Angelic Instructions – An Easter Sermon reflecting on Matthew 28. 1-10 – Preached at The Dunmore Presbyterian Church, Dunmore, PA on April 5, 2026  

One of our family stories involves my wife and an on-line, on-camera conversation with our granddaughter when she was a toddler. Jan told Addie about taking our dog, Maggie, for a walk at our home in Susquehanna County.  Then as now, we share the acreage with eight or ten deer that feed in our meadow. If we’re out and about, they’ll give us a look and go back to manicuring the field. 

            That day, one of the young fawns, a curious sort, made a move toward Jan and the dog.  The brown bundle of energy was dancing and prancing the way she does when it plays with its twin.  Jan told our little one “the deer wanted to play with Maggie, but I think Maggie was scared of the little deer.”

            The little person on the screen looked at her grand-mother, pointed a finger for emphasis, and summoning all the authority granted to someone two-plus years old, said: “Grammy, when I come to your house, I tell Maggie: “No be scared, Maggie!”

            Angel-speak from our little one! “No be scared.” “Do not be afraid.” Martin Copenhaver calls it “an angel’s calling card.”[i]

            In Matthew’s Easter morning story, both the angel and Jesus speak to the women, “Do not be afraid.” The phrase links the last stories of the Gospels with the first.  What did the angel say to Mary before telling her she was about to be with child? “Do not be afraid.” What did the angel in Joseph’s dream say that change his mind about divorcing his pregnant fiancée? “Do not be afraid.”  What did the angel say to “certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay keeping their sheep?” “Do not be afraid.”

            Like the other Gospels, Matthew tells of Easter morning happenings the others don’t.  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John differ in telling who went to the tomb and why; when and how the stone covering the tomb’s entrance was rolled away; who spoke to whom, and who did or not see Jesus. Each of the Easter morning reporters had some things they wanted their readers to notice.  Today we’re focusing on what Matthew wants us to see. In other words, this is Matthew’s story and we’re sticking to it!

            To do that, we must turn back a page or two to look and listen and feel what was going on in the day leading up to that morning full of surprises. No need to go back and replay all the grim and grisly scenes most people avoid by being elsewhere on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  Even those services of worship usually stop telling the story at the point where a Roman Centurion at the foot of the cross speaks, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”

Matthew’s crucifixion account doesn’t end there. It concludes with a list of witnesses and their credentials: He writes: “Many women were also there, looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” (Mt. 27. 55-56

            In two scenes we rarely hear about, Matthew tells what happened next, setting the stage for the events we have heard about this morning.  Taking us back to just before sunset on Good Friday, Matthew lets us know how the women knew where to go at Sunday’s sunrise. He writes:      “When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn from the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.” (Mt. 27. 57-61)

            In Matthew, the women don’t go to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. They don’t have to do that because they have witnessed how Joseph prepared the body for burial. The presence of the two Mary’s in the background, at the foot of the cross, as Joseph rolled the stone to seal the tomb, and lastly as the angel rolled it away, stand as the two individuals required by Jewish law to give testimony.

            Back to Joseph for just a moment. Though he doesn’t figure in the story of Easter morning, his respectful care of the body of Jesus, the use of his own brand new tomb, the effort to roll the stone, point to one reason for fear in his or any other life: going against the crowd. N.T. Wright points to Joseph as one of those individuals who summon courage at just the right moment to do what needs to be done.  Joseph steps into the picture as one of those people who put their own grief aside to take care of business when death intrudes on a circle of family and friends.

            Wright says this about Joseph’s approach to Pontius Pilate: “Peter and the others had run away to hide because they were afraid of being thought accomplices of Jesus. Joseph had no such qualms even after Jesus’ death.” Wright continues: “Some of Jesus’ followers might well have thought that, if the Romans had crucified him, he can’t have been the Messiah, so he must have been a charlatan. They might willingly have let the Romans bury him in a common grave, as they usually did after a cruci-fixion. But Joseph didn’t see it that way. A clean linen cloth; the tomb he had prepared for himself; and the security of a great stone.”[ii]

            Matthew includes a second story before moving on to tell about the two Mary’s going to view the tomb early on the first day of the week.  The calendar has dropped a page to the floor as Matthew adds another feature that comes into play in his Easter story.

