Funeral Sermon for my favorite General
November 14, 2009
St. Thomas Episcopal Church
We gather today to celebrate the life and faith of one who was truly “an oak of righteousness" among us. Many of you are so well acquainted with General Beach’s life that I need add nothing to the details you all know so well. Many of us will try to fill the gaps as best we can in our personal and professional and community lives, and we will be comforted by his spirit and example. He would, I think, be quite impatient with any list of his accomplishments and honors; I suspect the list is somewhat incomplete at any rate despite the heroic efforts of those who helped him stay on top of his many commitments. In this I include especially his son Charlie, and Edna and Charlotte, and the many, many police officers who allowed him to break the sound barrier over the eastern Kentucky mountain roads!
The General would want all of this work to be carried on, of course. In the best military sense, as he has laid down flags, he would want us to pick them up and march forward. But it is especially the flag of faith that I believe General Beach would want us to lift high. Just as it seems entirely appropriate somehow that Charles Beach Jr. would be born on the 4th of July and would begin his new life on Veterans Day, it feels right that we gather for a few moments here in his lifetime church to think about God’s faithful presence among us.
His dedication began early. For the last 80 years or so he has been in the habit of arriving early at church in order to ignite the furnace here at St. Thomas. [Of course the mode of energy usage has changed a bit over the years!!] As his father had before him, General Beach served this church as the center of his belief and trust in a loving God. He has inspired his church family here at St. Thomas to serve with the same kind of generous spirit.
Serving, as important and life-giving as it is, however, really blossoms best when rooted in a deep and passionate system of belief. “Believe in God,” says Jesus in John’s Gospel. “Believe also in me.”
Belief is something we understand and encounter with our minds, and it is lived out in our actions. Over the last 90 years, the General exemplified this kind of belief, as he read and prayed and studied. He passed this connection down to his son Charles and daughter Elizabeth, and through them to their children. And I suspect he discussed it enthusiastically with his friends and perhaps even his banking associates. As an evangelist, he was both determined and powerful—as I imagine many of you might have experienced!—Perhaps he has even inspired you to do the same. Even in this last year, he read four newspapers every day and worked hard through prayer and conversation to understand world events in the context of his beliefs.
But Jesus began this passage we heard from the Gospel of John with THESE words: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” This is where the rubber meets the road—even if our General is driving!—and in hearing this statement of comfort, BELIEF struggles to become faith. “If it were not so,” coaxes Jesus, “Would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?. . . I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.” FAITH requires a much different level of trust, doesn’t it? . . .a much deeper encounter with the God who encourages us to open our hearts to love.
It is this deep engagement that the General began to share with me and with others in the last few months. After a life time of serving and giving, and using his strong military instincts to strategize campaigns and control outcomes, he found himself in a position of depending on the very communities he had always served, and of not being dependably able to control every outcome.
This does not come easily to any of us, but I suspect it is particularly challenging for a high level military commander. And yet, through Grace, a true gift came out of this time, and I know in my heart that it is this flag that General Beach would have us lift high and carry forward.
He had always known (head) and believed that God and his family and his friends loved him. But suddenly, he understood with his heart that such love often requires not just our generosity, but by opening ourselves to the generosity of others. Sometimes, we cannot truly understand how to depend on God until we need to depend on one another. As General Beach faced the undeniable truth of this kind of love, he knew that total confidence that Jesus loved HIM in the deeply personal and selfless way that he encountered through his family and friends and colleagues.
“I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus proclaims. As Christians, we open our hearts to this truth, and offer ourselves into the trust of a Savior who comes to us as a bridge across all of our doubts and insecurities.
It IS a Happy Morning, as we sang in the Easter hymn that gathered us into this service. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, this morning we can say, “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything.”
It is this very Peace that our father, grandfather, brother, and friend came to know. It is this very Peace that I know he would have each one of us move toward as we gather to celebrate his new life in Jesus this day.
May HIS rest be this day in Peace, and his dwelling place in the Paradise of God.
