In an e-mail from the Diocese of Southern Ohio, I learned that the sermon preached at Bishop Herbert Thompson Jr.’s Requiem Mass is posted online. Since the link leads to a .doc file, I thought it would be helpful to have it available as a regular html page as well. I know I occasionally am unable to open Word documents. Memories of Bishop Thompson, in celebration of his life, are still being collected here, and some of them will be included in an upcoming issue of Interchange. Click “read the rest of this entry” to read Rev. Hanisian’s sermon.
Sermon preached at the Requiem Mass for
the Rt. Rev. Herbert Thompson Jr.
1933-2006
By the Rev. Canon Jim Hanisian
Christ Church Cathedral
August 26, 2006
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on us. Amen.
Look around you. Look at this magnificent cathedral.
“What’s wrong with this picture?”
That is what Herbert Thompson used to say when he was struck by the irony of a situation or, like chrome on a Hum-V, when something was just plain wrong. As we gather here today, feeling the loss, the shock of the news of Herb’s death, it is easy to ask, “What’s wrong with this picture. What is clearly wrong with this picture is that we now live in a world that has lost a potent spiritual presence. What is wrong is that we have been deprived of a mentor, a sage advisor, a pastor, a force for unity in a divided time in our church, a visionary, a friend, and for his family and friends, a father and a brother. What also is wrong is that he only got to live the retired life for seven months. After a lifetime devoted to responding to God’s call, being a voice for justice, peace, reconciliation and liberation, he deserved time to kick back.
He phoned me one day, last February and said, “Jim, this retirement thing is quite something. I get up when I want, get dressed when and how I want, say no to things people I don’t want to do and best of all, they pay me for it.” Then he added, “You ought to try it.”
We all have pictures of Bishop Herb…dancing in a purple cassock, being deeply lost in prayer, wearing a silly nose at convention, laughing that explosive laugh. One enduring picture for almost all of us is the face of a man intently paying attention to a single person. The intense stare of his eyes, the way he could make you feel that you alone existed for the time you were together.
One of my jobs as Archdeacon was to be a part of a staff-wide effort to get Herb to places he needed to be….ON TIME. It was an impossible task, as you all know. But generally, it was impossible because he was taking time to listen to someone else, counseling with them for as long as it took. He was generally late on purpose. The purpose was to be present to another fellow human being.
And, if it were not for our faith, faith in a loving and living God who sent his Son into the world to die and rise again, we would have only these pictures to console us in the days to come.
But there is another picture. It is picture of a group of dutiful women arriving at a burial place to discover the tomb is empty. Like us, they were shocked and saddened at the death of their friend. Like us, they were afraid, because a giant of a person in their lives was no longer there to advise, to laugh with, to eat and drink with. Like us, they came to honor him. their world made sadder by the absence of someone they had come to love. The picture for them was of a stone rolled away from the tomb. What it meant, at first to them was that their precious friend’s body had been stolen. But then came the news. He is not dead…HE IS RISEN! Saint Matthew says they departed from that tomb with “fear and joy.”
Our task in this service and in the days to come is to move to joy from the fear we all share in a world without the presence of Herbert Thompson. It is a most ludicrous task. But it is ours.
How can we move to joy, in the midst of death? Let me suggest that there are many other pictures we need to recall. Remember back to his election as Bishop of Southern Ohio. Remember how we erupted with cheers at the announcement of his first ballot victory. Remember Russelle singing at his consecration, and the hug he gave Kyrie in joy as he became our 8th bishop. See him holding Christian, his grandson with a look of pride. See Herbert embracing Owen as he ordained him a deacon in this very place. Remember his pride in is son, Herbert at his commissioning as an officer in the United State’s Navy.
Remember his call for a summit on racism in this city. Remember how people from all over Cincinnati spent hours, days and weeks making a difference. And remember how far we still have to go to honor Herb’s vision for a world where people of different colors can not just tolerate, but also appreciate one another as the gift from God they are.
Picture his preaching: at your congregation or at Diocesan Convention. And remember the powerful way he could tell you about Jesus, about God’s love for you. Remember how God became more real for you through him.
One of Bishop Thompson’s greatest gifts was the way in which he refused to let anyone go. In the difficult days after of the 2003 General Convention, Herb refused to be captured by either side. He voted against consent yet welcomed Bishop Robinson with open arms to the House of Bishops. He frustrated people on both sides of almost every issue, by placing unity above the argument. I remember one group meeting where someone said, “You, sir, make an idol of unity.” His response was immediate, “The night before Jesus died, he did not pray that his disciples be right, he did not pray that his disciples be moral. No, he prayed that his disciples be one. If trying to live into that prayer is idolatry, then so be it.”
For me, Herbert Thompson was the very essence of what it means to be Anglican. He had firmly held positions and beliefs. But he was unwilling to let his opinion separate himself from his sisters and brothers in the faith. And, he believed that the Episcopal Church was great because it could contain ANY argument. He was impatient with those who thought people should leave the church because they disagreed. Across denominational and even religious lines, be held firm to the belief that God does not love a select few, but all of creation. Deeply committed to Christ, Bishop Thompson gave the first gift in all history from a Christian diocese to a Jewish seminary in 2000.
Herb also believed deeply in “call.” For him, to be called by God to do anything was the highest gift a person could receive. His own journey took him to three different and widely un-similar congregations. Often others would criticize him for accepting these calls. His call to be our Bishop continually amazed him. Early on, in a conversation just after his consecration, he said to me, “You would have to be crazy to want to be a bishop. I have been reading history. Most bishops were dragged kicking and screaming into their office no doubt because, later, they would be dragged screaming to their deaths.” Yet, in response to each call, wherever he served, he did remarkable things. He changed the world in which he lived by his constant belief that God had great things in store for those who followed God’s call.
The challenge for this diocese as we elect a new bishop in the fall will be to honor him by holding fast to the unity for which he worked so hard and renewed faith in God’s call to each of us. No matter who we elect, we must argue about the events of our day holding each other’s hands. We must vow never to separate from the body. To do so would be not only un-Anglican, but un-Herb. We must be open to God’s summoning, as people and as a diocese. And as we form the circle of hands embracing, we can be certain that he will be joining us, holding us as always, close to his heart and prayers.
I have read with tears the many comments from you on the web site devoted to him. Far more eloquently that I, you have captured the essence of this Christian man. Again and again, you have painted a picture of a beloved Bishop, a remarkable Christian with the gift of making God known by his mere presence. You have expressed the faith that is in us that because Jesus is risen, Herb is risen, too. Images of him doing the electric slide in heaven, of being re-united with his loved ones who have preceded him there, his enduring presence in your heart. These are the pictures that matter. My own powerful memory was created on one of the days of the revival Redeemer and St. Andrew’s held in 1999. One night, the preacher made a good old fashioned altar call and invited all clergy present to come to the front to pray with those coming forward. As Bishop Thompson approached the front, I whispered to him, “How do you do this?” He said, “Beats me. Just pray.” So for about an hour, most of the 500 people present came forward to pray with one or another of us. As I finished with my last person, I looked over and there was Herb with Cliff Weake, a parishioner from Redeemer whose wife had recently died. Their foreheads were touching; Herb’s arms were on Cliff’s shoulder. The both of them were weeping. He looked up, saw my eyes tearing and the three of us joined foreheads and cried for joy. You see, even then, he was turning fear into joy.
In the face of all these pictures and because of the picture of that empty tomb, we hold that Herbert, too, is risen with Jesus. He is not dead. He is risen. And so as we gather this day and ask, “What’s wrong with this picture????
For us Christians the answer is a profound ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Alleluia!!!
AMEN.