            “The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, ‘Sir, we remember what that imposter said while he was still alive. ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Therefore command the tomb to be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception would be worse than the first.’  Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.’  So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.” (Mt. 27.62-66)

            Contemplate that meeting of religious and political power brokers for a moment.  On one level it is a simple story of conspirators cooking up a cover story.  On another it is the height of hypocrisy.  Those who so often pointed the finger at Jesus for defiling the Sabbath by works of healing are doing business on the holy day. Pick your caption for the picture: “Do as I say, not as I do,” “The End justifies the Means,” or “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”  Whichever we choose, it should not surprise us that such backroom deal making went on. I’ve heard such shenanigans still go on, haven’t you?

            Now we’re ready to see what happens when all heaven breaks loose! How do you describe something that is indescribable?  In the Gospel of Matthew, the answer is bring on the angels!  Heaven’s messengers haven’t been seen in the Gospel since the last of Joseph’s dreams back when Jesus was a boy.  Now one of them is back to announce the Resurrection.

            The gray of the dawn is suddenly brightened as the angel descends. Apparently, some angels have a heavy step, because his arrival on earth triggers an earthquake.  The angel steps toward the stone like Samson on the day he grasped the Philistine temple pillars and brought the house down.  With a mighty grunt, shoulder to the wheel, so to speak, the stone is rolled back from the tomb’s gaping mouth.  Dusting off angelic hands, the messenger climbs atop the stone and takes a breath before speaking to the startled women. Meanwhile the soldiers sent to make sure the seal on the tomb remained unbroken are quaking in the gladiator boots, laid out prone like the rest of the cemetery inhabitants.

            An earthquake occurs…all hell breaks loose…and fear is rampant. We’ve seen evidence of that whenever a quake strikes and the security cameras roll.  Images captured show groceries dumped from shelves onto the floor, chandeliers swaying, and volunteers digging in rubble to save people trapped beneath crumbled buildings. People running out of buildings in panic after each aftershock. 

Only in Matthew are we invited to witness who did, and by inference, who did not open that grave.  Barbara Brown Taylor shows us what Matthew is up to, explaining, “A grave robber did not do it.  A Messiah sympathizing soldier did not do it.  A band of guerilla disciples certainly did not do it. An angel of the Lord did it.”[iii] Matthew’s point is summed up by a phrase we heard earlier from Psalm 118: “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.”

            God did it.  Each time Jesus told his disciples he would be arrested, tried and killed, he had told them what God would do.  He didn’t say “I’m going to pull off the Great Escape!”  He said that he would be raised…something only God could do.  Now it had been done.

            The angel speaks.  And what does he say?  “Do not be afraid!”  But wait, there’s more!  There always is with an angel.  “Angel” means messenger and every one of them had something more to share once they offered those fear calming words: 

“I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him.” (Mt. 28. 6-7)

            Perhaps this is the moment to talk about the difference faith makes when it comes to facing fear.  The stricken soldiers, who are just there to do a job and collect a paycheck presumably hear all the angel says, but it means nothing to them. The women, on the other hand, who stuck with Jesus to the very last, who had heard what he taught, and in Mary Magdalene’s case, had been healed by Jesus, got it.

            Not only do they get it, they act on it.  They run to tell the disciples and come face to face with the Risen Lord. Though our translation told us he said: “Greetings!” in the original language he issued a command: “Rejoice!”  Once again they respond as a disciple should: they obey. They rejoice!  They “fall on their knees with their face to the Risen Son. O Lord, have mercy!”

            He does. He snaps them out of it with just the right words: “Do not be afraid!” Then reminds them they are messengers on a mission: “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, there they will see me.” And off they go again.  

