I preached the following sermon on December 27, 2013 at my late grandfather’s funeral. It is based in part on the biblical story of Joseph who is given charge by an angel to name Mary’s baby.
It must have sounded like a firecracker, like a sonic boom going off in old Joseph’s ear: an angel telling him to name Mary’s baby, Jesus.
“You want me to call him what? To name him whom? No one will buy it. That name hasn’t been used in years, not for generations, not since the world went totally bad and everyone forgot about grace and kindness and, God. You can’t give a kid a name that means “savior” unless you’re absolutely serious about changing things, unless you really mean to set things straight again. Are you sure that’s what you want me to call this baby boy?”
“Yep,” the angel says. And so the boy is born and eight days later Joseph, along with Mary, who is still feeling the pain of childbirth, takes the boy to the Temple in Jerusalem, to that holy place where nameless ones become someone, and there they lift the child and declare, “He shall be called Jesus.” Joseph does it. He follows through, because we know Joseph is a righteous man who must believe in a righteous world. So he names the boy, Jesus.
What we name a child is important. How we call them matters.
That my great-grandparents named their first-born son Frank Gunnard Nilson is interesting I suppose, but not very. He was, after all, a junior. Many of us knew the original Frank Gunnard Nilson. I did not. If he was a good man—and I have no reason to believe he wasn’t—then I too would have named my child after him. But I’m sure he wasn’t always good. I’m sure that on the day Frank and Ethel raised their son in the air and declared, “He shall be called Frank Gunnard Nilson, Junior,” there was some hope that he would live out the name better than his father before him. So it’s mildly interesting, what they chose to name him. What is more interesting, however, and far more important, is that when my grandparents went to name their first-born son they didn’t choose to call him Frank, but Bruce. And yet, Bruce Gunnard.
Gunnard. I don’t know what it means. It sounds a bit German, like something people would say to describe a bad bratwurst-beer combo. “Oh Helga, that one’s going to be a gunnard to get down.” Or maybe Austrian. Like the Von Trapp family in the Sound of Music might have had an eighth child named Gunnard, but we never hear about him because he was a black sheep in the family. He couldn’t sing. Gunnard could only play the trombone. But I believe the name is Norwegian, from the word gunnar, meaning soldier, attacker, which is about right for my grandfather.
What I know of my grandfather is that he was a cross between a gun—loaded, cocked, liable to fire, and often prone to misfire—and nard, a fragrant ointment that when applied could make unpleasant things somehow seem more pleasant. Gunnard. To say that he was one is to say he was a force to be reckoned with, which is also to say, he did not like to be wrong…about anything, and in this way he would often insist upon being right…about everything. We can be grateful for this part of him. We can, and should be, grateful that as a public educator he insisted on the idea that everyone can learn. There were, we know, no unnamed, no unknown children in his schools. If you were the worst kid on the planet and you had to go to the principal’s office, Gunnard would make certain you served your time, but he would also send you on your way with the assurance that at least one person believed you were the best kid on the planet. And when, after 25 years, he retired from it all in 1986 because he was weary of spending more time in meetings than in the classroom, he simply turned his insistence to the good people of Cushman Union Church.
I spent many Sundays there with him, playing my clarinet while he played his trombone, we all sang a hymn, and he preached. There were never more than 30 or so people at the church and many years later I asked him why he stayed at it for 16 long years. He was only supposed to be a 1-year fill-in. He insisted, “It mattered to them.”
We can be grateful that Gunnard wanted to be in the times and places where it mattered.
Yet we know it’s never quite this simple and that the truth is: Gunnard was fiercely afraid of not mattering. That like all of us, his great willingness to do for others was also a matter of doing for himself, a self-protection cover against whatever inadequacies and inabilities he had. So that whether you were talking with him about the best roads to take when driving from the west side to the east side of town, or the best club to use in teeing off the 8th hole in a round of golf, or the eternal destiny of politicians, he would insist on knowing it all, like all these things somehow mattered the same, when they didn’t matter the same, or maybe even at all. Of course—and this is a great irony—this meant that if you were the one driving with him or talking with him or just trying to live with him, he could sometimes make you feel like you didn’t matter at all. That what you know and feel and see wasn’t so important.
I know. We don’t like to speak of such things, especially not at funerals. We don’t believe in treading upon the grave. We much prefer to speak only of the beautiful. It will do us no good though, to stop at the beautiful. For we have not come here seeking proof of the beautiful. Those parts are plain to see. Rather we have come looking for the hope of redemption, proof of new life, for the ugly parts. At least that’s how Grandpa said it to me once.
It was 11 years ago. Having just graduated college and landed my first job, I was living back at home. I had also just broken up with a girl that I had been dating for about 4 ½ years. Life was suddenly feeling pretty different to me, but also kind of free and hopeful. Grandpa had just had his stroke. Following a lengthy stay in rehab, he was also adjusting to being back home, and to not feeling so free and hopeful. But he had been dating a girl for about 49 years and she would prove to be the best thing going for both of us that year. Anyway, 2 or 3 times a week I would stop by to give Grandpa a bath. I don’t remember how the whole thing got started but I think it had something to do with Nana agreeing to pay me under the table in loaves of banana bread.
It was hard for Grandpa. Not being able to get his own pants off, to balance himself in the shower, to get the soap into all the cracks and crevices. For the first few months we were getting along okay but then it happened: he was standing under the water, naked as the day he came into the world, I was scrubbing his bald head with shampoo, and he let one rip. I tried to laugh it off, to pretend like we all do it, and I figured Grandpa would as well, except he didn’t. He was clearly embarrassed, though I honestly didn’t know why. And there was nothing he could do to make it right, which is when he yelled, “Damn it, I hate this.”
I asked him if he’d like a moment and he said he would. So I walked out of the bathroom, closed the door and just stood on the other side thinking about what I could do to make it right. When I realized there was nothing I could do, I knocked on the door and went back in. Grandpa was just sitting there.
“What would you like to do?” I asked him.
“I just want to go back to when I could do this on my own.”
Somehow or another I understood him perfectly. “Not being able to do it on your own doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It just means that now we get to do it together.”
There was a pause. “I can live with that,” he said.
I thought to myself, I know you can, I know you can. Because, thanks to him, together is all we’d ever been.
And so it went this past Sunday that when Gunnard could no longer do it on his own, and there was nothing more any of us could do to help him out either, Jesus came and lifted him up to carry him home. And I imagine that when he arrived at heaven’s gate, God came out to say, “Who do you have there?”
And Jesus said, “This is Frank.”
“Frank? Which Frank?” asked God.
“You know, Frank Nilson. Middle name Gunnard.”
“Oh yes,” exclaimed God. “Bring him in. I know him well.”
Thanks be to God who knows us and loves us all so very well.
PleaseGrace 