Ralph Deadwyler August 8 2018
The year was 1927 and the month was March. Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States. Adolf Hitler was giving his first public speech. Babe Ruth was signing the biggest contract in sports to the tune of $70,000 a year with the New York Yankees and the next highest player on the team was paid $17,500. On the other side of the globe, Chiang Kai Shek captured the city of Shanghai without firing a shot.
That might have been important then, but for us, the most meaningful thing that happened in March of 1927, happened in the red hills of Ga in a small town called Lithonia not that far from Atlanta. It happened when Jim and Verdia brought forth a son by the name of Ralph Deadwyler. Together with his brother James Thomas and his sister Inez, Ralph grew up in the heart of the confederacy with all the racism and Jim Crow Laws around him. Lithonia is just a few miles away from Stone Mountain, Ga where the KKK had undergone a rebirth Just 12 years before Ralph was born.
I tell you this because I want you to know, when God’s hand and favor is upon your life, it does not matter what the circumstances are where you begin your life. God is able to take to you to heights that you could not have imagined. Ralph was not just another poor little black boy born into a small southern town. Ralph started out the same way we all start out, and that is with the hand of God being involved in our lives.
For The Scriptures tell us in Psalm 139 13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
In other words, God wants you to know that you are not here by accident. You are not the result of chance molecules coming together. You were thought about in the mind of God long before you arrived in your mother’s womb. God had a plan and a purpose for your life. The question is, have you connected with the plan that God has for your life? We are celebrating tonight because Ralph intersected and connected with the plan that God had for his life.
God put a big heart in Ralph that was full of compassion for people. If you lived on East 92nd street, what could have been a short walk to St. Clair, became a marathon walk in the neighborhood. If you were outside on the porch, or in the yard, you were going to get a neighborhood chat from Ralph. He wanted to know how you were doing, how’s the kids, and if the dog and cat were allright. He actually listened to what your response was.
He was a comedian. Ralph took great pride in smiling but even more pride in getting you to smile and laugh as well. He got joy out of the happiness of others. He was caring. He was a listener. He was easy going. He looked for the good in others. His son Ralph said, “you know, I never heard my father bad mouth anyone.” Ralph was the kind of friend everybody wanted. He was helpful in whatever way he could assist you and he did it with a positive spirit, not expecting anything in return.
Ralph didn’t allow the difficult times he faced in life to make him bitter, envious or jealous. He chose instead to become a proud Black Man, loving his family and serving his God. On January 26, 1951, Ralph married the beautiful young woman who had captured his heart and that was none other than Juliette Fairley from Camden Alabama.
They built a home and family together of which they were both very proud. I asked Juliette what was the trait she was attracted to by Ralph, she said he was a hard worker. By some of those pictures I’ve seen, he was a good looking hard worker who knew how to dress.
They were both as proud of their three children as they could be. Ralph and Juliette knew how to keep love alive in their relationship. In Men Who Excel meetings, Ralph would often say that Juliette was a good woman.
In the obituary it mentioned that Ralph would be in his own zone when he would be back in the kitchen cooking a meal for himself and others singing hymns in the process. I asked Juliette if she was a good cook, and she said she was kind of so so. So I guess Ralph was happy cooking because the meal was going to taste more than so, so.
Juliette said she never learned how to drive because Ralph got impatient trying to teach her. He’d say “lookout, you’re about to hit that.” She said okay I quit. From that day on Ralph became her personal chauffer. She said he drove me anywhere I wanted to go, and he never complained about having to wait for me.
For one day out of the year, Juliette was not married to a black man but rather to an Irishman. Ralph’s birthday was on March 17th which was St. Patrick’s Day, and every year he went downtown for the St. Patrick’s Day parade that he pretended was held in his honor. They would have antique cars on display and each year Ralph would watch for a 1949 Lincoln because it was one of the first cars he owned.
God blessed Ralph with ambition and contentment. It’s hard to find those working together if you don’t have the Lord working in your life. Ralph lived in front of his kids the meaning of his wedding vows of being there for your wife kids when it was easy and when it was not. He and Juliette had a sense of humor between them to keep the romance alive.
I was at the barber shop they went to, and one of the barbers told me, they way they joked with each other, I thought they were just dating. For 61 years they journeyed together in marriage.