“Do not be afraid.” What is it about those words?  Martin Copenhaver offers this: “When an angel says, “Do not be afraid,” or when Jesus says “Fear not,” it is not an assurance that nothing can go wrong, because often things do go wrong.  It is not assurance that everything turns out for the best, because, if we are honest about it, it seldom does.  Rather, it is assurance that, whatever may happen to us, whatever a day may hold, God has the power to strengthen us and uphold us;  that whatever we must face, we do not face it alone; that nothing we encounter is stronger than God’s love;  that ultimately God gets the last word; that in the end—and sometimes even before the end—God’s love is triumphant.”[iv]

            “Do not be afraid.”  What is it about those words?  Maybe it has something to do with who says them, and why.  Both the angel and Jesus speak those words to gain a hearing for the rest of what they have to say.  Both the angel and Jesus have comfort to offer along with a task for the women to do. The angel speaks of a reunion: “he is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him.” It turns out they don’t have to wait that long.  The task and the promise of renewed presence are there again.  “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, there they will see me.”

            Seeing Jesus must be the key. Experiencing the presence of Jesus is what Resurrection is all about.  Frederick Buechner wrote: “in the last analysis what convinced the people that Jesus had risen from the dead was not the absence of his corpse but his living presence.  And so it has been ever since.”[v]

            Why did the angel and Jesus insist on meeting in Galilee, the place where it had all begun by the lake?  Cameron Murchison provides this answer:  “The theological point of telling the disciples to meet him in Galilee is straightforward: the risen Jesus is to be expected in the places of his once and future ministry, in all those places of grace-full endeavor, where healing, feeding, teaching and even suffering are undertaken in his company.”[vi]

            “Do not be afraid.  Go and tell…”  It is in the combination of those words that we find direction for our lives.  Jesus is found when we get out of this place and do what he said, when we live up to our purpose as people called to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world.  We dis-cover ourselves in his company, whenever we offer a hand up instead of just a hand out; when we leave selfishness be-hind and embrace servanthood; when we refuse to cower before all the powers that think they are in charge, and in-stead bow to the One who came to serve not to be served.

            In Letters to a Young Doubter, the late William Sloan Coffin wrote: “Easter has less to do with one person’s escape from the grave than with the victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power.  And let us also emphasize this:  …Easter represents a demand as well as a pro-mise, a demand not that we sympathize with the crucified Christ, but that we pledge our loyalty to the Risen One.”[vii]

            So that is Matthew’s Easter story. A quiet dawn interrupted by an earthquake, and a lightning and thunder snow angel rolling the stone away to reveal God bringing life where there was death. Two faithful women, the last to see Jesus buried become the first to meet the risen Lord and to share his message. Our Risen Lord going to the Galilees we know, at home, at work, and all the other places where there are needs Christ sends us to meet. Go and tell, live and love, following “with reverent steps the great example of him whose work was doing good.”[viii]

 [i] Martin B. Copenhaver, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 2, (Louisville, KY, Westminster John
Knox Press, (c) 2010), p. 348
[ii] N.T. Wright, Lent for Everyone, Matthew, Year A, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), p. 141
[iii] Barbara Brown Taylor, Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Vol. 2, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), p.359
[iv] ibid., Copenhaver, p. 348 & 350
[v] Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life, San Francisco, Harper Collins, © 1992, p. 102
[vi] D. Cameron Murchison, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 2., Louisville, WJK, © 2010, p. 350
[vii] William Sloan Coffin, Letters to a Young Doubter, (Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox Press, (c) 2005)
[viii]John Greenleaf Whittier, “O Brother Man,” The Hymnal, (Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1933, Thirtieth Printing, 1962), Hymn 403, verse 3

On Sunday, March 15, 2026 it was my privilege to be the Guest Preacher at The Outer Banks Presbyterian Church in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.  The sermon was dealing with the story found in John 9. 1-41

Beware of the Illusion of Sightedness 

You may have seen it as the happy story on the evening news-- the one shown just before signing off. It featured a young boy, who was colorblind. Thanks to a pair of special lenses he was able to see colors for the first time in his life.  What his eyes suddenly saw was so over-whelming that he turned around and hugged his father who was sharing the moment with him.

