Jutta was one of those people that make a preacher’s job easier – or really, the job of anyone who speaks in public. I came to know Jutta at the vespers service held each Thursday evening at the Manor. She always sat close to the front – on the second row, in fact – and…I don’t know how to put this, except that, week after week, each time I spoke, she was with me. I could see it in her face. She made me feel like what I was saying was the most important thing on her mind at the time.
If you’ve ever made a talk to a group of any kind, you know how the audience can make the difference – or, if not the whole audience, just one or two people who give you the green light. They’re the people who are into what you say. They are receptive. They seem to resonate with you…and you with them. If I can put it in kind of a churchy way, they are a blessing.
That was Jutta. Then…afterward, she would never fail to come by and say how much she enjoyed the service. In time, we developed a little ritual in which she would say how much she enjoyed it, and I would say, no, I’m the one who got the most out of it. And she would insist, and so forth. And we would have what you might call a benign verbal battle, each trying to convince the other. I never tired of it.
Now, with nothing more than that little snapshot of Jutta, you can make three observations about her. One is her relationship to herself. A second is her relationship to others. And a third is her relationship to God.
Let’s start with Jutta’s relationship to herself. Jutta had what I would describe as a healthy esteem for herself. When I say healthy, what I mean is that she didn’t have herself on her hands. She didn’t need you and me to take note of her. She didn’t demand to be the focus of our attention.
There are people that do. The world has to revolve around them, or they don’t feel significant. They are self-absorbed, self-important, or self-conscious. Their sense of who they are depends on what others think – or, really, on what they think others think.
Not Jutta. She was very secure about herself, and, because she was, she never felt a need to direct the conversation to herself. She always wanted to talk about you, to listen to you, to pay attention to you.
Jesus talked about this with his disciples. On one occasion, these men who would later be known as St. John, St. Matthew, St. Peter, and so on – these larger-than-life figures in our minds turned out to be pretty small-minded…at least, until our Lord confronted them. You know what they were doing? They were arguing among themselves about who was most important. And when Jesus questioned them about it, they were too embarrassed to admit it.
So, Jesus said to them, “You know that in the world those who have the power lord it over everyone else.” And then he said, “It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be the servant of all, whoever would be first must be last. For even the Son of Man” – he was talking about himself – “even the Son of man,” he said, “did not come to be served but to serve.”
Jutta had learned this at some point, and it had become part of the fabric of her identity. She had an incredibly exciting life – growing up in her native Germany, living in the U.S. and Japan, working as a chemist, pursuing her interests in art and opera, raising two sons, and teaching for almost three decades – and yet, when she engaged you in conversation, it was you she wanted to talk about. That’s the sign of a strong, integrated sense of self. Instead of being a taker, she was a giver.
I could see that she had this remarkable relationship to herself in my brief exchanges with her on Thursday evenings after vespers. I could also observe her equally remarkable relationship with others.
In the 2003 movie, Something’s Gotta Give, Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton play opposite each other. And there’s a scene in the movie where the Jack Nicholson character says to the Diane Keaton character, “Erica, you are a woman to love.” It was a moment filled with ambiguity. But I would say of Jutta – and I think you would agree – that she was, without any equivocation, a woman to be admired.
She lost her mother when she was only six, and that could have been devastating for any child. But she and her sister and her brother not only survived that loss; they managed to thrive. And they all became fascinating people. Richard has said of his mother, “There was no one like her,” and he was certainly right.
She taught both her sons – Richard and Steve – to be considerate of others, consistently conscious of the value of other people, no matter who they were. And she did that with her counsel, of course, but she validated her words with her example. That surprises no one, does it? She modeled the right way to live and love and share the world with others.
She enriched the life of everyone who knew her. She had a group of girls once who wanted to play soccer but didn’t have a coach. Guess who became their coach. When she retired from teaching school, she began volunteering at the hospital, and she was the one who kept families in touch with patients undergoing surgery. Again, Richard said, “We were really lucky to have her,” and everyone who knew her agrees.
I myself was a beneficiary of her habit of putting people at ease. I had a weekly exchange with her for which I will forever be grateful. I observed something of her relationship with others to match my observation of her relationship with herself. And one other thing I observed: her relationship with God.
The setting in which I knew Jutta best was perfect for this. Vespers at the Manor is a religious event. It is a service of worship. We talked about God, and we stressed the grace of God given to us in Jesus Christ. So, it was not unnatural to talk about matters of faith.
I learned right off that Jutta was a life-long Lutheran. I have this practice, whenever a hymn is sung – I look up to the top left of the page in the hymnbook to see who wrote it. That’s where you’ll find the name of the hymn writer in most hymnbooks. And at Vespers, I occasionally call attention to it. So, once we were singing Luther’s classic hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and I pointed out that it was one of his hymns. At the end of the service that night, Jutta told me that she was Lutheran.
If there’s anything that marks a true Lutheran, it is an emphasis on justification by grace through faith. Jack Rogers, in his lectures, used to ask, “What was printed on the bumper sticker of Martin Luther’s Volkswagen?” And the answer, of course, would be, “Justification by faith.”
Which means…what? That I am made right with God, not because of any good thing that I has done but because of what Christ has done for me. I’m accepted by God, not because I am acceptable but because he is accepting. It’s all of grace, and I respond to that grace through faith – or simple trust in God’s mercy in Christ.
This, of course, is not just a Lutheran belief. It’s at the heart of the gospel. And over time, as I spoke each Thursday about God’s grace in Jesus Christ, Jutta would tell me how the message made her feel right at home, her being Lutheran and all.
In the passage from Ephesians, which we read earlier, Paul says that when we hear the word of truth, which is the gospel of salvation by grace through faith, and when we believe it, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. That is, the Spirit of God comes to dwell within us, and his presence is the guarantee of our eternal inheritance. Jutta has now come into that inheritance, which is life eternal in the presence of God.
I would go so far as to say even that, with Jutta, the quality of her relationship with herself and others was a direct result of the quality of her relationship with God. Because she knew she was safe in Christ, she was secure in herself, and she could be attentive to others. The wholehearted love of God seems always to issue in selfless love for others. It certainly did with Jutta.
