Indefatigable

A Funeral Homily for Michael Parta

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the Bible, the archangel Michael is the indefatigable warrior-angel of God’s people, who cast out Satan from heaven, and who traditionally serves as psychopomp, offering to every soul at the moment of death the open avenue of salvation. Seems a worthy namesake for Mike Parta, doesn’t it? Of course, the thing to keep in mind with both of these Michaels is that their power, their strength, stems not from within themselves but from their selflessness, their faith, and their lives of humble, holy service.

Every time I took Mike Communion—out there in the sunroom overlooking his favorite lake—he would always tell me the story of the heart attack he had in his forties: about how it was then that he had truly made his peace with God. And come what may, he said, he would be all right. Whether he lived or he died, whether he stayed or he would go, he knew that he would be all right. He had a powerful faith; and, as he liked to remind me, a minor in religion.

And these two together gave him an understanding of this life as a gift, pure gift—as though everything after the heart attack was one long pleasant surprise. It was a saturation of grace. And this, along with his natural gregariousness, gave him impetus to pay it forward, not to hoard the gift of life but to share it. Freely he received, and this freed him to give.

I’ve been here 14 years now, and I confess I didn’t know half the stuff he did. I didn’t know about the peace accords in Egypt. I didn’t know that he met three different Presidents. I don’t even think I knew about Estonia, and we were just there. It wasn’t that he didn’t talk much; Mike loved to talk. But he didn’t really talk about himself, at least not with me. He talked about dreams and ambitions and opportunities. He talked about his community and his faith and his family. He talked about gratitude. He was thankful toward his God.

And he talked about the Finns, of course. That was his project for me when we first got here: to educate the new pastor in all things Finnish, from saunas to sisu. One time early on I had managed to find a book about the Finns in Minnesota, and I said, “Hey, Mike, look! I think you’d really appreciate this.” And he said, “Yes, I know. I published it.”

To be honest, over the years I got to thinking of Mike as sort of a battleship: larger than life, the big guns, a proud and protective patriarch. I knew how many rounds he went with cancer, but I could never quite believe that it might stop him. He beat it every time, and it never could break his spirit. Yet I’ll tell you what I’m grateful for: he came home, got up in the morning, looked out the lake, sat down in his chair, and died, at peace, at home. Friends and family were there like a shot.

He went in the fullness of his powers. He went surrounded by those whom he loved. He went like a conquering archangel. How else could such a man go, really?

But here’s the deal, folks. In spite of my standing up here and telling you all largely what you already know, we do not gather this day to remember what was once good but now over. Do we, Mike? No, for we are Christians here. And as such we believe the strangest things, impossible things, really. For starters, we do not believe for one moment that Mike Parta’s story has ended.

Yes, he has died. Obviously that’s why we are here. But as Christians, we believe that Mike’s true death happened long ago, long before even that heart attack which was to prove for him a milestone of grace. No, Mike’s real death occurred on the day of his Baptism—right here in St Peter’s—when he was drowned in that Font, drowned to his sins, and raised anew with the life and Spirit of Jesus Christ as a fire in his bones.

That taper burning brightly over Michael’s earthly form is our Paschal Candle. It is lit on only three occasions: at baptisms, at funerals, and at Easter. And this is to remind us that these three are in truth one and the same. Mike was baptized into Jesus’ death, already died for him, that he need never fear death again. And he was baptized into Christ’s own eternal life, already begun. Death for us has been defeated. Christ unthrones the king of hell.

And so robbed of her sting, robbed of her fear, death becomes for us the gateway to everlasting life. You cannot die! —not in the way that matters, not in the way that you think. Death for us is now like waking. Death for us means going home. Mike believed that. Mike knew that he was going home, that he would be okay. He was a little worried about the rest of us; he knew we weren’t ready to say goodbye. But he lived and died with faith in the One who raises us all from the dead.

You want to live like Mike lived? Then live knowing that death is behind you. Live knowing that the grave has no sting. Strive to remember, ever remember, that life is a gift, an act of grace, and our only proper response is to love as we are loved. This is not naïveté. This is not to pretend as though life were easy, nor that we won’t know pain. Mike knew. Mike suffered. But he also knew that suffering is not God’s will and shall not stand; that in Christ, He has had the final Word.

All of our brokenness, all of our tragedy, all of our losses, all of our sins shall be swallowed up like a handful of sand thrown in the ocean. And we will know joy and reunion and bliss such as we cannot possibly comprehend here below. If you believe this—hell, if you just try to believe this—then you shall have faith such as can move all mountains, faith that makes the sun to rise. To hell with death. Everything we bury is but planted. Everyone who falls shall rise again.

So says Christ! And I dare anyone to tell Him otherwise.

Now, maybe you think all that’s hokey; pie in the sky by and by. I don’t care. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the promise given to us in our Baptism. And it may be the most ridiculous, outlandish promise you’ve ever heard. But once you do hear it, it does something to you, gets inside of you, kills you and makes you alive again! It may not affect everyone in the same way, but the Word never returns empty. In this way it is its own authority. It works with a life all its own.

It was this Word of God that came to Mike in his Baptism, in his community, in his lifetime of service and faith and love. It was this Word that took a heart attack and made it into a source of strength, redeeming the irredeemable in such an impossible way.

It was this Word that allowed Mike to look cancer square in the eye time and again and say with defiance, “You have no claim here. You have no dominion here. You cannot make me what I’m not. No matter what you do to me, I will be okay—because I know the One to whom I belong.” Indeed, if Christ is for us, who can be against us?

There will come a day, my brothers and sisters, when the Resurrection begun in Jesus Christ shall spread like fire to envelop the cosmos. From the perspective of Heaven, it’s already so. This separation now is but a brief parting, a mere eye-blink in terms of eternity. This does not banish our mourning, of course.

But we will see Mike again, at the great banquet of life that follows death. We shall all be reunited in our own good time. For Mike now rests in the hands of Jesus Christ, who welcomes him home with that most glorious of accolades, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.”

And nothing, nothing—not cancer, not heart failure, certainly nothing so trifling as death—nothing can ever steal him from those loving and crucified hands.

This is the promise of God. And God does not break promises.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.