Can you imagine what it must be like to suddenly see today’s bluebird sky and the variety of greens worn by the grass, pine, spruce and cedar?  An algae covered turtle climbing onto a log bleached gray by sun.  A squadron of brown Pelicans winging over a beige sand beach. What a sensory overload it must be to take a walk down the cereal aisle of a grocery store or stroll through The Elizabethan Gardens at the height of summer!

            Now imagine what it must have been like for that man in Jerusalem after his soak in the pool at Siloam discovering he could see muddy drops of water dripping back into the pool from his fingers and face.  Can you picture the expression of wonder as he notices the circles made as drops splash into the still water?  Watch him retrace his steps to the place where he had been sitting before, eyes darting this way and that taking in sights he passed all his life but now could see for the first time.  See his face light up with recognition when the voices of his neighbors begin their wondering.  “Is that him?” “No, just someone who looks like him.”  Did you notice his eyes get big as saucers when they looked perplexed each time he repeated “I am the man?”

            This very long story found in the Gospel of John is one in which we are invited to see ourselves in each of the people who spend a few moments at the center of the action.  As the disciples, the neighbors, the Pharisees, the parents, the formerly blind man and Jesus speak, we are invited to hear ourselves.  In doing so we may not like what we see or be pleased to hear an echo of our own voices.  Yet we might find incentive to examine ourselves and leave behind all the ways in which we blind our own eyes to the work of God occurring right under our noses.

            Let’s start with the disciples.  Their only contribution to the story is to ask a question prompted by the sight of the blind man begging.  “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  We do not fault them for their inquiring minds or their need to know. The question asked grew from the prevailing view of the time, that there was a connection between suffering and sin.

            If you were suffering, you must have sinned.  It was the same reasoning that Job’s friends used.  The Old Testament story debunked that worn out way of thinking, but that didn’t mean it had been put to rest. It rears its ugly head even today every time someone asks: “What sin did I commit that caused me to be brought low by cancer? What offence of mine is being repaid causing me to watch my child get lost in a drugged-out haze?  Did our communal iniquity ignite the fire that burned our beloved church to the ground? 

            Some lessons each generation must learn for itself. Some pay attention to history and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past…but most of us learn the stove is hot, not because our parents said so, but because we ignored what they said and found out the hard way.

            We stand with the disciples in needing to hear again (and again, and again) the answer Jesus offered: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned: he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

            Don’t be stymied by that answer, however. Don’t get the idea that God relegated this poor soul to a life of dark-ness just so the light of the world could chance upon him one day and make his useless orbs function. Take it as the teachable moment it was meant to be. God is all about bringing light where there is darkness; God is all about chasing us with goodness and mercy; God is all about inviting us to dwell in his house our whole lives long. So feed on the food fit for children of light found “in all that is good and right and true.”

            When we turn our attention to the neighbors in the story, the first question that arises is: why didn’t they know it was him? Did he look so different without his white cane and dark glasses? Or was it that he had blended into the scenery so well that they had never really looked at him before…you know, the way we avert our glance from the girl on the streetcorner playing her flute, with the case open at her feet to receive coins; or the dude with the cardboard sign at the intersection who walks past each driver’s window until the light turns green.

            If nothing else, their puzzled reaction to the suddenly sighted man leads us to question who we might be ignoring in our daily rounds. Who sits beside the roads we travel with needs we might meet, in need of love we’ve been called to share? Is the astonishment of the neighbors John’s version of Matthew’s “when did I see you hungry” revelation of when one did or did not respond to the least, the last of the lost? It leads to yet another question to ponder in these remaining Lenten days: what might we do to open our eyes so we might see and respond to those loved by Jesus?

