April 14, 2007
Is 25:6-9; Ps 27; Rom 8:14-19, 34-45, 37-39; John 11:21-27
Grace and Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Kansas City
Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Teresa Sheldrake was a gift from God. We have to understand that about her first. Most of what makes life rich and worth living are gifts that reveal themselves over time, in the dramatic ups and downs as well as in the simple ordinariness of everyday life; they show themselves as stabilizers in our world. Teresa was that kind of gift.
You are here this morning because in some way your lives have been touched and blessed by that gift: loyal friend, faithful family member, lively “Aunt Tee,” devoted sister, beloved wife, loving daughter.
Teresa was a gift who revealed herself through what she loved. Ask the folks she visited at St. Luke’s Cancer Care center; she loved to model for them a sense of well-being and hope and a reminder of the goodness of life, even in the midst of the reality of cancer, an illness she never denied but also never allowed to define her living. Ask her friends, who she loved to entertain in the carefully appointed home she created with Richard. Teresa had that flair for hospitality, of welcoming you and reminding you that you – you, personally – were important. If you looked around her home, you quickly saw that this Iowa girl never lost her love of the earth; her gardens were vibrant displays of what she and God could design and create together, reminders of the cycle of life with which God blesses all of creation.
It’s to her family that she most loved to bring joy, and laughter. You could always count on Teresa to be the life of the party. But she also brought a very healthy clarity. You never had to wonder what Teresa thought about an issue. She was most generous in sharing her opinions, if you asked, and even if you didn’t, opinions about where she stood, and about where you should stand. She reflected clearly the family ethic, the ethic that continues to knit this family together: Meet your responsibilities, do the right thing; look out for each other; keep your chin up, don’t dwell on the negative; celebrate life for the gift that it is. Her standards were high – there was an edge to this no-nonsense woman, she called out the best from you – but those standards were also the anchors of the love she felt so dearly for you, her family.
Yes, Teresa was a gift from God, and God tells us in Scripture that our days on this earth are limited, that one day our life in this world will cease. That knowledge also comes with a promise, one that Teresa embraced. The Scripture readings chosen for today reveal some of the contours of that promise. In the Hebrew Bible the prophet Isaiah looks ahead to the day when God will swallow up death forever and will himself wipe away all tears. The psalmist is able to walk with courage and confidence on this earth even in the most dire circumstances of life, even in the face of overwhelming odds. And how? Because he claims God as both light and salvation, his life’s true stronghold.
We Christians claim Jesus as that very light and salvation, alive and in our midst, now, through the Holy Spirit, promising us that even though we die, we will live; and that nothing in all of creation – nothing – will be able to separate us from the love that God has for us, the perfect love revealed in Jesus.
Teresa embraced that promise; that’s why she could live with confidence, and with an ongoing, daily declaration that life is a gift to be celebrated. A celebrator – that may well be the fullest understanding of the gift that she was, and continues to be as her memory lives on among friends and family.
Let me put it another way. Some years ago the noted violinist Yitzhak Perlman was the featured soloist at a concert at Lincoln Center. The audience watched as Perlman, stricken with polio as a child, struggled across the stage in his leg braces and his crutches. They watched as he settled into his chair, put down his crutches, unfastened his braces, picked up his violin, looked up and nodded to the conductor to begin.
Then, three measures into the piece, one of Perlman’s violin strings snapped. It sounded like a gunshot, everyone in the concert hall heard it. The orchestra stopped playing, the audience fell silent. Everyone knew what had to happen next: Perlman would have to fasten his leg braces again, pick up his crutches and struggle across the stage to either replace the broken string or pick up another violin.
Instead, he did a most remarkable thing. He stayed put. He reached up and removed the broken string, then took a deep breath, looked up and nodded to the conductor to begin the piece again. A newspaper reporter who was in the audience that night wrote about what happened next:
“He played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Yitzhak Perlman refused to know that … When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. Then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.
“Then Perlman said something profound to the audience, something as unforgettable as his performance. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out just how much music you can make with what you have left.’”
Teresa Sheldrake made some beautiful music with her life in this world, and that is her legacy to us: the invitation to continue with what we have left.
And Teresa will be listening. You see, God’s promises are sure, and God promised Teresa in the waters of her baptism that God would never let her go, that he would accompany her through all of the twists and turns of life, and, at the end, would welcome her home again.
That’s where Teresa is now, no doubt happily advising God on the suitable decorations for heaven. She waits for us there, in that place where they do not measure time by hours or days, where the glory of God provides more than enough light; that place that calls to each of us, and is our true homeland. May God keep each of you – Teresa’s loved ones – as you celebrate her life, and your own, and live into God’s promise. Amen.