Following is an edited version of the 2023 Susquehanna Conference Memorial Service message by Rev. Catherine E. Boileau. You can view a video of the service here. Rev. Boileau’s message begins at 30:40.
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 3:1-6
You know those moments.
I went back in and my dad motioned [with a slight wave] and I didn’t understand what he was trying to say. I reached into my bag for my pen and my journal and handed it to him and he wrote, “Bye-bye”. I said to my dad that I didn’t understand why he wrote that and he wrote that he’d heard everything the doctor said. Oh Dad.
And so we sat for [who knows] how long in that sacred space, what the Celts call those thin spaces where eternity and mortality all come together, a space they say where God is only three feet away.
You know those spaces.
Times seems to stand still, even while the clock is ticking. So we sat in that holy space. Finally, he motioned for the pen and the journal and not knowing what to expect now from him—but we lean in don’t we? We want to hear every word because we know they’re gifts—my engineer, pragmatic father wrote these words, “So, don’t forget to cancel the bank card.” Oh, Dad!
Now lest you think that my dad had thousands or millions of dollars to protect, that’s not the case. Or that his checking account was most important to him, that was also not the case. Throughout that morning he wrote countless notes to me and to the family, notes of caring. To his dying breath he was concerned about his wife of 62 years, my mother. “Have your mother sit down, her hips won’t take it.”
When we were sharing together in casual conversation, waiting for the doctors to come, and said how cold the room was, dad wrote, “If you’re cold, go buy yourself a sweatshirt.” When the doctors or the chaplains or anyone came in the room that morning, Dad would [tell me] the stories to share—and they were all about the grandchildren. “Tell the doctor about Jonah and the lamp,” “Tell the chaplain about Ron and his girls.”
But maybe most precious to me was when I said, “Dad, should I call your pastor now?” And he wrote, “Yes, mom will need him eventually, but you’re my pastor.” Oh dad.
Isn’t it amazing how God gives us the capability to shape each other through letters and words and they land right in our heart and in our spirit? Those letters stay with me, of course, and they became words of hope for the family, who could not because of COVID get there to say their goodbyes. To tell the grandchildren that even though grandpa was on the respirator he wanted stories told about them, because they were his precious joy, and he was thinking about them in those moments.
And when [the doctors] came to remove the respirator, and everybody had left but I stayed with him, he made the sign of the cross and said, “To live is Christ, to die is gain.” Oh Dad.
Dad survived six more days, struggling for his breath all the way through. But still enough breath to send us to the bakery for his favorite cheese Danish because the hospital one wouldn’t do. He was still my dad. When I thought about the letter about the bank card, I realized it wasn’t as much about his checking account, as it was about his faith. And that in a moment such as that, when he knew the hours were coming to an end, he had no fear. He didn’t need to panic or wrestle. He knew in Whom he believed, and he knew that One was trustworthy.
To the families that we invited into this thin space, who by coming [to the Memorial Service] were so gracious to invite us into theirs: We know that you know the thin spaces. Those places where eternity and our regular day-to-day intermix and are interwoven. In the thin places, God writes his word also in our heart and meets us in those moments, because God is faithful. Because precious in the eyes of the Lord are the deaths of his saints.
The Apostle Paul was a great writer of letters. They were sharp and focused and, like my dad’s notes, sometimes there’s little pieces that are just for certain people and we’re quite left wondering. But there was aways an urgency and a desire to get to what was most important. I thought about that. Maybe it’s because Paul spent most of his ministry in the thin spaces. Shipwrecked, beaten, stoned, left for dead, accused, beaten again, and imprisoned... Paul spent most of his ministry facing the thin spaces. In the thin spaces, we tend to tune in to what is most important. In the thin spaces, we don’t spend a lot of time and energy and emotion on those things that don’t really matter.
So Paul writes a letter to one of his beloved congregations, the letter we know as I Corinthians. It’s full of passages we quote, I Corinthians 13, “Love is patient. Love is kind.” But it also has a sharp edge on some parts of the Corinthian church’s life—where there were some variances. Understandably so, when the Corinthians received the letter from their church planter, beloved pastor, there was some push-back.
Have you ever noticed when you tell the truth, that not everybody is glad to hear it. Can I get a witness?
And so there is some push-back and as often happens, if you’re the one delivering the truth, then sometimes people will want to discredit you, discount you. They’re not sure Paul’s as good a preacher as Apollos. In this [second] letter when he responds after they’ve expressed their sadness at causing Paul the angst, it seems there’s still a question about his credentials. Who is [Paul] to come before them or send this letter about them to tell them about their life? Where are his letters of recommendation?