            Sandwiched between the two interrogations of the man is the questioning of his parents by the Pharisees.  The authorities appear to be determined to show the healing to be a hoax, and to have their opinion of Jesus as a fake confirmed. The man’s parents, however, are only able to speak of what they know. There are only two facts they can verify: “Yes, this is our son. Yes, he was born blind.”

            They cannot, or perhaps, will not, say anymore. As John tells it, fear of losing their own standing in the community is the reason. The man’s parents stand before us as a reminder that even those closest to us are unable to speak for us about the gifts God has given us.

            Additionally, their part in the story allows us to ponder how much or how little we know about our children and grandchildren and the lives they lead. One writer points to “the paucity of intergenerational conversation.”[i] With the increase of time staring at little handheld screens, and the decrease of banter around the dinner table or in the car, the depth of our knowledge of those with whom we share life suffers. It leads us to wonder what we might do to foster communication, so we don’t find ourselves able to answer only: “we do not know, ask them.”

            With the disciples, neighbors, and the man’s parents out of the way, we’re left with the Pharisees in whom we may hear echoes of our own voices or see glimpses of our own behavior. The religious authorities in the story are prime of examples of what another writer calls “the illusion of sightedness.”[ii] Operating under what I call the curse of certainty, their view of Jesus is summed up in one sentence.  Speaking of Jesus they say: “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” (v. 16) It is confirmed in the second interview when they begin by trying to coach the man to say what they want to hear: “We know that this man is a sinner.” (v. 24)

            One hardly needs 20/20 vision to see how the visual acuity of the Pharisees decreases as the focus of the healed man increases. Anchored to their position that making a little healing mud on the Sabbath was work, and therefore, prohibited; bound by their view that any healing not a matter of life and death should wait for another day; they close their eyes in order not to affirm the miracle that should have led to celebration not condemnation.

            One doesn’t need progressive lenses to recognize how often the sin of certainty and the illusion of sightedness is found among us. “The leopard can’t change its spots,” we say of those about whom we have reached an irreversible verdict. “It is what it is and always will be,” we declare when unwilling to acknowledge it is possible for there to be a before and an after with a God-inspired change in the middle. And consider how often we’ve been asked to pretend we don’t see what a video clip clearly shows.

            The Pharisees in the story stand before us like a caution sign reading “Beware of the Illusion of Sightedness.  Each time with eyes clenched closed, they speak with such certainty, they remind us to reevaluate those opinions and positions we have taken that eliminate the possibility of God doing something new, different, amazing and graceful.

As the story of the man born blind begins, we see in the actions of Jesus the creative power of God. As in the creation story in Genesis, the dust of the earth and the water of life are combined. Darkness is overpowered in a “let there be light” moment.  The formerly blind man is a new creation by story’s end, a child of light able to “try and find out what is pleasing to the Lord,” as our reading from Ephesians urges us all to do.

 As the story comes to its end, we also see the shepherd’s heart revealed. Jesus seeks and finds the formerly blind man after he has been put out of the synagogue. Were we to read into the next chapter, we would discover that Jesus has much to say about what makes a good shepherd, and what a good shepherd does.  Put the two chapters together and you realize at the end of the blind man’s story we see the good shepherd at work bringing the newly sighted man into the fold.

 In between, as the formerly blind man tells and retells his story the Gospel writer allows us to see how faith grows gradually in the heart of a person on their way to becoming a believer. At the beginning, all he can tell his neighbors is “the man called Jesus” healed him. The first time the Pharisees challenge him after he tells them his story he identifies Jesus as “a prophet.”

            Each time he tells the story his spiritual vision gets clearer.  In the longer interchange with the Pharisees, after his parents confirmed he was really and truly, cross-our-hearts-and-hope-to-die—born blind, he has put two and two together. He tells the blind guides before him: “If this man was not from God, he could do nothing.”

