A sermon for the funeral of Gary Murphy
October 5, 2024, at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Stuttgart, AR
Readings: Joshua 1:5-9; Revelation 21:2-7; John 6:37-40
What I remember about the first time I met Gary is his smile. His smile captured his kindness, his generosity, his happiness. He served for a time on the vestry here right after I arrived, but before he and Elaine moved to be closer to Lee. He smiled, and he was welcoming, and he had a little bit of a crush on Molly.
Today we gather to give thanks for that smiling, kind, faithful man. We gather to pray for his family, for his friends, for one another, as we grieve his death. We gather to commend his soul to the God who made him, the God who redeemed him, the God who sustains him even now. And above all, we gather because we have a Christian hope–a hope that nothing in this life or the next is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Because Gary was baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ, he is his, claimed as a child of God, today and forever.
Gary was a straightforward man. What you saw was what you got. He loved God; he loved his family; he loved his church; he loved his community. He never struck me as a man who would get caught in illusion. He was real, embedded in the present moment. And even when things were hard (and things were hard sometimes), his characteristic kindness, his humor and his smile, would all shine through.
Not too long after I got here, I saw Gary and Elaine walking through the memorial garden. The moment is seared in my memory. They were walking slowly, seemingly soaking in the moment. They came into the office and told me they would be moving. They told me through tears. Gary’s health was declining, and it was time to be closer to family. They were excited about that. But not excited about leaving their home of decades. Gary looked at me through glistening and sad eyes, shook his head, smiled, and said, “well, it is what it is.” That was Gary. He just pressed on, trusting in God, trusting in Elaine, even when he was learning he couldn’t always trust his memory. “It is what it is.”
Moments of transition like that show what we’re made of; they have a way of revealing where we put our faith, our confidence, our trust. Our first reading from Joshua happens at a moment of transition where it would be easy to misplace faith. Moses, the trusted leader the people had known, the one they went to for answers, has died. A new leader, Joshua, is there, and the people are being asked to go where they haven’t gone before. It won’t be easy. God tells the people through Joshua that as they go forward they will have to be strong and courageous. And they can be because God is with them. They do not need to rely on themselves for courage; they can rely on God’s strength, presence, and grace. In the end, being courageous is not beating your chest, bellowing into the dark night of the soul, grasping for control and power and influence. In the end, true courage is a quiet confidence in God, in God’s goodness, in God’s leading, in God’s power and strength for the day. It is the faithful steadiness that Gary Murphy lived. “It is what it is,” he said; and come what may, he had faith.
For all his faithfulness and kindness, for all his gentleness and love, for all his courage and genuine trust in God, the last few years have not been easy for this good man. They have not been easy on E, either. Time has a way of exacting cruelty. There’s no use denying it; it is what it is, Gary would have said. We trust God gives us the strength and courage we need in the face of that cruelty, even in the face of the ravages of dementia’s long goodbye.
But even as we hold to the courage we receive from God’s grace, we also trust that such cruelty is not the end of the story. Goodbye is not the last word. Dementia can claim no one forever. Death shall not exercise dominion over the children of God.
In the gospel reading today, Jesus proclaims that promise. “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me,” Jesus says. They are the very words we pray as we are buried. Jesus says that he will “lose nothing of all that he has given me but raise it up on the last day.” That applies to Gary; that applies to you and me; that applies to all who have been grafted into the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. The promise does not depend on us, on our strength, on our fickle ability, but only on what God has done through Christ. For God has done what we could never do for ourselves. God in Christ has defeated death and sin. God in Christ, through his death and resurrection, has conquered everything that seeks to separate us from God–disease, pain, sorrow, grief, the dark night of the soul, the cruelty of the time–and he has brought life and immortality to light. “See, I am making all things new.” Christ, the Alpha and Omega, thunders from the throne.
“It is what it is,” Gary said. He says that today, too. But there’s a different ring now. For he sees, face to face, what really is, the heart of true reality at its source in the eternal Word of the Father. He sees the hope, the promise, the grace of Christ. Tears are wiped away and what was lost is restored and healed. And all things, including our dear, strong, and courageous Pops, are made new in the light of our Savior. My friends: It just is what it is.
Storied Grace 