All of life eventually brings us back to the issue of death. Death forces us to deal with, does it really matter how I live my life or is death really the end, or just another beginning? I want you to know that God loves you. God wants you to know in advance that it does matter how you live your life. People will often say, only God can judge me. The truth is God will judge us all for everything that we do. God also wants you to have eternal life and that’s why Jesus came into the world.
Jesus offers an invitation to that eternal life to every person. He said “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through Me. If anyone tries to save their life, they will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me, will save it. For what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose their soul.
Ralph made a decision to give his life to Jesus Christ and to allow Jesus to change him into a child of God. Ralph was one of the greatest heavenly ambassadors this world has known. An ambassador represents the country he is from to those on the outside. We call ambassadors in the church, greeters and ushers. Ralph had the ability to make you feel welcome the moment you came into the church. His friendly smile, his warm demeanor, and the humility that he walked with were all a blessing.
The good news is that he didn’t reserve his behavior for just inside the church. He was a community ambassador as well walking up and down E. 92nd street. He would give out treats to the kids, make crazy faces at them and let them know they were somebody.
Pastor Toby and I were honored for our role as community leaders and were presented with the keys to Glenville by councilperson Sabra Pierce Scott. But the real joy for us that day was sharing the stage with Ralph as he also was presented the keys to Glenville for his volunteering in the community. Ralph had a true servant’s heart wherever he was. It’s great to have the same reputation in the community as you do in the church.
Ralph was also a peacemaker for us in the church. He was often our second eyes and ears. He would come and let us know, “Just thought you ought to know that so and so’s feelings were hurt in the meeting, or so and so is in the hospital, or so and so is upset because they were left out of the program. He was sensitive to the pains of others and he wanted them to stay in the life of the church, because he knew that’s where the power of Christ to be healed could be found.
Ralph faced the battle of cancer in the same way he approached every day living. He knew that God was still in control. If you had the privilege of visiting him in the hospital, he was going to make you feel better before you left. He had a joke waiting for you. He wasn’t going to complain about how he was feeling. He was going to introduce you to his roommate or any person that came into the room. We felt loved and appreciated by him as his pastors.
God gave me the privilege of being able to speak to Ralph the day before he died. I told him, Ralph you have been a superb example of a follower of Jesus Christ. You’ve been a person I have looked up to as a father for many years. You have helped us out greatly as pastors. You’ve been a wonderful example for the other men in the church. I will always be grateful for the privilege of having been your pastor and your friend. When you get to heaven say hello to John Hayes, Andy Thompson and John Mosely, the other ushers who are waiting for you. You have served the Lord well.
Ralph looked at me with that sparkle in his eyes and said “Thank you.” I said is there anything you want me to say to the church this Sunday. He smiled and made his fighting pose as if to say the time for my departure is near. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” Ralph went home to be with the Lord less than 18 hours after our conversation.
Our brother in Christ, Ralph Deadwyler went home to be with the Lord. But if you were to die today, where would you be in the morning. Are you in an almost right relationship with God today. Almost means you’re not there yet. Where are you today in your relationship to God. Jesus said in , Mat 7:13 "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the only way to enter that narrow gate. All you have to do is to accept the life that God wants to give to you.
Then you admit, "God, I have done a lot of things I should not have done. I realize I cannot pay for all that I have done. I ask you for forgiveness. I accept that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, He being holy and righteous, paid the penalty for my sin. I invite him to come into my life and take control of it." Ralph Deadwyler made that decision years ago and has not regretted it since.
You will make numerous decisions in your life between your birth and your death. But the only decision that will still be personally affecting you a 1000 years from today, is what did you do with Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches there will certainly be a resurrection of everybody from the dead, and then comes the judgment of God. Without Jesus Christ, you have no hope of being found okay in God’s eyes.
We may say of Ralph , that he was my friend, he was my uncle, he was my brother, he was my father, or he was my husband, but the greatest truth of them all is that Ralph Deadwyler Sr was, is, and forever will be a a child of God who has now completely returned to God. For those of us who die without knowing Jesus Christ. Ralph Deadwyler Sr. will only be a good memory with no hope of spending eternity with him.
The good news is that for those of us who do know Jesus Christ, Ralph Deadwyler Sr. is simply waiting to meet us on the other side and when we get together again, it will be forever.
For the Bible clearly teaches,
1 Th 4:13 Brothers and sisters , we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men and women, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