Amen.
St. Thomas Episcopal Church
We gather today to celebrate the life and faith of one who was truly “an oak of righteousness" among us. Many of you are so well acquainted with General Beach’s life that I need add nothing to the details you all know so well. Many of us will try to fill the gaps as best we can in our personal and professional and community lives, and we will be comforted by his spirit and example. He would, I think, be quite impatient with any list of his accomplishments and honors; I suspect the list is somewhat incomplete at any rate despite the heroic efforts of those who helped him stay on top of his many commitments. In this I include especially his son Charlie, and Edna and Charlotte, and the many, many police officers who allowed him to break the sound barrier over the eastern Kentucky mountain roads!
The General would want all of this work to be carried on, of course. In the best military sense, as he has laid down flags, he would want us to pick them up and march forward. But it is especially the flag of faith that I believe General Beach would want us to lift high. Just as it seems entirely appropriate somehow that Charles Beach Jr. would be born on the 4th of July and would begin his new life on Veterans Day, it feels right that we gather for a few moments here in his lifetime church to think about God’s faithful presence among us.
His dedication began early. For the last 80 years or so he has been in the habit of arriving early at church in order to ignite the furnace here at St. Thomas. [Of course the mode of energy usage has changed a bit over the years!!] As his father had before him, General Beach served this church as the center of his belief and trust in a loving God. He has inspired his church family here at St. Thomas to serve with the same kind of generous spirit.
Serving, as important and life-giving as it is, however, really blossoms best when rooted in a deep and passionate system of belief. “Believe in God,” says Jesus in John’s Gospel. “Believe also in me.”
Belief is something we understand and encounter with our minds, and it is lived out in our actions. Over the last 90 years, the General exemplified this kind of belief, as he read and prayed and studied. He passed this connection down to his son Charles and daughter Elizabeth, and through them to their children. And I suspect he discussed it enthusiastically with his friends and perhaps even his banking associates. As an evangelist, he was both determined and powerful—as I imagine many of you might have experienced!—Perhaps he has even inspired you to do the same. Even in this last year, he read four newspapers every day and worked hard through prayer and conversation to understand world events in the context of his beliefs.
But Jesus began this passage we heard from the Gospel of John with THESE words: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” This is where the rubber meets the road—even if our General is driving!—and in hearing this statement of comfort, BELIEF struggles to become faith. “If it were not so,” coaxes Jesus, “Would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?. . . I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.” FAITH requires a much different level of trust, doesn’t it? . . .a much deeper encounter with the God who encourages us to open our hearts to love.
It is this deep engagement that the General began to share with me and with others in the last few months. After a life time of serving and giving, and using his strong military instincts to strategize campaigns and control outcomes, he found himself in a position of depending on the very communities he had always served, and of not being dependably able to control every outcome.
This does not come easily to any of us, but I suspect it is particularly challenging for a high level military commander. And yet, through Grace, a true gift came out of this time, and I know in my heart that it is this flag that General Beach would have us lift high and carry forward.
He had always known (head) and believed that God and his family and his friends loved him. But suddenly, he understood with his heart that such love often requires not just our generosity, but by opening ourselves to the generosity of others. Sometimes, we cannot truly understand how to depend on God until we need to depend on one another. As General Beach faced the undeniable truth of this kind of love, he knew that total confidence that Jesus loved HIM in the deeply personal and selfless way that he encountered through his family and friends and colleagues.
“I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus proclaims. As Christians, we open our hearts to this truth, and offer ourselves into the trust of a Savior who comes to us as a bridge across all of our doubts and insecurities.
It IS a Happy Morning, as we sang in the Easter hymn that gathered us into this service. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, this morning we can say, “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything.”
It is this very Peace that our father, grandfather, brother, and friend came to know. It is this very Peace that I know he would have each one of us move toward as we gather to celebrate his new life in Jesus this day.
May HIS rest be this day in Peace, and his dwelling place in the Paradise of God.
Amen.
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