Memorial Service for Scott Stec
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 1:00 p.m.
McEvoy and Shields Funeral Home,
1411 Hunt Club Road, Ottawa, Ontario
Greeting and Welcome:
Good afternoon. My name is Darrow Woods, and I am Scott’s cousin. I am also a United Church minister. I met a number of you on July 16, when we gathered for Scott and Elfrida’s wedding. On behalf of all sides of Scott’s family, I welcome you here, and thank you for coming. We see you all as living signs of the impact Scott has made in the world, and how he is loved, and respected, and will be missed.
We gather to mourn Scott’s death, and celebrate his life. We are also here to laugh and cry together, to hold and comfort each other, and look to faith for hope and meaning.
Please take a moment now to make sure that your cell phone is either off or set to vibrate.
Opening Prayer:
Loving God, we live and breathe, and love, and create, and change, and grow, and suffer losses, and grieve. We nurture love, and we help each other. We seek meaning, and look for signs of hope. We grumble, we sigh, we laugh, we cry out in despair. We pray, we sing, and we offer you thanks and praise. Our hearts beat, and the blood moves through our bodies. All the living we do, we do in your presence. You are always with us, God, whether we know it or not. In this time, we quiet ourselves, limit our distractions, so that we can look for you in our midst, and hear your voice, and feel your peace. Amen
This passage I think also speaks to the kind of person we have known Scott to be- one who valued people above possessions, and getting along above petty arguing.
Matthew 5:1-9
1-2 When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:
3"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
4"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
5"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.
6"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.
7"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.
8"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
9"You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.
First Letter from John, chapter 4:7-12, 17-19
7-10My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can't know him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.
11-12My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
17-18God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us….There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
19We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. God loved us first. “
May God help us make sense of these words, and in them, find hope and meaning. Amen
Speakers in order:
1)
2)
3)
Special music
Sermon:
We gather together to celebrate Scott’s life, and to give thanks to God for him. We also make our prayers, and ask God to take care of him. While we are talking to God, it may be that we have some questions. Why did Scott have to die, in this way, at such a young age? It doesn’t make sense. We hate this. The only meaning we see in it is that at least his suffering is over. If it wasn’t going to get any better for Scott, at least now it does not get any worse. But that does not answer our questions.
The questions are very human, and natural, and for the most part, unanswerable. We don’t understand many things about life and death, and really, I am not sure how helpful the answer to the “why” questions would really be. It may be that the only thing that might relieve the grief and confusion and anger of these moments would be if time could go backwards, and Scott never became sick in the first place.
I think the “why” questions are just our mind trying to catch up with what has happened. Our minds can’t cope with the pain of losing a precious loved one, so we cry out why, in protest.
I don’t think there is an answer that makes the pain go away. The pain is real, and natural, and a consequence of loving someone.
The last time I saw Scott was just before Labour Day. My family was not able to be with us for Scott and Elfrida’s wedding, so we all came here at the end of August. I am so glad we did. My kids had not seen Scott for years, and they had not met Elfrida. They treated our family to a great supper one evening, and we made plans for the next day. While Elfrida was at work, we picked up Scott, and took him with us on our family expedition to the Museum of Science and Technology. It was a great day.
My kids got to explore, and play in the museum with their gentle giant of a second cousin. That went well, because even at 32, Scott still had the heart, and sense of delight and fun he had when he was a boy. I know this, because I was 18 when he was born, and I knew him when he was young. I almost said when he was little- but you know…
My wife is also a minister. When Elfrida and Scott took us out for supper, they asked us “What’s the hardest part of your work?” They were being careful, I think because of the presence of our kids, who are 10 and 13. But the unspoken part of that conversation was about death. That was the beginning of one of those conversations that happen a bit at a time We dance carefully around the subject of death, rarely daring to come close. We don’t like to dwell on it. There is probably a fear that we might hasten the reality of death, by talking about it- so we avoid it.
But it came up again between Scott and I. The two of us were in the Railway Hall of the museum of science and technology, seated on a bench beside a huge black steam locomotive. I noticed that the steel wheels were taller than Scott. When you have a cousin that tall, you notice things that are even taller. Not many things are.
Scott’s dad worked for many years at a big paper mill in Thunder Bay. Trains brought pulp logs in to the mill, and carried away the huge rolls of newsprint made there. The railway, and steel wheels are part of our spiritual landscape. My first job out of high school was as a brakeman. I remember the sights, sounds, smells, and the feeling of riding on diesel locomotives.