What matters most in ministry—Paul is writing to the Corinthians and to us—is this, it doesn’t make a difference how in the end, in the thin spaces, it doesn’t matter how many degrees I have, or how many accolades I have, or how impressive my LinkedIn profile is, or how many followers I have on social media. It doesn’t even matter the size of my church, or the salary that I make, because at the end of the day, in the thin spaces, what Jesus will remember, will pay attention to, are the words we spoke, the letters we wrote, to people in our life. It’s a bold statement by Paul. The test of my life, whether or not I’ve been fruitful and effective, at the end of the day will be what I invested in the hearts and souls of people.
Ministry is all about people. The goal of everything we do in the church of Jesus Christ is to plant the Gospel seed in the hearts and souls of humankind and to demonstrate the power of the Kingdom in the accompanying justice and mercy ministries. People matter to God, so they have to matter to us.
My husband and I spend seven years in urban neighborhoods in the former South Jersey Conference before we moved back to Susquehanna [Conference]. We worked with 8-12 year olds and at that time, Camden, N.J., was second in gang activity only to east Los Angeles. One night we were with one of our beloved campers, Jurell, and his single mom, Linda. My husband took Jurell out for a walk and talk. I sat in Linda’s little bungalow, sitting on a junkyard, and it was spotless. And she poured out all the things in her life that were challenges to her as a single mom raising this beautiful boy, her son. Being affluent and white and from the suburbs I asked, “Do you have a case worked or case manager who could help you?” Linda got up, left the room and came back with the Bible that we had given Jurell at camp, and she said, “I don’t need any more social workers. What I need is for you to tell me about this Jesus that you told Jurell about.”
Church have you ever noticed —if we’re paying attention—that oftentimes those we go to serve are in fact writing letters in our heart? Those we go to serve often become—if we are paying attention—our teachers, imprinting our lives. Maybe if were talking about being new and improved, we can renew our covenant, our passion, to remember that our ministry is about writing letters through the Spirit of God, scribing the Gospel, so the world can read in us the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When your church looks at you, what letter are they reading about God? What you’re posting, and what you’re sharing, and what you’re saying, and how you’re navigating conflicts—what letter is the world reading about God?
As I shared, my dad survived six more days after the respirator was removed, and he amazed me. I realized, as I thought about it, that he had no reason to rush or to cram things in because he had been prepared by the church for this moment all his life. My dad was baptized Dutch Reformed, but he married into the Methodist tribe. As he spent most of his adult life in the Methodist Episcopal Church then United Methodist Church, I realized that everything the church was doing and that he was participating in was preparing him for that moment. Because, we are in the business of forming people. Every time his pastors prayed the simple prayer over communion, making the bread and juice to be the body and blood of Christ and then also praying for the Spirit to come on the church so we can become the body of Christ, redeemed by His blood, that prayer was being answered in my dad and he was being formed in the eternal, living Christ. Every time he went to a church meeting, even when things went wrong and there was conflict, he worked through the conflict and the day didn’t end, and the sky didn’t fall, and they ended up working through it and moving on in Jesus’ name. Even with disagreements, my dad was being formed by you, the church, in Jesus Christ. The anthems that he sang in the choir. When he took Disciple Bible Study he became a disciple, so much so that he taught Disciple Bible Study for 25 years. My dad was being formed by the church of Jesus Christ.
He said, “For my memorial service you might look in the back of my Bible, there’s some verses.” It turned out there were 86 of them. And not just, “‘I go to prepare a place for you,’ says Jesus,” but about Jesus and the Sadducees, and why we knew the resurrection was the resurrection. Or Job who said ‘when this body fails, yet I shall see God, because I know that my redeemer liveth.’ (Job 19:25-26) Dad knew that Jesus didn’t just offer us resurrection, Jesus is the resurrection and the life. My dad knew because the church were letter writers—not perfect—but none-the-less the Spirit was using the church to write the Gospel seed into my dad’s heart and soul.
So I’m forever grateful.
To those of you who are family members ...we give thanks of a grateful church, as your clergy father or mother or spouse, spouse of a clergy, or lay members were all instrumental in writing through the Spirit of God the eternal Gospel into the hearts and souls of people like my dad. [We give thanks] for the clergy who preached and for the spouses who served, who whispered words of encouragement, or said, “I’ll take the kids, go…” and modeled what servanthood looked like. They believed in a kingdom they could not see and they believed that “Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world.” So, we as a church say thank you for sharing them with us, for what they did, how they lived. It matters. And not only we remember, Jesus remembers. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that even the small things they did as a lifestyle witness, Jesus took notice of. “I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was hungry and you fed me. I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you did not forget me.” We give thanks to them, and to you for sharing them and we remember them. The promise for them is secure. The same God that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us.
