Burial Oliver Nicholas Thompson
18 Oct. 2024-20 Feb. 2025
1 March 2025 Jack Hardaway
At times like this, my priest growing up, Bob Riegel, he would say that for Ollie this is only the blink of an eye, he now lives in the fullness of the resurrection and the renewal of creation.
But for us, the rest of us, we have to wait.
Father Bob. He liked to be called Bob. I always called him Mr. Riegel though.
The blink of an eye.
And then those who wait picking up the pieces.
So Ollie is fine.
It’s the rest of us, those who wait, who are more problematic.
Sometimes when I’m washing dishes, especially when it’s some of the old family china, a plate slips, I juggle it for a second with soapy fingers and then I lose it, and things slow down and I see the plate slowly fall to the floor and shatter into a slow motion puzzle of shards coming apart, scattering across the floor.
That shattering sound.
One instant a precious thing of beauty and the next it is gone.
That shattering instant is especially sharp and cutting at the death of an infant.
Such beauty that is then gone.
It is wrong.
It leaves us bleeding as we grasp at the pieces.
The beauty of a young child awakens and calls us to the beauty of God and the shattering of the cross.
We feel the heart break of creation and the splendor of the Holy One.
The thing about this faith that we live is that we are never given a reason or explanation for this wrongness.
There are stumbling words about freedom and fallen creation but the words just sound more foolish and shallow the more they get repeated. All we are given is the cross, the death of the Son, and the splendor, the shock, the terrifying surprise of Easter morning.
This faith that we are caught up into, that our bodies and souls are baptized into, this faith requires a harsh thing of us.
The pain of all the shattering-s of this life become the wakeup call: to long more passionately for the beauty of the One Who Is Risen, to hope more deeply, to love more fearlessly, to forgive more defiantly, and to give more joyfully, it is the wakeup call of the resurrection breaking into the grief of Good Friday. Sleepers awake.
Grief collapses us into the wakefulness of resurrection, the shattering alarm that wakes those who sleep.
It isn’t what I want to hear.
I want to hear that things will be alright, somehow, right now.
That this slight momentary affliction really is just a passing moment as the full weight of glory wraps and holds us close.
That is what I want to hear.
Things will be alright, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
We are being wrapped and held in the full weight of glory.
It is just that this slight momentary affliction is a very long moment and the affliction cuts deep, and there is nothing slight about it.
This faith bids us to have more faith even yet.
That is what it always comes back to.
Which simply doesn’t help much with the cry, and the weeping, and the grief of this moment.
It helps some though.
Waiting.
Waiting is tempered with expectation and longing.
Faith gives us that when our lives are shattered.
Ollie, wrote a chapter in the Gospel, a revealing about God and life.
The book of Ollie, the Gospel according to Ollie.
Ollie brought out the best in so many, bringing together so many.
God is like that.
Bringing out the best, the precious gift of time, the calm of patience, like a still space in the storm, the fierce courage to trust, and the stubborn contrary heart that is faith, despite it all, because of it all, faith.
The Magnificat, the song of Ollie, magnifying the Lord.
This is a time of weeping , longing, raw grief.
This is also a time of thanksgiving for the gift of a beautiful brief life.
This is also finally a time of revealing, revealing the God who is with us in the passion.
Time, patience, trust and faith. These four abide.
The gift of Ollie.
Amen.