SERMON - Dick Pfister 6-22-09
http://trinitycamden.com/Homily.htm

Today is a bittersweet day. We’re decked out with the Paschal candle and the resurrection white of Easter, proclaiming our joy of Dick’s passage from this worldly life of travail, sickness and death to the heavenly life of joy, health and eternal life. And though this is indeed cause for celebration, it still remains a bittersweet day.

Death is part of the human condition and is inevitable for us all. Yet when death snatches a man in his prime, we cry out “Too soon! Too soon! Why couldn’t Dick have been granted more time to know and be known by his grandchild, Audrey Marie?” It just doesn’t seem right or fair. Yet it is so.

Timing is a mystery and is known to God alone. So while we celebrate Dick’s transition to a better place and eternal life in the heart of God, we grieve for the family left behind: Judy, Daphne, Beth and Garner; Brothers Joe, Mike, Walter, and Sister Mary and all Dick’s friends and colleagues.

So, who was Richard Dean Pfister, whose life we celebrate today? Well, Dick was a lot of things but some things he was not. He wasn’t bland or plain vanilla. He wasn’t a non-descript, invisible Everyman. He wasn’t stingy with his time, abundance, advise and love. When Dick took an interest in something or someone, his presence became larger than life because Dick was a take charge kind of guy. He was a doer. “It can’t be done” was simply not a part of his character.

