“Something You Never Forget”
A Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday (RCL Year C)
February 18, 2007
Rev. Larry Lange
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Congregation
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Yes, there are Lutherans in New York. When we Midwesterners think of people from New York, we think of the floor of Wall Street; we think of people jumping up and down with a sheaf of papers clutched in one hand and a cell phone smashed against the side of their heads with the other hand shrieking out numbers. We Midwesterners think this is how people from New York conduct themselves at the breakfast table in the morning or at family gatherings or at funerals. We Midwesterners don’t like to think unkindly of people from other lands, but when it comes to people from New York, well, we just can’t help ourselves. Every encounter we have with them seems to confirm our suspicions about them.
Like the first time I met Barry Hellman which was after a worship service when good Lutherans file sedately out of church in good order to say good morning to the pastor. One day Barry Hellman appears, his arms spread wide as if he’s about to give me a great big bear hug, although I’d never met the man in my entire life. “Pastor Larry!” he’s shouting, “ My name is Barry Hellman: Barry and Larry! Our names: they sound the same! We could be twins!” And then he grabs my hand with both his hands and he’s shaking my hand so vigorously it’s like we’re being electrocuted. It’s these kinds of encounters that cement our uncharitable notions about New Yorkers.
And Barry Hellman behaved like that all the time, apparently also the night his wife was giving birth to their only son. Barry had insisted that he was going to be there with his wife with the video camera to do the La Maze breathing thing with her and she was fine with that, because that was the most up-to-date, fashionable thing to do which apparently is important to New Yorkers. And so Barry was there in the final moments when the pain is great, and the doctor was telling Barry’s wife to push, and she was pushing, and Barry was shouting encouraging Wall Street sorts of things at his wifefrom behind the video camera, and she began shouting not-so-encouraging things back at Barry…Did I tell you she was from New York also?
Well, the whole thing was kind of like two wharves men unloading a ship. The two of them were seized by some sort of spirit and couldn’t stop. They started shrieking at each other, and meanwhile something was going wrong. I don’t think I ever heard the same story twice about what happened; the baby was in the wrong position; they tried to turn the baby; they discovered the baby was tangled up in the cord. Barry was shouting at the doctors and was on his cell phone with the President of Happy Health Care Incorporated telling them he was suing them for everything they were worth, and his lawyer in Manhattan would be contacting them momentarily, and he had it all on videotape.
I watched that baby grow up to become a quiet boy of three years old, and every once in a while I’d hear Barry make vague comments about how the boy’s quietness and shyness and politeness were some sort of mental defect caused by that negligent delivery room staff, but I as far as I know he was just a normal, little Lutheran boy. It’s one of those loose ends in a story that never really get tied up neatly.
Anyway, that’s Barry Hellman, New Yorker: an in-your-face, outta my space, ahead in the rat race kinda guy. One day about a year after the birth of his son, Barry was in a hurry driving to a client’s house, and he was on the phone and he was making a right turn on red, and he had come to a complete stop at the stoplight to make a particularly important point to whomever he was speaking, and he started to make his turn onto an eastbound street right into the rising sun.
Now you know what it’s like driving into the sun on a very cold winter day when all the car exhaust hangs in the air like clouds with a dark shadow on one side of them and a dazzling glare exploding behind them. And you know how dirty your windshield gets in winter, because if you go to the car wash all your doors get frozen shut. And you know how the glare of the rising sun transfigures your windshield from gray dirty glass into a blinding white. Well, that’s why Barry’s zippy little car slammed into old Carl Abendroth who was in the crosswalk and that’s why a second later, the Carl’s shocked face was smashed into Barry’s windshield. Carl’s body slid off the short aerodynamic slope of Barry’s car onto the cold cement before Barry could disentangle himself from his seat belt and air bag and rush out to his assistance.
It was way too late to help.
