Funeral - Darrell

Funeral – Darrell Altman

February 24, 2008

Perhaps I ought to offer a few words of introduction. I am Chris Heavner, the Lutheran campus pastor at Clemson University. I was Chris Altman’s pastor during the years he was a student there - at least the years after he started spending hanging out time with Laura Fisher, now Laura Altman, his wife. The Altman family being who they are, it didn’t take long to become friends with Margaret and Darrell. During the most recent visit of the Gamecock Football team to Clemson, Darrell brought a pig to town and we cooked in on the front lawn of the church.

My involvement in this afternoon’s service is also a testimony to the ability of this man, and his wife, to reach across the miles and invite into relationship God’s children living in distant lands. I am honored to be here, as I am sure are all those gathered this afternoon.

I would like to read from Romans, Chapter 8:

¹⁸ I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰ for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage…..

²⁶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words….

³¹ What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³ Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ^…..
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is not a “good thing,” it is not even an “acceptable thing,” that Darrell has died. I hope it is okay to admit this. The man who taught our course on preaching at the seminary instructed us that as preachers, we “Shouldn’t take God’s side too quickly.” By that he meant that sometimes the role of a preacher is to stand with those besieged by suffering and ask of God, “Why?” When I think of all that this man had given, of all that he had left to share, I have to ask of God, “Why?”

My preferred answer to that question is found in the Book of Job. There, the voice in the whirlwind reminds us that God is God and we am not. God doesn’t tell us this, as a way of saying that we have no right to ask. God tells us this so that when we are slammed up against the limits of human existence we can hold on to the hope that such limits do not exist for God. God is able to do, what we are not able to do.

The songs we learn as children are probably the most helpful. When we sing, “Jesus loves me,” we always come to the concluding line which reminds us, “They are weak, but he is strong.”

St. Paul says it differently, but he says the same thing: Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

We stand over against God, asking “Why?” God comes back to us and says to us, “It will be okay. Nothing will separate you from me, nothing. And to help you through this time, I am going to allow my spirit to speak the words that you might find it difficult to speak. I am going allow my spirit to help you make sense out of that which by any human standard is senseless.”

When we cooked that pig, back in November of 2006, about half way through the process Darrell whispered to me, “I’m not completely sure how to do this.” I told him he was doing a good job faking it. That none of those impressionable college students, looking admiringly up to him, could tell.

None of us knows what we are doing when gather for a service like this. We don’t know how to do this? What we do know, is that God’s spirit is interceding for us. We don’t have to “fake it,” not even for the sake of those looking to us, or looking up to us. We can openly admit, and proudly proclaim, “I don’t know.” And then we can be quick to add that our God does know. We may not understand, but we pray to a God whose understanding is not bound by the same limits. Nothing, in our whole life has ever separated us from the love of this God - - and we speak with confidence when we say that this won’t, either.”

Amen.