Finally, when the Pharisees send him away and the Good Shepherd finds him and reveals himself to him, the formerly blind man takes the final step and says, “Lord, I believe,” and worshiped the source of his sight, and his whole new life.

The contrast between his sight, both physical and spiritual, and the blindness of the Pharisees leads the eagle eyed among Gospel readers to realize the story was summarized on the very first page of John’s Gospel where it said: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name he gave power to become children of God...”  (John 1. 10-13)

            The progression of the formerly blind man’s observations offer us the opportunity to contemplate our own journeys of faith. How is your view of Jesus today different from the first time you sang “Jesus Loves Me” in Sunday School? When you hear a pastor ask new members, “Who is your Lord and Savior?” do you silently answer along with them, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior!” Trace and celebrate the way your own relationship to the Lord has deepened over time. Consider how Jesus has opened your eyes to the blessings God sends your way every day.

            Each time the man at the center of the story tells his story there is a reaction. The neigh-bors are confused; the Pharisees are resistant; his parents are fearful. Did you notice what is missing through it all? No one reaches out to celebrate with him the gift he has received. No one does anything other than question how he got from his lonely before to his new after. No one attempts to help him navigate the world he can finally see.

            No one, except Jesus, who seeks him out at the end. Jesus searches and finds him, offers him a new family, a new relationship with the one who gave him the twin gifts of physical sight and spiritual insight.

            What Jesus did for that man he has done for many and continues to do, which is why we’ll sing now the musical prayer with fervor:

                        Open my eyes that I may see

                        Glimpses of truth thou hast for me...

                        ...Silently now I wait for thee

                        Ready my God Thy will to see.

                        Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine.[iii]

 

---

[i] Gary V. Simpson, Feasting on the Gospels, John, Vol. 1, Chapters 1-9, (Louisville: KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), p. 298

[ii] Cynthia A. Jarvis, Feasting on the Gospels, John, Vol. 1, Chapters 1-9, (Louisville: KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), p. 286

[iii] from the hymn, Open My Eyes That I May See

 

When Promises Become Prayers

December promises

first heard while sitting in a pew

then spoken whilst standing in pulpits

become an aging man’s prayers.

Words of an ancient prophet

sprinkle seeds of hope

in a heart wearied

by hopelessness

spread upon amber waves of grain

by purveyors of hate.

 

The first prayer bursts forth in frustration and anger

occasioned by shocking evidence

that the ways of our humble, servant Savior

are exploited, abused and ignored

necessitating a major course correction.

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

and that we may walk in his paths.”[i]

Wonderful Counselor, hear our prayer!

 

The second prayer grows from endless reports

of homes destroyed, infrastructure fractured,

children starved or carried to premature graves

as drones and missiles rain bombs

launched by neighbors who neither love one another

nor do unto others as they’d like done to them

“For all the boots of the tramping warriors

and all the garments rolled in blood

shall be burned as fuel for the fire.”[ii]

Prince of Peace, hear our prayer!

 

Finally, a prayer transforms what once was

and what will be to what is,

asking it to be true for our time too:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”[iii]

Everlasting Father, hear our prayer!

                        James E. Thyren

December 2025

[i] Isaiah 2. 3
[ii] Isaiah 9. 5
[iii] Isaiah 9. 2

 

  1928-2025

Homily                        Celebration of the life of Doris Ackerman Brett              November 8, 2025

                            Union Congregational Church, Montclair, New Jersey
                                                            Ecclesiastes 3. 1-8

A few hours after Doris died, I drove to West Caldwell to share the news with her older sister, my mother Jean, who at a few weeks shy of her 101^st birthday, frequently asked: “Have you heard any news about Doris.” Surprised by my appearance in her room in the early evening, she demanded to know what I was doing there.  “I have news about Doris,” I replied, and proceeded to pass on what I knew.  She sat in silence a while, characteristically asked for details I couldn’t provide, reflected on being the only one left, and then she said of her sister:

            “She loved to talk!” Mom recalled how, on many Saturday nights, the two aging sisters, long widowed, and no longer able to be out and about, spent time talking on the phone. She said she would miss that. Truth be told she had missed that for some time already. Sadly, the time for that season had already passed. The “time to mourn” of which Ecclesiastes speaks, began for many of us when our family’s storyteller went silent and could no longer hold the floor humorously recounting something that happened to her or the people she loved.