Barry was, as the saying goes, beside himself. Barry suddenly, fearfully realized that the real world might just be full of people like him who would pounce on him like panthers, who would sue him in snap for everything he was worth, who would fire him for this vehicular carelessness and drop him from insurance and/or force him to pay exorbitant rates that no newly unemployed person could ever afford. Barry suddenly saw his life dashed to the ground like a flower pot. In his dreams he saw the lines the police had painted around Carl’s body in the crosswalk; the lines indicated a leg sticking out in an unnatural way and one of Carl’s arms outstretched, a ghastly crucifix forever in Barry’s mind. For the first time Barry understood that a world full of people like him was not such a grand place after all. Every time his phone rang, his stomach burned, his hands convulsed.
Barry came and told me he was going to the funeral, that he was going to fall at the knees of Mr. Abendroth’s children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and beg their mercy and pity and proclaim to them that he’d learned a great lesson and that he’d always keep his windshield clean and he’d only talk to his family on the cell phone while he was driving and never again would he make right turns on red.
I suggested that he consult his lawyer before doing something like that. And I suggested that the family might not be quite ready for an…an appearance like that at a funeral and that maybe a nice letter to the family would be more appropriate or a gift to charity in the man’s honor, but only after consulting his lawyer.
Barry went to the funeral. He sat in back of the funeral home chapel sobbing and shaking his head as he held his head in his hands. Barry was a wreck from three days of nightmares, shrieking at his family, jumping out of his skin every time the phone rang.
An older woman sitting in front of him in the funeral home managed to penetrate his delirious weeping. “You’re not a family member, are you?” she asked.
“What?”
“You’re not a family member.”
“Me? No. No, I’m not. I’m the darn fool who killed that man.”
A few people who had been chatting quietly up front paused and looked toward the back of the funeral home to discover the source of the disturbance.
“Shhhh,” the older woman said. “I’m not either. I’m a family friend. You didn’t know Mr. Abendroth, did you?”
“No. No, I did not, and I can’t say that I ever will, now can I? And why is that? Why? Because I killed him, that’s why!”
People paused again in their conversations and had now identified the source of the disturbance, though they did not know why that person was so disturbed.
“Shhhh!” the older woman advised. “Listen to me. It’s okay. I know this will sound funny, but the family is greatly relieved.”
“What?” Barry whispered hoarsely, finally heeding the older woman’s advice. “Relieved? How can they be relieved?”
“He has Alzheimers. He refused to go into a nursing home. No one had any power of attorney. He refused home health care. He refused meals on wheels. He wouldn’t even open the door to any of his children. He’d yell at them about the younger generation being sick, because they were just after him for all his money, and that he couldn’t stand them or his life any longer. They were angry and frustrated and embarrassed and didn’t have any idea what to do next. It was just a matter of time before something like this happened or that he left a cigarette out somewhere and burned the whole building down with everyone in it. It was just a matter of time.”
Barry was thrown back in his chair by the older woman’s words. From this new vantage point, he suddenly saw that the people at the funeral home were not suffering from an inconsolable grief at the shocking loss of their favorite elder; they weren’t having a big party, but there was a calmness among them that lent truth to the older woman’s words. Barry was completely absorbed taking all this in and feeling an amazing sense of relief washing over him that felt to him like a gospel moment, a moment when he was directly in touch with the divine, a moment when he felt as though he was being transformed from one degree of glory to another by the Lord, the Spirit. It was an experience he never wanted to end. Barry was so absorbed in this transfiguration experience that he didn’t notice the older woman had disappeared, and for a while after he wondered if it had all been a dream except for the fact that he never heard from one lawyer from the family or an insurance company or anyone at all and he grew in certainty that he had been forgiven, freed from that sin, and he was a changed man: a calmer, gentler, more grateful person than ever before.
What hadn’t changed, of course, was that he is from New York and whether the new Barry Hellman had changed for good is one of those loose ends in a story that never really get tied up neatly, except that just the other day I was talking with a member of Grace who recounted a similar mountaintop, transfiguring moment in his life and he said it was something that you never forget, something, he said, that was always with you, always with you like the Lord himself, always with you—whether you feel it or remember it or deserve it or believe it or not: always with you like the Lord himself. Always.
Amen.