Scott and I are sitting on this bench in the locomotive hall. I think it was cut down from one of the long pews they used to have in railroad stations. He asks me, “How do you do it? How do you talk with a family when someone dies?” Suddenly, there is something even bigger in the room than the massive locomotive. Now we are sitting in the shadow of death. I feel it, like it’s barrelling down the track towards us. In my heart, I feel my own dread of death, and particularly, my dread of the death of this man with the beautiful spirit, who has always, absolutely, been my favourite cousin.
I understand, in that moment, what Scott is asking, is not so much for words of comfort for himself. He is asking whether there will be comfort and hope for those he loves. I hear, and feel, the deeper questions underneath his words. It’s like the rumbling you feel when a train is coming, even before you can hear it, or see it. Death, or at least our shared awareness of the possibility of Scott’s death, was a powerful force in the room.
But it was not the only powerful force in the room that day, and it is not the only powerful force in this room right now. The more powerful force is love.
Instead of answers that probably would not satisfy us anyway, God gives us love.
It is love that makes our lives livable, even in the face of illness, and hardship, and death. It is love that gives us the ability to carry on, even when change happens that we would not have chosen. Love helps us through the times that shatter us, and make us cry.
When it comes right down to it, nothing else matters much, outside of love. I am not talking about the way we say we love a new smartphone, or ipad. I am not talking about romantic affection, or our feelings about a perfectly grilled steak. I am talking about love without strings, love without ego, love that is about nothing except total acceptance and good will. This is the love that conquers fear, and makes life possible, even when the tracks are rumbling.
There are moments like that time on the bench in the locomotive hall with Scott, when we get glimpses of pure and real love. Love that is better than most of us humans can manage on our own. Love that flows through us, to another person, or through another person, to us.
I think that this kind of love originates not with us, but with God. That kind of love does not end with death. The love we have for Scott is not diminished by death. The love he showed the world did not end when his physical body died. All that love remains, and is real.
What I have come to believe is that God’s love never ends. It has no beginning, and no end, it just flows on and on. The glimpses we have of real love in our life, can give us confidence that love comes from somewhere beyond us. Love comes from God. Actually, that love is God. When we die, we return to be fully with God, the source of all that made life livable in the first place. And in love, God takes care of us, forever. Amen
Prayers of Thanksgiving and Concern
God of grace and glory,
we are so thankful for Scott Stec who touched the lives of those gathered here,
and who now has died.
He will be remembered in so many ways.
As a son, and husband, as a son-in-law, and as a cousin.
As a housemate, as a fellow student. As a co-worker.
As a floor hockey champion. As a golfer, and sports fan.
As the only person I ever met, who wore size 18 shoes. I remember his parents having to drive from Thunder Bay to Duluth, Minnesota to find him shoes and clothes.
As a gentle, loving, positive man who looked for good in life, and in people, and who did not complain, even when illness made every step, every moment, and sometimes each breath, a painful challenge.
We thank you for the friendship he gave
and for the strength and peace he brought.
We thank you for the love he offered and received.
We pray that nothing good in Scott’s life
will be lost, but will be of benefit to the world;
that all that was important to him
will be respected by those who follow,
and that everything he valued
will continue to mean much to us now that he has died.
We ask that he may live on in our hearts and minds,
inspiring courage, informing conscience.
We ask that those who were close to Scott may now,
because of his death, be even closer to one another,
and that in peace and friendship here on earth,
we may always be deeply conscious of your promise
to be faithful to us in death.
We pray for ourselves, who are tested by this death,
that we do not try to minimize the loss,
or seek refuge from it in words alone,
nor brood over it so that it overwhelms us
and isolates us from others.
God of grace and glory,
grant us courage and confidence. Amen
The Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
forever and ever. Amen
Chapel Commital:
In a moment the service will be over, and you are all invited to join the family in the reception area.
To offer a sense of completion, I am going to now say the words of committal that we would use if we were at a graveside today
Words of Committal:
Into God’s keeping we commend Scott Stec here departed.
Earth to earth, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
Trusting in God’s great mercy by which we have been born anew
To a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Blessing
On our hearts and on our homes, the blessing of God.
In our coming and our going, the peace of God.
In our life and our believing, the love of God.
At our end and new beginning, the arms of God welcome us home. Amen