            That said, we can move beyond “the time to weep, to embrace “the time to laugh,” and leave the “time to mourn,” and welcome “a time to dance,” which I’ll come back to later.

            One of my earliest memories is of Aunt Doris, the storyteller, seated across the dining room table on a Sunday afternoon telling of her adventures on a cruise on the Queen of Bermuda, or a ski club trip to Vermont. Across the years the stories grew to include Uncle Dave, and the arrival of Linda and Sue and the joy they brought to her life.  And we looked forward to hearing the latest chapter in the escapades of Tippy and Snoopy, chewing a hole in a sport coat to get at some chocolate in a pocket, or ripping out the headliner of Dave’s big, green Chevy.

            Until a few years ago, I could count on a phone call on an evening in February. She’d start by thanking me for flowers sent for her birthday, tell me not to bother next year, and then launch into a fresh batch of stories that now included Randy and Sarah, Carolyn, Dave and Brett. The dark winter night always became brighter as she told a story on herself of a recent incident that presented a challenge.

            Doris knew well the pendulum swings presented by Ecclesiastes.  Born into a happy family in 1928, the Great Depression descended in 1929, cast a shadow, and brought about changes she was too young to remember. Her father’s place in a family business ended. The family moved from Jersey City to Montclair, residing at times in a double block with Uncle Jim and Aunt Grace and her cousins on the other side. At other times they moved into a house owned by her grandfather, which had been vacant for a while. My mother recalls that the windowsills had to be replaced because squirrels trapped in the house had chewed them in an effort to escape. Their father’s health deteriorated, and he didn’t live to see Doris graduate high school. Nevertheless, she thrived, entered the working world and received training at Katie Gibbs, providing the skills she would put to work again after David’s illness and death in 1979.

            Those days in the last years of the 1970’s, a time when David’s health was breaking down, became a time for Doris to build up and persevere, embracing the “for worse” and “in sickness” of the wedding vows that had replaced the “better” and the “health.”  They too were times when mourning began long before a last breath brought a time of peace.

            Before that life was pleasant and memories were made on Woodlawn Terrace in Cedar Grove and at Lake Hopatcong. I began crewing for Dave in his Comet, and later, a Thistle, as we sailed in Regatta’s from North Jersey’s little lakes to the Shrewsbury River. One summer Doris welcomed two 8^th Grade Boy Scouts to pitch a tent by the lake for a couple of wonderful days and nights. Life for the Bretts moved to Montclair and the rotation of holiday gatherings had a new location to hear Doris tell stories.

            It is worthy of note that Doris’ service to the church addressed the needs of others as they made their way through the seasons of life: teaching in the Learning Centers and organizing receptions for grieving families. A paragraph in Doris’ obituary tells a story of its own, as “a time to sew” offers a clue to how she coped with the various times life presented.  It reads “No one can think of Doris without thinking about her love for sewing and many types of handwork. She sewed her own clothes, clothes for her daughters, and clothes for their dolls. She also did cross stitch, embroidery and knitting. Her homes and the homes of family and friends contain many examples of her beautiful work.”

            Those words reminded me of a story found in the ninth chapter of the Book of Acts. It is the story of Peter being summoned to Joppa after the death of a woman named Tabitha. Often referred to by her Greek name, Dorcas, Acts tells us “She was devoted to good works and charity.” When Peter arrived, her friends showed him “tunics and other clothes” she had made when she was with them.

