Honoring Bob Clague      

(1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keep no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.  But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.  For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.  For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.  And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.

So, I am a lectionary preacher.  That means that there are suggested readings from the Bible for each Sunday.  There is usually a Psalm, an Old Testament lesson, an Epistle reading and the Gospel lesson.  These appear in three year cycles.  Year A has the Gospel of Matthew as its centerpiece.  Year B, which we finished before Advent, has Mark as its Gospel, and year C (which we are now in) centers on Luke. 

            If you travel around to different churches and denominations (Catholic and mainline Protestants), many times you will hear the same readings as we use here.  I tend to choose one of the lessons to preach on.  Other preachers will incorporate two or more.  Today the Call to Worship is a respeaking of Psalm 95 which is the Psalm of the day.

            On occasion I will stray from the lectionary in case I have a particular focus in mind.  I knew that, today, we would be honoring Bob Clague during worship, and I thought that I would need to go outside the Lectionary and choose another Bible reading to inspire my words.  But I was delighted when I saw that the Epistle lesson was precisely what we needed to hear today. 

            Now, 1^st Corinthians 13, sometimes known as the love chapter, should be familiar to most of you.  It’s possible that it’s a bit overused at weddings, but, I tell you, I always find something new in it to speak about.  And for today, it is the perfect place to begin in honoring Bob, but, also, it is good to let 1^st Corinthians 13 challenge and inspire all of us to live our lives guided by love in such a world as we live in today.

            …because we have gathered to worship God and to honor a good man.  Though we, here at our church, have only known Bob for some 6 or 7 years, he has made a big impact on our church family.  The first time I met and talked to Bob was at Election Day Dinner a number of years ago.  Betty had roped him into washing dishes–so that put him right next to my potato station.  The man I met displayed a really good sense of humor, was an excellent conversationalist and, clearly, had a positive outlook on life.  I was immediately cheering for Betty and Bob to be together.

            It wasn’t long before they announced that they would be married, so we, Betty’s church family, was included in the wedding.  Meanwhile, Bob would be sitting with us most Sundays in that pew over there with Betty, getting to know us.

            But Bob had lived a full and wonderful life before we knew him.  He was married to his first wife, Pat, for 60 years and had two sons and daughters-in-law along with many grandchildren and greats.  He was universally loved by them.  Bob had had a successful career as a manufacturing executive, making use of his MBA from Case Western Reserve University.

            He and Betty met by happenstance, both having been widowed.  Betty needed someone to help her inventory and sell Ralph’s tools after he had died.  Bob was recommended because he was working his retirement job at an Ace Hardware.  They immediately liked each other and each discovered what a good companion the other was.  You can call it the Hand of God, or you can say it was meant to be or you can call it a miracle. But we can agree to say it has just been wonderful.

            Bob and Betty had a delightful 6 plus years together right through to the very end.  Bob kept the twinkle in his eye almost until he passed.  You who have known him know exactly what I’m talking about.  He was irresistible.

…But there’s more.  Bob personified today’s lesson from Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Church.  He was patient.  He was kind.  He was not irritable.  Even in the last few months he bore his weakening body with an acceptance that not many of us would be able to display.

Bob was small in stature, but his heart was big, and he was an excellent role model for living the Christian life. 

One of his most endearing traits was that he opened himself to be a friend and father-figure to Betty’s children and grandchildren, and they are grieving his loss, as well. 

I have good memories from a few years ago at one of our mission staycations.  It was a hot, intensely sunny day, and some of the guys were cutting wood for building something, and there was Bob in the middle of it all, sweating along with the rest of them, not necessarily protecting his red head’s skin but, in his quiet way, had become the foreman of the project.  What a good guy.

Thank God for the life of Bob Clague because he was one who showed the face of God to us.

…Now, for us, as we read 1^st Corinthians 13, let’s take seriously the words of Paul.  We may have all the gifts and talents that the world honors, but if we don’t have love, it really is all for naught.

I have been thinking a lot about aging and death lately, of course.  Walking alongside Betty in the midst of her grief and loss, but also in her gratitude for having lived long enough to have been able to enjoy years with Bob, has stretched my own appreciation for life. 

Attending the funeral of my 90 something year old colleague, Jim Wolf, who served 38 years at the Grandview UMC, I have noticed how the years fly by but, also, how lucky folks like Jim and I have been to serve churches that we love.

Now, my older brother is in the ICU at University Hospitals, and his health is very fragile.  There’s a good chance he may die, and I know he’s fine with that.  I am too.  Through the years I’ve been quite good at seeing how he might have made better decisions in his life, but the message to me today is that love keeps no score of wrongs, does not rejoice in other’s wrongdoing, but delights when truth wins out.  These are powerful words for living out the long haul. 

As Ron’s kids try to figure out how to navigate this phase of their lives, together and apart, I only wish for them to gain some wisdom from passages like 1^st Cor. 13.  And I want to be a good role model for them and for my own family in such trying times as these.  It’s all humbling and, as David Shankland reminded me on Friday, it’s a lesson for us in getting out of the way of our own egos and letting love be our guide in all things.

So today, let us be grateful for the life of Bob Clague, for the man he has been for his family and for each of us, for the positive impact he has had on Betty and her family.  And let us be grateful for this church family as we encourage each other to spend the remainder of our lives learning the important lessons in this life–for without love, we are simply empty noisemakers.  Amen.