This is the sermon I preached at the funeral of Lee Howard at St. Paul's in New Haven, long after I left there.
On September 2, I will do the funeral of Hanna, Lee's divorced wife, but though divorced, she was in his choir.
Amazing.
Lee’s
Sermon (September 3, 2016) St.
Paul’s/St. James, New Haven
I chose the
gospel today—the discussion between Thomas and Jesus about where Jesus is going
and how the disciples know where he is going—because of all the Biblical
characters, Lee reminded me most of Thomas. Lee, like Thomas, would be the one
raising his hand and saying, “Hold on, Jesus! We don’t know where you are
going. How can we know the way?”
Lee was a
Thomas kind of guy….
A sense of
urgency.
That’s what I
remember from my first ever encounter with Lee Howard—a sense of urgency.
Since he was a
Southerner, I had expected him to be slow moving, slow talking, laid back. But
not Lee….
Whenever I was
in his presence, I felt a ‘buzz’, a kinetic energy. Eating lunch with him in his
apartment, which I often did, I would feel like I was in a bubble while Lee was
in motion, talking non-stop, having more to say than time to say it, bringing
out plates and glasses, food and drink from the jumble of his living space.
Urgency.
Until the last
years of his life, when thoughts and speech and movement slowed down on
him—until then there was this…”urgency” about him.
But now that I
think about it, maybe the right word is “passion”.
That’s more accurate I think. My experience of Lee was on his ‘passion’—for
music, for people, for ideas, for life.
That sounds
right. The Lee Howard I knew was a person of ‘passion’.
I would watch
him work with the choir. It was like he was juggling one more ball than he
should have been but he kept them all going through his strength of will.
I know he was
passionate about music…no question there.
And he was also
passionate about people—about his family, his children, his friends, his fellow
musicians, his ex-wife.
In my 41 years
of ordained ministry I’ve seen lots of divorces. And in my experience, one of
the things involved in the divorce agreement—besides money and property—was
‘the church’.
In every
divorce I’ve known about, one of the couple got “the church”.
Not so for Lee
and Hanne.
I’ve thought
about that a lot over the years. How both of them held on to St. Paul’s. I
don’t imagine I’ll ever figure it out, but it gives me hope.
Lee was
passionate about his children. Helen, Lee Jay and John came up in most every
conversation we ever had—even if we were supposedly talking about the music for
Lent!
It has been a
couple of decades or more since I had a close relationship with Lee. We were on
different journeys. But we did share the road for over 5 years. And when I look
back on that time, what I remember about Lee was his ‘passion’.
Lee’s journey
is over now. But I know his passion lives on in those he loved. And his passion
lives on in the music we hear this day, played in his honor.
The words of
the Burial Office and the Eucharist are full of hope and life and possibility.
I give thanks for that. And the priest, at a funeral, wears white—the color of
Easter, not the color of mourning. We Christians are called to believe that
Death is not ‘the last word’. Death is the ‘penultimate’ word (I believe Lee
would appreciate having “penultimate” being part of his funeral sermon! He had
a passion for words). The LAST WORD we say today in prayer and music and
liturgy is HOPE and PROMISE and LIFE.
St. Francis of
Assisi once wrote, “Death is not a door
that closes, but a door that opens and we walk in all new”.
That is our
hope and prayer for Lee this day. Even though Death seems to be a closed door
that keeps us from those we love—our prayer and hope for Lee is that the door
of Death opened and he walked in ‘all new’ into the presence of the One who
loved him best of all. All new. All new. All new and full of passion.
Amen.
