our Lord’s example to serve and not to be served. Examples of how Ardelle Hopson saw virtually every aspect of the Christian faith through the lens of stewardship are meant to convey to the congregation the extent to which she believed in sharing time, talent, and treasure for the building up of Christ’s Kingdom. The stories about Bishop Martin’s contention against racial injustice are emblematic of his lifelong struggle to encourage the people of God to respect the dignity of every human being, as promised in the Baptismal Covenant.
The twenty-six homiletic offerings that follow fall into three categories. In “Mentors,” I share sermons that I preached at the funerals of five clergymen, all of whom had a profound effect on me at various stages of my ministerial formation. “Matriarchs” is made up of homilies delivered at obsequies for women of deep faith and devotion, “pillars” of Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, who distinguished themselves as leaders in their families, their parish, and the broader community. “All sorts and conditions of men” is an expression borrowed from The Book of Common Prayer.11 Originally, the phrase sufficed as a reference to all people, but I have chosen here to use it in its literal sense, as these sermons were delivered at the funerals of men who represented a broad spectrum of humankind and who impacted those around them in myriad ways—among them a young man who committed suicide, a newspaper editor, a diplomat, a priest, a football player, a violinist, an industrialist, and a university chancellor. These and others whose funeral sermons I have been privileged to preach, represent people of God who manifested “the varieties of gifts but the same Spirit” of which St Paul speaks (1 Cor 12:4), whom we commend to God’s care in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.
In the compilation of this volume, I am indebted for technical support to Ken Smith, director of communications at Calvary Church, Marsha Morris, parish secretary, and to my son, Justin Lewis; and to my friend and colleague Richard Burnett for his gracious and insightful Foreword.
Harold T. Lewis
Pittsburgh:
The Feast of St. Mark, Apostle & Evangelist
25 April 2018
1. Episcopal Church, “Commemoration of the Dead,” 382.
2. Episcopal Church, “Bidding Prayer.”
3. Hymn references are, respectively, to Abelard, “O What Their Joy;” Neale, “Jerusalem the Golden;” Alford, “Ten-Thousand Times Ten-Thousand;” and Ackley, “I Serve a Risen Savior.”
4. Hoffacker, Matter of Life and Death, 7.
5. Scott, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” 293.
6. Directions for funerals in the Roman Catholic Church, for example, state: “A brief homily based on the readings is always given after the Gospel reading and may also be given after the readings at the vigil service; but there is never to be a eulogy”. (Catholic Church, Order of Christian Funerals, 8.)
7. Hughes, Trumpet in Darkness, 10.
8. See, for example, Willimon, Worship as Pastoral Care, 115: “Against the definition of the purpose of a funeral as being ‘for the family,’ I argue that the purpose is the same as for any service of Christian worship: to worship God.”
9. Schmitz, Life of Christ, 16.
10. Leo, Exits and Entrances, 16.
11. “Prayer for All Conditions of Men,” 32.
“God doesn’t choose the worthy.”
PERCIVAL ALAN REX McFARLANE, Priest (1928–2001)
Preached in St. Mary’s Church, Paddington, London 2 February 2001
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (John 10:11)
Almost exactly forty years ago, I found myself in the role of president of what we used to call the YPF—the Young People’s Fellowship—in St. Philip’s Church, Brooklyn, New York, where I had grown up. Between masses, the youth of the parish served breakfast to the faithful and charged the princely sum of a dollar and twenty-five cents. Now the only people who didn’t pay for breakfast were the reverend clergy of the parish, an awesome threesome, who arrived, at the stroke of ten, in cassocks and birettas. It was on such a Sunday breakfast that one of those priests approached me and, out of the blue, asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I told him I wanted to become an interpreter at the United Nations. Without batting an eyelash, he asked me if I had ever considered the priesthood. I laughed so loud that people stopped eating their breakfast. When I regained some of my composure, I said, “Oh no, Father, I am not cut out for for that sort of thing.” The priest’s retort—he was deadly serious—made me stop laughing. “Harold,” he said, “God does not choose the worthy, he makes worthy those whom he chooses.” “Not a bad line,” I thought to myself, and I promised the priest that I would, like Mary, ponder these things in my heart. That priest was, of course, Percival Alan Rex McFarlane, beloved curate at St. Philip’s and known to young and old alike as “Father Mac.”
Father Mac took charge of my life. He told me to apply to McGill University, and, when I was admitted, he arranged for me to stay at the Diocesan Theological College and to worship at his boyhood parish, the Church of St. John the Evangelist. When, a year or two later, he returned to Montreal, ostensibly to work as chaplain at Her Majesty’s Prison (but really, I suspect, to keep an eye on me) he informed me that, for my soul’s health, I should come to to prison to play the organ for the Sunday services—for free, of course. He was always giving me life lessons. Once, he visited me at college and brought with him a young man who had been formerly an inmate. Alan spent fifteen minutes on the telephone explaining that it would be unethical to let on that I had met this man when he was behind bars while I was the prison chapel organist. He had, after all, paid his debt to society. I assured Alan that I understood. Over sherry, one of my classmates asked Alan’s guest how he came to know Father McFarlane The former prisoner, doubtless also schooled by Alan, replied, “I met him on the outside.”
Today, as we gather to commend Alan to Jesus Christ, the Bishop and Shepherd of our souls, in whose priesthood Alan was pleased to share, we take no small comfort in Jesus’ words in the tenth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel: “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is an hireling and not a shepherd sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters them . . . I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:11–14).
I think this passage is especially appropriate for two reasons. First, Alan was a man who could mouth these words with conviction. Fully aware of his humanness, he could and did put himself in God’s hands, in the embrace of a loving shepherd. He tried to tell me this in our last conversation on the telephone. “Your old Uncle Alan is dying,”
