1 Corinthians 14:1 Marianne Niesen May 8, 2011
Celebrating our High School Graduates
and our Graduate to Eternal Life, George Harper
Welcome to St. Paul’s this morning.
Today, as you well know, is Mother’s Day and of course we recognize with gratitude our Moms and all who have cared for us with a mother’s love. I know many of you will celebrate in special ways today…with cards and flowers and brunch and all of that is good. It is always good to pause at times and give thanks for those who have loved and encouraged us to become our best selves. So, Happy Mother’s Day, Moms.
For us here at St. Paul’s Mother’s Day has also become another special day . . . the day we honor our high school graduates. Today is no exception. We are still going to do that. In fact, it was just a bit over two weeks ago that I called George Harper and invited him to preach on this Sunday. I knew I would be here but, like many of you, I had seen that George was getting weaker and it was more difficult for him to get around – and I wanted him to have an opportunity to preach again. He was thrilled. He told me it would ‘give him something special to do on Mother’s Day’ and the fact that Becca, his granddaughter, is one of the honorees, made it all the more significant. Before he hung up, he said ‘thanks for thinking of me.’ And, of course, I had no idea then just how much we would be thinking of him when May 8th finally rolled around.
The last thing George would have wanted would have been to in any way overshadow a celebration for our young people. Still, there was no way we could ignore the reality of his passage to eternal life last Monday. This year marks the 50th year of George’s ministry here in Helena at St. Paul’s. That’s a long time – but the real power of his time here was not just that it was long but that it was so incredibly fruitful. And just as his career began with his work with youth at the National Conference on Methodist Youth, it seems really fitting that we will share our final recognition on a Sunday honoring our youth. It is not so much an overshadowing as it is a sharing of the spotlight. I’m quite sure that our graduates today are happy to share the stage with George and he has shown us all how much he loved sharing his life with them. As I heard him say more than once…I can’t keep up with them any more. So I just try to keep them in sight!
So we are doing a lot of things this morning…thanking Moms, recognizing graduates, remembering George Harper . . . and through it all, praising God who has shared life so abundantly with us all. In a moment, we’ll sing a wonderful hymn that gathers it all together. But first, let’s stand and greet one another.
Remembering George
Tonight, we will have a large public gathering to honor our friend, teacher and pastor – George Harper. Our Bishop will be there, as well as our choir, and, I am sure, many people will gather from around the conference and the state. That’s why the family chose to have the service at Carroll. Though we wanted so much to be here at St. Paul’s, the reality is that George’s ministry has been a big one, a long one and a far-reaching one. We knew that, wherever we had it, it was important that all who came would feel welcome – and would fit. The fact is that though the ministry of George Harper was firmly rooted in the church, it always extended beyond the church. George, of course, wanted a small service – about 20 minutes long. But, there is a point where even he doesn’t get what he wants. It’ll be about an hour with lots of music – which is what he wanted.
I’m sure many of you have your favorite George memories . . . the story of a wedding or funeral or baptism or camp or youth group or sermon or joke or one-liner or graduation speech or banquet prayer. It’s important that we tell those stories to each other – and we will. But what I want to share with you is part of a letter that George wrote in 1952 to his children- Rusty, Hal, Stevie and Nancy. They were little at the time and, I’m told, actually never saw the letter until a few days ago when they were going through ‘stuff’ kept in a vintage suitcase that, Dorothy said, was George’s father’s suitcase. He wrote:
Daddy is on the train coming home from a land that will be our new home before long. It is a land where the mountains are so tall that the snow on top of their heads becomes a part of the white clouds that float around them, and the earth and sky are one big picture that you an stand and look at, never quite believing it could be real. But it is real . . .
It is a land of the big sky. (You) feel little standing under it in the bright sunlight on a crisp cloudless morning, or lying on your back looking up at the night with stars so big and near you feel you can reach up and touch them. (You) learn what humility means. But, at the same time you feel big. There is no place for little thoughts or narrow feelings. It’s just too big a country for little things.
We are moving to Montana and the big land will welcome us. You will ride her mountain trails and learn the secrets of her forests. You will work on the prairie and learn the ways of horses and cattle. And you will grow straight and tall like the pine tree, as graceful and swift and strong as the deer. And you will be as clean and honest as the wide open country which has nothing to be ashamed of.
It is a land where the people are still pioneers, and where the Church is a straight forward church. Its young men and young women need to be banded together in a movement to make the people and policies of the state as much a part of God’s perfect plan as the mountains are. That is why we are going to there to live. God wants us to help (him) there. More and more people will come and the state will grow better or worse. We will grow up with the state and we will help to shape its future.
It’s our land . . . to love and to build. . . Mother and Daddy are taking you there to live with a prayer that the big land and the big sky will help us to grow big too.
I think you’d all agree that we have been the beneficiaries of that big vision. Please watch with me . . . (DVD tribute to George.)
Celebrating our Graduates
“Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it – because it does. Give yourselves to the gifts God gives you.” (I Corinthians 14:1, The Message)
On George’s first day in the ICU, on Monday of Holy Week, I left a meeting at the church and, for some reason, decided to stop by the hospital and see if I could slip into George’s room. Amazingly, when I peeked in, he looked up immediately and seemed delighted to have a visitor. He told the nurse to come back later and told me to pull up a chair and we talked. One of the first things he mentioned was that he had to get stronger because he was preaching on Mother’s Day. I asked him if he’d thought about the sermon and he told me he had – a little – but that for sure he had the title. “It’s Mother’s Day, right? So my title is Mothers Never Graduate.” To which I replied . . . “that’s true, George, but the fact is none of us do.” He nodded and smiled. He told me he thought one of the best things we were doing in the church these days was the lecture series in the fall because we’ve gotta keep learning. Keep thinking. Keep open.” He never missed one of those opportunities. He was always learning new things, reading, thinking. He spent time last week outlining his last Bible Study class – with a new insight about the Book of Jonah. And I know that’s how I want to be . . . a learner always. I want to grow into being at least some of the pastor George was – my style will be different, of course, but his vision, his openness, his courage – those are the things to continually reach for.
I don’t know the sermon George would have preached today but I think it would have been something about how graduation is not the end for you. It is a step – an important step, a step to be celebrated, for sure – but a step nevertheless in a life that must always be on a ‘learning curve.’ He would, I think, remind you to ‘go after a life of love.’ In other words, keep the important things important. I think he would have encouraged you to keep developing the gifts God has given you. I think he would have told you that the way to do that is to keep learning, keep thinking, stay open to new ideas and new possibilities. Because, whether he said it or not, that’s the sermon he lived. His words from that letter written almost 60 years ago are still true… it’s your land to love and to build. And your lives are ahead of you to live into, to love into. May your vision be big and may your minds and hearts stay open to surprise and wonder. May you live in such a way that you too spend the last week of your life working on the next great idea to share.
I think he would have said something like that and I know that, when he finished, he would have said . . . that’s it! Okay, Meg, it’s yours.
