Sermons
Scott Ashley Garland
August 17, 1965—January 30, 2006
Memorial Service
Good Afternoon.
Jennifer and Scott,
Gabrielle and Grant
have been coming to All Saints
for a little more
than three years.
But it was in the last year
that Scott
really began to be connected
and known here.
For those of us from All Saints’
our most recent memories
are of Scott, Grant and Gabrielle
in our Christmas Pageant.
And then last Sunday,
Scott in a plaid kilt
with a fighting flamingo T-shirt,
having forsaken the Gators
for a pink bird,
leading the cheers
for our Annual Parish Meeting.
After the meeting,
with sweat pouring down his eyes,
the last thing Scott said to me
was,
“This was great.
I can hardly wait
to get even more involved.”
Who of us knew that day
what was to be the next.
But
what we know now
—is what we’ve always known
on some level—
but bury deep
in the closet of our minds—
that our lives
are fleeting and fragile.
In this flawed, frail world of ours—
our lives are precarious.
Knowing this now viscerally,
how then
will we endeavor to live this day
—not tomorrow
—not the next—
but today? How will we live today?
There are no pious words,
theological phrases
or biblical passages
that will alter
the devastating reality
of Scott’s absence and death.
Nor can I tell you
that I believe in a God
—who would will this to happen;
a God who would
will Scott to die
for some unforeseen
—yet to be comprehended divine reason
or sacred plan.
That is not the God I worship
—that is not the Holy One
in whom we live
and move
and have our being.
So what—then?
What do we do?
What now do we know?
What I know
is that a part of God
died on Monday night
when that plane went down.
A part of God
now has a gaping wound,
a bloody hole
at the reality of Jennifer
going on with life
without her Scott.
Just at the thought
of Gabrielle and Grant,
Ruth & Jim,
Susan and Rich,
Ruth and Ken
—all of us—
going on without Scott
—our God is bleeding.
Ours is not a God
—picking planes from the sky.
Ours is not a God
who floats above our mind-numbing suffering.
Ours is a God—
who died on the cross.
A God fully immersed
in our world
who knows full well
what it means
to be naked,
exposed,
and completely unable
to stop, control or end the pain.
The God we worship
is the crucified Christ
the one who knows
more than any of us
the pain of loving and losing life.
Our God came to this place,
walked on this earth,
suffered and died,
and rose again
so that in moments like this
we might never be alone.
God holds us
—as we hang onto to each other.
God weeps
as the tears pour down our cheeks.
With every story we tell
God mourns
Scott’s short life and tragic death.
Our pain is God’s pain.
God will hold us and carry us,
when we cannot go any farther.
God will sustain us,
breathe for us
and literally pull us
from one day until the next.
For ours is a God
who knows what it means
to have someone
be there
in the midst of death.
Our God
knows what it means
to be at the foot of the cross
and
stand there
and
stay and not leave.
And what do we say?
What do we do?
We hold on tight
to one another
for that is
where we will find
God’s healing presence,
God’s Holy Hope.
We hold on tight
and we remember Scott
in all we say and do.
We embody with one another
his joy,
his goodness,
his raucousness and his passion
and
his courage
to finally see and know
that he was loved
for who he was, as he was—a holy child of God.
We leave today
—shattered but not alone,
grieving
but not without love,
devastated but not without hope—
For
“Yea,
though we walk through
the valley of the shadow of death
we will fear no evil
for thou art with us,
thy rod and thy staff
they comfort us.
We will dwell
in the house of the Lord forever.
This day, this night, always.
Amen.