Mary Brandt
May 13, 2006
I am constantly amazed at the ways in which people allow me into their
lives. I often ask myself just who I am. I’m a guy who went to school – a
long time. I jumped through a whole bunch of denominational hoops on the
way to ordination. Then one day, the Bishop laid his hand on my head, said
the proscribed words, and announced that I was ordained to Word, Order,
and Sacrament. And at that moment, it happened. I became a pastor, a
minister, the leader of a local congregation. People started coming to me
with their joys and sorrows, with their questions and ponderings, with their
doubts and with their fears. For twenty-five years, I have been constantly
amazed that people have enough trust in me to allow me into the most sacred
times in their lives: births, baptisms, graduations, illnesses, family struggles,
and death. I am pretty much just an ordinary guy, but am more humbled
than I can express when I enter into the great passages in people’s lives.
There are great moments in human life; moments when new chapters open
up, new avenues are taken, and new experiences met. These rites of passage
are important moments when we are all changed. Think about the changes
that happen in our lives. Think of how we change from childhood into
adolescence. Think of how we change from adolescence into adulthood.
Think of the changes that occur with the coming of retirement.
These are all times that bring with them a certain sense of the unknown. We
may have some vague idea of what waits, but really don’t know until we get
there. The greatest rite of passage, the greatest change, the greatest
unknown, comes at death.
Now, for those of us who are Christian, we find that the unknown of death is
not that big of a deal because death has lost its fear. Death is not fearful
because, through our faith, we have come to know what waits. We
remember the Scripture in the fourteenth chapter of John, in which Jesus
promises that he is preparing a place for all of us. When that place is
prepared, he will receive us into our new home.
It is death that brings us all here together today. We come here to witness to
our faith, and to the faith of Mary Brandt. We come here to praise God and
proclaim the reality of resurrection. We come here to proclaim that death is
not the final answer, death will not win, and death will not silence our
witness.
I want to repeat a story that I told only six weeks ago at the funeral of
another woman in the church. Just a short time before our oldest son was
born, my grandmother died. I left my very pregnant wife in Denver and
flew back to Fort Wayne for the funeral. Dr. William Dean was, at that
time, pastor of Memorial Baptist Church. To this day, I remember the
sermon he preached at her funeral. In fact, I not only remember it, but I use
it.
He was talking about the 23rd Psalm. He told us what a wonderful psalm it
was and how it has provided so much comfort through the ages to countless
generations of God’s people. It is a psalm of confidence and trust. It is a
psalm of hope. It is a psalm of peace, love, gentleness, and security.
It is a psalm of David. King David knew trouble. He knew heartache. He
knew trials and temptations. He knew fear. He knew the depths of his sins.
But he also knew the Lord, his Shepherd. The Shepherd was the One who
protected the sheep under his care, the One who could be trusted, the One
who could be called upon in times of trouble, the One who would never
forsake those who loved him.
Bill Dean told us about the most important word in the psalm. That word is
through. ”Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I
will fear no evil.” Death is just that…a valley through which we all must
walk. We can’t escape it, run from it, or hide from it. We may try to deny
its power, but that only lasts for so long. Death eventually catches up with
all of us. Death is the price of life.
But death is different for those of us who have religious faith; because we
know that the valley of death is not never-ending. We rest in the assurance
that we will emerge from that valley into the light of God’s eternity. Those
who place their faith and trust in God are never left alone, never.
We all knew Mary’s faith. We all knew how much she loved her church.
We all knew her heart. We knew that she knew her Savior. At the moment
her breathing stopped, those who knew her best knew that, although her
earthly life had ended, her heavenly and eternal life had just begun. She
took a step, not into death, but into life. We grieved at that moment, and we
grieve today, but not as a people without hope. We grieved and cried; yet
through our tears, we proclaimed our faith in Christ our Savior. We knew
that we had not lost Mary, but had only ushered her into a new relationship
with God.
Our Christian testimony is that God loved the world so much that he sent his
only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have
everlasting life. That is our testimony and that was Mary’s testimony.
I was in the nursing home on Wednesday afternoon. I stopped at Mary’s
door and noticed that she was sitting in her wheelchair in a hospital gown. I
see people in hospital gowns all the time, so didn’t think a thing about it. I
called out, “Hello Mary!” She immediately hollered back, “Don’t come in
here, I’m not decent!” You know Mary. That response to me shouldn’t
surprise you. So I said, “OK, I’ll wait across the hall.”
In just a few minutes, she had gotten into her robe and called me. We had a
lovely conversation, although she was having a little trouble breathing.
When I left, she said that she wanted to be pushed out into the hallway. So I
pushed her out until we began to run out of her length of oxygen tubing.
A couple of the aids were out there and said, “Mary, where are you going?”
She answered, “As far as I can.”
Let me respond to that incident for just a minute. First of all, Mary was
always decent… more than decent. She exceeded standards of belief and
conduct with which many of us are comfortable. She went far beyond the
minimum, far beyond average. The church was her life. She lived and
breathed her Savior Jesus. I noticed in the morning paper today that the
Pope is making a nineteenth century Fort Wayne woman a saint. Now that
is fine, but I believe that there are at least two Fort Wayne women who are
saints. Mary is one of them.
As far as going as far as she could go…she has done that. She has taken that
final trip as far as any of us can go, the trip to reside in the presence of her
Savior. There is now a huge whole in the world where Mary was. Her work
here at the church is irreplaceable.
All of us will miss her terribly. We will grieve for her. We will continue to
have trouble believing that she is in fact gone from our physical presence.
But I encourage all of you today to remember that Mary lives on. She lives
on in our hearts. She lives on in our thoughts. She lives on in our
memories. And most importantly, she lives on in the presence of her Lord
and Savior. That was her faith. That was her trust. That was her
confidence. That was her witness.
So today, we commit her to God, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection
to eternal life. Thanks be to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