            It is a resurrection story. Peter restored her to life. We gather here today in the belief that our dear Doris has been raised to new life. Some of you may have examples of her handwork to remember her by. All of us have memories to cherish of one we loved and who loved us. Someone once said:

                        “You never lose the ones you love if you love the ones you lose.”

            Savor the last lines of the poem Sue read:

            “Let memories surround you, a word someone may say

            Will suddenly recapture a time, an hour, a day,

            That brings her back as clearly

                        as though she were still here,

            And fills you with the feeling that she is always near.

            For if you keep those moments, you will never be apart

            And she will live forever

locked safely within your heart.”

            At Sue and Rich’s wedding, the DJ cued up a song. The first notes of a familiar tune reached my ears.  I stood up, walked over to Aunt Doris and said, “We have to dance to this.”  She gave me a puzzled look, but joined me on the dance floor, asking what was so special about the song. I explained that it reminded me of one of the records she played in that apartment on North Fullerton Avenue when I was very young and thanked her for being part of so many special memories. As we danced, Nat “King” Cole and his daughter Natalie sang

“Unforgettable, that’s what you are...

Unforgettable, though near or far...”

            Yes, she is unforgettable and always will be.

            Thanks be to God.

 

A Satchel Full of Memories

            Shortly after my grandfather’s death my father came up from the basement and placed an old black satchel on the living room floor between us as we sat on the couch. It had belonged to

his father, my PopPop.  Its leather was cracked and flaking with age, leading me to wonder if this satchel had made the crossing from Sweden to America in 1911.

            Inside the satchel were the memories of three lifetimes.  My grandfather’s memories were known in part from the stories he told.  The rest we could surmise from the contents of the bag:

a Baptismal record, World War I discharge papers, an obituary in Swedish announcing his mother’s funeral. My father’s memories of the man whose effects we examined were more plentiful, like the time PopPop locked a drunken friend in the basement because he didn’t like the way the man had spoken to his wife and daughter, who were guests at my grandmother’s table. Or the time PopPop replaced the grape juice Nana was planning to put in the punch she was going to serve some ladies from church with elderberry wine, making for a lively afternoon!

            My memories were of shorter duration: The sawdust smelling man who lathered up a four-

year-old face and handed me a bladeless razor so I could shave beside him at the soapstone sink in the basement as he cleaned up after a day at work.  Saturday nights passed playing games of “shineese sheckers,” while listening to the console radio across the room as Jack Wyrtzen evangelized from Scroon Lake, New York. The first memory of a grown man bursting into tears when he mentioned his wife’s name one winter Sunday after she died.

            Sorting through the contents of the satchel my father and I found rings of gold once given

and received in token and pledge of love by two young immigrants.  We handled pictures and postcards from people and places we had heard about in stories told at the Sunday dinner table. We wondered at the contents of letters written in a language we could not read.  We felt the coolness of a glass paper-weight from Narragansett Pier, talked of stories attached to a Carpenter’s Union pin, and marveled at the way the monogram had worn smooth on PopPop’s workday pocket watch.

            Buried at the bottom of the satchel among all these things was a little notebook showing the same well-used qualities as the pocket watch and the old, black bag.  Penciled and penned on its pages were dates and names and monetary amounts for each month spanning several years. My father recognized some of the names as belonging to missionary families whose pictures were often taped by the calendar in PopPop’s kitchen.  Some of the entries listed a place name or a project. A dollar here, a dollar there, and five, ten or twenty next to the others.  The giver and the giving unknown except by those who received the gifts.

            What we had unearthed at the bottom of the satchel was a diary of stewardship. A record of giving.  A testimony of love.  One nine-and-a-half fingered carpenter responding to those serving another carpenter with nail-scarred hands.  The little book became a posthumous challenge to those of us in the generations born on this side of the Atlantic.  A life need not wait to be spent in one impressive sum spelled out in a will.  Better to deposit many installments of quiet gratitude, doing a lot with a little over a lifetime, ever responding to the needs of the least, the last, and the lost loved by the Carpenter from Nazareth.