A Funeral Homily for Ron Allison

A Funeral Homily for Ron Allison

Today we gather to mourn the passing and celebrate the life of our dear brother Ron. At the reception afterwards we’ll have a chance to share stories of about this beloved character, but for now I want to look through the glass of Ron’s life to see how it might open onto the mystery of God, and our walk of Christian discipleship. He has a lot to teach us.

Our Gospel passage for today speaks of there being “many mansions in my Father’s house.” One way to use that image in our understanding of who and how God is for, with, and ahead of us, is to hear it as a statement of unconditional belovedness for all of God’s children—indeed for the entire created order. If there is one thing you can say about Ron, it’s that he was unique. A true character. With his ever-dapper sartorial flair (he was the only 77 year-old I know who could pull of Converse and skinny jeans), his Anglophilic preoccupations (particularly with anything pertaining to Her Majesty the Queen), and self-appointed role as St. Mark’s resident contrarian and Devil’s Advocate, I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone who was more themselves, more comfortable in their own skin than Ron. What a sign for us that God doesn’t desire perfect little peaches who perform some idea of what it means to a “good Christian.” The message of God becoming human in the person of Christ is that it is in fully embracing our humanity, in becoming more and more human, more and more who we are, we participate more and more fully in the Divine Life.

That’s really the function of saints in our lives. Rowan Williams tells a story about the first few times he met Desmond Tutu where he realized something interesting about being Tutu’s joyful, saintly presence. Instead of feeling diminished by being around Desmond Tutu, Rowan Williams walked away with a sense of joyous expansion. He found himself thinking that Tutu’s message was perhaps being Rowan Williams could be as much fun as Desmond Tutu evidently displayed in being Desmond Tutu. “Desmond loves being Desmond Tutu,” he writes, “there's no doubt about that. And the effect of that is not to make me feel a bit kind of frozen or shrunk. It's to make me feel, well actually perhaps I could love being Rowan Williams in the way that Desmond loves being Desmond Tutu.”

Saints don’t make us feel that they are remarkable people and that we are somehow always falling short of their impossible standard. Saints make us feel that there is a remarkable world out there full of delicious coffee and conversation; saints remind we live and move and have our being in a remarkable God who loves us like crazy; and saints remind us that we are called to have as much fun being ourselves as Desmond Tutu has being Desmond Tutu, and Ron certainly had being Ron.

There’s another story from the Jewish tradition that’s told of Rabbi Zusya. Rabbi Zusya when he was old man said, “In the coming world, God will not ask me why I wasn’t more like Moses, or why I wasn’t more like Elijah, but, ‘Why weren’t you more like Zusya?’” Part of recognizing who we are is realizing what gifts God has given us and learning to exercise those gifts for the building up of the Kingdom. In becoming more and more the unique, unrepeatable person God made us to be, we paradoxically become a more and more perfect channel for transmission of God’s grace, God’s healing work in the world.

As I mentioned earlier, Ron had a reputation for being our resident contrarian and professional devil’s advocate. Who can forget when we gathered on Thursdays for our weekly Bible Study his impassioned soliloquies from his perch by the fireplace? We always begin by praying the Collect together and reflecting on what strikes us. Ron, of course, was always suggesting rewrites to the Collects to the delight of some and the horror of others. I’m sure if he had the cellphone numbers of any of the members of the Standing Commission on Liturgy, they would have had his number blocked long ago!

But seriously, that kind of engagement with the faith is something I really cherished about Ron. His life was an example to us that we don’t leave our brains at the door of the church to be Christians. Being a Christian is not about believing six impossible things before breakfast as the Queen tells Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. We bring our whole selves to worship, we use our God-given memory, reason, imagination, and skill, to wrestle with our faith. Indeed, I see Ron’s life as an embodiment of Jacob wrestling with the Angel. Faith is a kind of holy tussle in an effort to make sense of an often topsy-turvy world, and Ron gave himself wholeheartedly to that tussle. When his Parkinson’s made it such that he had to give up driving and to depend more and more on the kindness of friends, he fought it mightily. It was hard for him to accept help. And in naming and sharing, in giving voice to that struggle, in being himself he graciously showed us all that part of ourselves—how we wat to go it alone, do things under our own steam, and how hard it can be to let ourselves be loved. What a powerful gift for all of us.

Ron left no rock unturned, no question unasked, no struggle unvoiced, and in the process showed us all that we didn’t need be afraid of our questions, our doubts, our fears, or our humanness. “The opposite of faith is not certainty,” said Paul Tillich, “the opposite of faith is doubt.” Ron kept us honest. Ron kept us faithful by steering us clear of the staid shores of mere certainty and back out into the choppy waters of a living faith lived out under the pressure of the living God.

It’s funny, because as Christians we can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that our beliefs are what are most important. But it’s actually in the tussle, the holy wrestling with the living God, in the encounter, in the relationship with this God we worship and try to follow after, that what it means to be a Christian is truly revealed. It’s no mistake that the name for God own Chosen People, “Israel” means “wrestling with God.” It’s no mistake that we hear those words in 1^st Isaiah—“Come now let us argue it out, says the Lord.” Ron not only showed us that it should be fun being the person God has made us to be, he also that it’s in wrestling with the Angel like Jacob at Peniel that our faith is true and lively. May Ron’s soul and the souls of all the departed rest in peace.