Dick has always been a scrapper. As a teenager, he played football in high school despite his size and physical limitations from polio. As chief Financial aide to Senator James Donovan and later as Director of the Magnet School in Utica, Dick played hardball with the powerful, always championing the underdog, the disadvantaged and disenfranchised. Dick received many plaques and awards in his long and successful career but he treasured most the collage and specially painted tie the Magnet School students made for him. There was never any doubt where Dick’s heart was.
When Dick retired, he was afraid he would have on challenge, no mission. Soon, he adopted this old church building as his mission. He plunged into fixing the church basement carrying out pail upon pail of rocks to prepare the dirt floor for cement. When he tired of doing that alone, he paid a local teenager to help him.
Then came the cement floor - Oh, I remember it well. Dick and his retired volunteers had agreed to pour cement in manageable stages. The day for phase one arrived. Instead of mixing a small amount of cement in a wheelbarrow, a gigantic cement truck showed up with cement to cover the whole floor! There was no way the few volunteers could handle it all so we rallied the troops. Exhausted, we asked why he’d ordered a truck full of cement. He said: “Well, I got a better price that way.” We weren’t very happy with Dick that day. But as he later said with a twinkle in his eyes, “I got the job done, didn’t I!” That was Dick. A tornadic, take charge, inexhaustible energizer bunny.
When the floor was done, Dick kept going. He arranged to have the stone foundation reinforced with mesh and parge to stabilize the old stones. Shortly thereafter, there was an earth quake. We often wondered if Dick ordered the earth quake to prove how strong the foundation now was.
Once Dick set his mind to doing something, Katie bar the door. Dick jumped into Masons, Kiwanis, Rotary and Cluster 13 projects with the same, inexhaustible energy as he did at church. My husband even roped him into working on the snowmobile trails. Though his unstop ability sometimes ruffled people, discontent never lasted long because Dick was so genuine, so well-intentioned, so generous and so very effective.
In retirement, Dick petitioned to become an ordained deacon >> an aspiration very much suited to him since a deacon works for the disadvantaged beyond the walls of our church. But his path did not lead to ordination in the church. No matter. God, himself, had ordained Dick a deacon many years previously - unbeknownst to most people and Dick himself. Being a deacon was simply who he was as a person and a Christian.
For example, we had a situation where a grandmother had to take in and raise two of her grandchildren. Money had been tight when she was alone. Now, she had two more to house, feed, clothe, and love. No problem with the love. It was the other necessities of life that caused worry. One day she mentioned that the children had asked for proper beds for Christmas. Apparently, they’d been sleeping on rusty, Army-type steel meshed beds. We put the word out. As you’ve probably guessed, Dick and Judy stepped forward with not only two proper beds AND proper headboards BUT ALSO a trunkload of comforters and linens. Daphne and Beth >> now you really know what happened to your beds and headboards.
Well. the beds were delivered and made up. The children returned to find their bedrooms transformed. They squealed with joy and delight; immediately changed into their pajamas and refused to come out of their bedrooms for dinner. Grandmother, of course, insisted they come out for dinner and it was then the little boy said: “Grandmama, now that I have a proper bed, I no longer feel like a poor boy.”
Will Dick be sorely missed? You bet!
Dick also had a rye sense of humor. He always joked that Judy trapped him into marriage and therefore demanded Judy pay him a penny a year to keep the marriage in tact. Good-naturedly, Judy always paid. As we all know, Dick and Judy were devoted to each other and their family. Dick dearly loved and admired his mother and together with Judy took care of her in her last years. In fact, the flowers adorning the altar and parish hall today come from the garden Dick planted in memory of his mother. When Judy’s brother became sick and needed help, they both pitched in as they did for their children and people they met through church and cluster 13.
Together, we could write a book about Dick and many of the stories might well get shared this day - and we Camdenites know but a fraction of the stories. Nonetheless and unequivocally, all storytellers will declare at the end that Dick enriched our lives, was truly the “salt of the earth” and tried his level best to live by God’s precepts.
We’ve touched on Dick’s life this side of heaven. What about Dick’s future on the other side?
Well, we don’t know much about life beyond death other than the few glimpses scripture gives us. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus describes the criteria he’ll use to seperate the sheep from the goats when he returns to earth to inaugurate the kingdom of heaven. He says, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Does this not describe the Dick we all know? The Dick who not only talked the talk but walked the talk?
Then we have Dick’s favorite psalm: Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd >> a psalm of great depth, breadth, and beauty. I could sermonize on each verse but the one that particularly resonates with me in terms of Dick is,
“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; *
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”
David wrote this psalm from the perspective of a good earthly shepherd caring for his sheep. In the Spring, shepherds took their flocks to the flat places high in the mountains because they were vibrant with lush grasses and fresh cool water where the sheep grew fat. These flat places were known as mesas, or tables. But these lush places also attracted enemies, particularly lions who found young lambs perfect food for their cubs. Such is the way of nature >> where life is still good despite enemies nearby.
But “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies” has an even deeper meaning. In terms of human society, King David always had enemies at his table >> ambitious generals, scheming wives and sons, envy and greed. Even so, David knew the Lord was with him. That was enough for him to declare that his cup runneth over.
As we all know, Dick, in his later life, had an enemy at his table >> the big “C” >> cancer >> an enemy he fought with all his might. That’s what makes Isaiah’s description of the feast that awaits Dick Oh so sweet, so reassuring, so right >> a feast that only God can provide >> A feast with no enemies about >> a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged and strained wines, of rich food with marrow and God’s promise that he will swallow up death forever. During the years of his illness, Dick often had difficulty with eating, so won’t such a feast that he can fully enjoy be glorious? And Isaiah’s not just talking about a good feast or even a superb feast. He’s talking about a feast so abundant, so magnificent, so rich that our imaginations cannot possibly begin to comprehend or contain it.
And the swallowing up of death - forever - is better yet. That time has not yet arrived and we know not when. But in the meantime, Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us in some of the many rooms in his Father’s house so that we may be with him always. We have no idea what those rooms are like. But one thing I’ve learned about God in my sojourn through life is that God has a robust sense of humor. Given that, wouldn’t it be perfect for Dick to be placed in a room in need of major repairs? A room in need of a garden? A room that need to be prepared to receive those in need? Would that not be a perfect heaven for the Dick we know and love?
Jesus also tells us that we will be called children of God and when he again appears, we shall see him as he is and we shall be like him. Now, we all love life as we know it. Heck, that’s all we know. But there’s a part of every person of faith that yearns for the pure joy of heaven >> the absence of sickness; the absence of stress; the resolution of all conflict and the presence of fulfillment and pure love. Jesus tells us that we shall find such a life with Him in heaven. I believe it. Dick believed it as well.
Even so, the death of a loved one brings pain and grief, which is very real. It leaves a hole in our hearts. But our liturgy of the Dead is an Easter liturgy that draws ALL its meaning from Jesus’ resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised. Therefore, the liturgy is characterized by joy, in the certainty that for Dick, and for all of us when our time comes to join Dick that
“neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It’s our assurance that All is Well. Thanks be to God.
Amen.