, God’s Grace…

We know that Dad was a man who understood what it was to need. As a young child, he saw his parents’ struggle…the recycled clothes from his uncle, the times like most children of the depression when what he needed or wanted and what he had didn’t add up to the same thing.

But here’s the amazing part of it…Unlike so many ….Dad never seemed to define himself by what he didn’t have…by the experiences he hadn’t had, or the things or hopes that weren’t fulfilled. That kind of negative thinking just didn’t jive with the overarching abundance that was at the center of his life…The abundant love he received from his parents and family…and in time, from Mom….the abundant curiosity that drove him to chemistry and to a mastery of minutia that has surely boggled every mind with whom he came in contact…the abundant grace he came to understand was at the core of his relationship with his Maker and his Redeemer.

Having received much, in return he lived abundantly …Think about Dad’s zealous approach to a task or problem at work…or the expectations he placed on himself in providing for his family….or his enthusiasm (positive or negative) for the particular placement of his golf shot….or the concentration he would shower on finding the best place to cast his line—or the best worm to use….or the strength (and, well, the length) of his opinions…..or the profundity of his questions…..or the showers of love and pride that marked his time as a grandfather….or the depth of his devotion to Mom and their life together….or the number of rolls of scotch tape he kept in his desk—just in case…or even his intensity in everything from woodworking, to tying flies, to mastering the fishing game on his new Nintendo WII ….Abundance…abundance…abundance…

It is probably too simple to say that the world is full of two kinds of people—regardless of their economic status…those who live in world of abundance and those who live in a world scarcity…but who could doubt that Big Daddy lived in a world of abundance…

Today’s passages both from the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament speak of a divine love that is not part of a world of scarcity…but abundance…they speak of a God who wills that the Son lose nothing and noone in the world….they speak of a Divine Love that provides what is needed….they speak of a feast that celebrates the end of death for ALL….in short they speak of an abundant God….

In this world…love is not a zero sum game…it cannot run out—it never dies…In this world….grace is not something a miserly God dispenses reluctantly but a shower of blessing cast as wide as love itself by the One who is love incarnate.

That is the God Big Daddy worshiped….a God whose love was so great that he was willing to live and suffer and die…and whose love was so greater still that it even conquered death…once…for all…

I look around the room and see the legacy of Big Daddy…the legacy of those almost 41 million minutes…it’s there in D’s delightfully wicked sense of humor….in H’s dimple when he smiles….in K’s effervescence and humor….in T’s endless enthusiasm for the new opportunities of each day….in Mom’s devotion to those she loves…..But it’s not just there…in those of us who bear his name or carry his genes….It’s in each one of us who have been blessed to know, to love, to experience, the abundant life of Big Daddy….and that is how, even among us, Dad lives on in a way…in the memories to be sure…but also in the ways each of us have been changed by our encounters with Dad’s overflowing spirit.

For that is the great gift of abundance centered in God’s abundant love and grace…it can’t help but overflow…it can’t help but roll down like waters…it can’t help but transform.

And so that is our challenge, I suppose…and our invitation…to live into the abundance that we are offered in and through the Christ who even now welcomes Dad among the saints…To celebrate what we have…what we have been given….the grace of Christ….our talents, our families, our opportunities…our callings….and even our challenges…and to live with a gratitude so abundant that we use all we have been given to further the coming kingdom of the one who gave us those 40 odd million minutes with Dad…and who—perhaps more importantly Dad would probably tell us—gives us each this moment…and the next…moments we can share with one another.

In thanksgiving to God for a life well lived…for a life lived abundantly here with us…and now lived eternally in plenty that we cannot even fathom….we echo but amend the words of scripture and say “Well done, O good and faithful...abundant…servant…may flights of angels sing you to your rest….” Amen.