Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Don Rezek Requiem Mass
December 9, 2006
The Rev. Melissa Skelton
John 10:11-16
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away-- and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
Last week the church office received a letter containing a generous check in honor of Don Rezek. What struck me about the donation were two things: first, there was a note attached to the check describing all the different causes Don had supported through the years and, second, the donor had written three words on the memo line of the check. Those three words were: “For sweet Donald.”
“For sweet Donald:” Something in me surged when I read those words. I knew that the donor and I had known the same Don Rezek, the same Don Rezek that many of you have known. Sweet Donald
I imagine that many of you here today have an image of what I’m talking about when I use the donor’s word “sweet” to describe him.
I’m not talking about a kind of saccharine Pollyanish take on life or a simple-minded, chipper personality. No, Don’s kind of sweetness had to do with something more complex, something more grounded, something more theological. His sweetness, the unfailing positive and connected way he operated, flowed from a number of important things. These are what I think they were:
- his experience of life lived in the face of grave illnesses,
- his fidelity to a gracious God known to him in the prayer and sacraments of the church and in the church as sacrament, and
- his regular, steady and reliable connection to family, to friends, and to neighbor.
And so I want to talk about Donald and his sweetness, a thoroughly Christian sweetness. I want to do this as a way of honoring him and as a way of our exploring the ways that God is manifested in the world. This is especially apropos today, on the Feast of the Epiphany, a feast celebrating both God’s manifestation in the world and our manifesting God to the world.
And so, first, the sweetness that comes of living in the face of grave illnesses. For Don, the on-going health issues he had related to HIV and to his heart attack did not lead to paralysis, chronic complaining or fearful living. Indeed, they were the impetus for living life to the fullest and coming at life with generosity and friendliness.
And so it was pleasant and refreshing to be around Don, to hear about what he was doing, where he was going and what he thought about things. Pervading all of this was a sweet gratefulness about life and a tendency toward appreciation. For many of us, then, Don was and is a model of what it means to live, really live, with the awareness of our own mortality and to do so with a sweetness of spirit and a verve that, for me, is Christian through and through.
Second, there was a sweetness in Don drawn from the prayer and sacraments of the church and in the church community as sacrament. Don came from a Catholic background and so came to St. Paul’s with all his lived sacramental theology in good order. He loved the Eucharist and was one of the weekday mass crew, coming whenever he could. While in the hospital his one refrain to me was “Did you/can you bring me communion?” For Don, Christ was present and available in the Eucharist and in the prayer of the church. God was also present in the community that is the church—in many of you who asked after him, sat near him, and cared about him.
And finally, there was a sweetness in Don related to the regular, steady and reliable connection to family, to friends and to neighbor. Don understood the value of staying connected to family and friends and, I believe it had something to do with his longevity. Whether it was his weekly lunch date with his regulars, his trips to see family in Washington and Alaska, or his relationships with some of you outside these walls, Don understood and received all the benefits of human contact.
But, of course, this went even further in the area of connection to neighbor. With his modest resources, Don was a philanthropist. He donated money to many causes, more than most people ever knew about, and as was so characteristic of him, he did this faithfully, year in and year out.
Don and I met about two months ago to do his funeral planning and he chose the Good Shepherd gospel for this liturgy, the one Morrie read. It’s a passage that some folks associate with some rather sacharrine images of Jesus—the blue-eyed Jesus, looking fresh and clean with a little lamb thrown over his shoulder. Anyone who knows anything about what shepherds really do know that this image is not only incorrect but a little dangerous. Good shepherds, I think, do have a sweetness about them but it is a sweetness of a life lived flat out, humbly and with a purpose, a life grounded in attachment to their charges, and simple fidelity to that task in the face of wolves, desolate places as well as the promise of green valleys and still waters. This was our sweet Donald’s image of God. And this, of course, was part of the image of God he manifested to all of us.
