Bill was a remarkable priest and an incredible man. He was Archdeacon of the Diocese of Long Island for many years. He retired to Connecticut and came to our clericus and attended St. John's in Waterbury for several years, off and on.
Being asked to preach at his funeral was a great honor, extremely humbling and a treat beyond imagining. In his later years, Bill had macular degeneration and couldn't drive anymore. That will help you make sense of the beginning of the sermon.
I can only hope some of Bill's glory glimmers through in my words....
SERMON FOR THE FUNERAL OF THE REV. BILL
PENNY
9/18/2007
The best job I ever had—best by
far—was being Bill Penny’s chauffeur from time to time.
I am only one of a multitude of folks
who were Bill’s chauffeurs—and though I always thought I was his
favorite driver, I am as sure as sure can be
that everyone who gave Bill a ride felt like “his favorite driver”.
Bill simply had the God-given capacity to make whoever he was
with feel like the best and brightest and most beloved. That gift of
his is beyond compare, fondly to be wished, a holy gift.
And there is this: I was Bill’s
driver to the General Convention in 1997.
We’d drive into Philadelphia each
morning from Bill’s sister in law’s house and go to the
convention center. I would feel like the one person entourage of an
ecclesiastical “rock star”. We couldn’t walk ten steps without
someone coming over to hug and kiss and love on Bill. And he would
hug and kiss and love on them.
There were coveys of nuns who
descended on him like teenagers around the Beatles—Bill was Paul
and John and George and Ringo all rolled into one. There were bishops
who would walk away from important conversations just to come over
and bask in Bill’s presence. Just walking through the convention
center, priests by the dozens and as many lay-people, would be drawn
from whatever else they were doing to come and hold Bill near and
feel his oh-so-fierce hug in return. (Sometimes, when he hugged me, I
felt he was about to dislocate my shoulder or break some bone….Bill
was a world class hugger…..)
I had known before that trip that Bill
was a “special person”—what I hadn’t realized is how wide
spread that realization was! Everyone he ever met, it seems, was made
to feel so wonderful by just being with him that they never forgot
it….And could never forget it.
And now Bill is dead. I hate this
part. I want to rant and rage against God and the cosmos and the
powers that be and say, “No, give him back to us…we still have
great need of him….”
And we do. His family needs him and we
as individuals and we as a church have “great need” of him—of
his never-ending compassion, his great, good humor, his gracefulness
and generosity of spirit, his wisdom about what was old and
his openness to what is new, his love and his guidance and his
eternal optimism in the face of life’s cynicism and his
undefeatable hope in the face of fracture and fear.
We have need of knowing that whatever
the evidence to the contrary, life is TERRIFIC….Really, life is
Terrific….That’s what Bill believed, believed always,
believed absolutely, without a shred of doubt….
“Enough about me,” Bill would be
saying about now, “Proclaim the Gospel, Jim. Proclaim it….”
And this is the
gospel I proclaim—the gospel Bill gave his life to; God is
Love.
Not complicated at all. Not subtle in
any way. A simple three word sentence that gathers up and contains
all we know and all we need to know.
GOD IS LOVE.
In one of Kurt Vonnegut’s science
fiction novels, there is a robot named Salo that had been programmed
to travel the galaxies endlessly, searching for the answer to one
simple question: “WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?”
Salo finally finds his answer from a
lonely, forgotten woman who was marooned on one of the moons of
Jupiter. “THE MEANING OF LIFE,” Beatrice tells him, “IS TO LOVE
WHOEVER IS AROUND TO BE LOVED.”
I believe that would have been Jesus’
answer as well.
And I know it was Bill’s
answer.
From Bishops to power-brokers to the
people who run the fish store to clerks at Starbuck’s to folks down
on their luck—Bill simply loved whoever was around to be loved.
Whether he was pleading for compassion from the powerful or sitting
on a bench on the Waterbury Green with the homeless—he loved
whoever was around to be loved. And in that he proclaimed the
gospel more eloquently and profoundly than any preacher can convey.
God is love—and love is stronger
than death could ever be.
The Buddhists tell
us that the illusion of separateness is the cause of human
suffering. The illusion of separateness is the cause of
human suffering. If that is true, then the acceptance of unity
is the pathway to joy.
That, I believe, is
the gospel truth that Bill embraced, leaned into and lived from. He
didn’t seem to notice the separateness of the powerful and
powerless, of brokenness and wholeness, of hope and hopelessness, of
death and life. Bill seemed to accept, in ways both obvious and
profound, the “unity” of God’s creation. He loved whoever was
around to be loved.
And that is the
good news I proclaim for him and from him.
He taught us to
love by loving—by his eternal love of his precious Natalie, his
blinding love of Priscilla and all her family, his loyal love to
those he ministered to and with, his unflinching love of “the least
of these” in our midst, and—most, most of all—his quiet and
grateful love of the one who is Resurrection and Life.
My invitation to
you is to carry from this holy space, this gracious time, a little of
Bill’s Spirit—a sampling of his love, a touch of his humor, a
dollop of his compassion. And my invitation to you is to carry from
this service, this memorial, the unity of God, who is resurrection
and life.
If we can carry
that good news with us into the world, Bill will be pleased. If he
were here, he would say that was “Terrific”, absolutely
“Terrific”.
Godspeed, dear,
dear friend. And may God’s blessing be with you and with us, who
miss you so, this day and forever….
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