Sacred Earth

A Funeral Homily

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

There is, in Christian mysticism, the persistent notion that God’s first incarnation—His first body, if you will—is Creation itself, and that the Book of Scripture is rightly understood to be preceded by the Book of Nature. We find a sort of holiness within the natural world: a quiet, a harmony, a deep and abiding peace that our daily lives often seem to lack.

All throughout Minnesota you have men and women for whom the deer stand, the fishing boat, the duck blind, are in fact confessionals, prayer rooms, sanctuaries. One never feels quite so close to the Creator as one feels in the midst of His Creation. And I don’t mean to romanticize things. We know very well, don’t we, that nature’s full of struggle and survival of the fittest—“red in tooth and claw.” But even in the midst of that, there is no malice, no wickedness, just honest instinct.

There’s no such thing as an evil animal, or an evil tree. You have to have volition to be cruel. You have to have reason to be irrational. Nature is neither.

We all know Loren knew that, right? A farmer, a hunter, a man of the land. The real oldest profession is that of a gardener: one who cares for and stewards the land; one who loves the little corner of Creation which has been bequeathed to him. And Loren did, didn’t he? He loved his land, loved his farm, loved his home. You can’t be that aware of something you don’t care about; you can’t spot animal tracks in the dirt from a moving truck unless you are connected to that dirt, intimate with it.

There are, in Christian tradition, three modes or types of prayer. The first is oration, spoken prayer; silent or aloud, impromptu or prepared. I understand that Loren was not a man of many words. In fact, he only really seemed to talk to Rhonda. But as her father told her—that’s all that truly matters in the end. The second sort of prayer is meditation, best exemplified perhaps by prayer beads, by the Holy Rosary. I don’t image that he did a great deal of that.

But the third sort of prayer is considered the highest and the purest of them all: contemplation, the practice of holy silence. Contemplative prayer is to sit and be suffused by the divine, by the presence of the holy all about us. And that’s the sort of prayer that Loren knew best. Maybe he didn’t call it that. Maybe he didn’t quite put it into those words. But to be in nature, to be in the woods, and to know every leaf and branch, every rock and track, every bird or beast or creeping thing that set foot on his property—

That’s prayer. And it’s the very best sort of prayer: the sort that doesn’t seem like prayer at all; the sort that just allows yourself to be. There’s a holiness in that. There’s a gratitude in that. And from it flow peace, generosity, and love.

I was told to keep this short. “Not too many words, pastor. It has to be outside, pastor. That’s what Loren would want, pastor. That, and ham sandwiches.” It is true that still waters run deep. But a man like this deserves a tribute. He was taken from us too young. And the last year is not how we would want to say goodbye. But by God, he lived in the years that he had, didn’t he? He loved in the years that he had. Loved his wife, loved his girls, loved his family. Loved his pie.

In this world, things do not go the way they ought. Bad things happen to good people. Loved ones are taken from us by tragedy. I mean, just look at Jesus. These things happen for the simple reason that the world is broken. It is fallen. It does not work the way it should, the way we know it’s meant to. So thank God for someone, who even in the midst of all that, could show us the joy and the beauty and the wonder of Creation; who loved good, simple, true things; who lived the life he had with honor and integrity and thereby set example for us all.

He wasn’t a churchgoing man. But he was a good man. And anyone who knows goodness knows God; it’s as simple as that. Nature is a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It is always renewing, always rising. In this way it points us to Christ. Christ has joined us in the brokenness of this world, and taken it all on Himself. In doing so, He has trampled down death by death, and opened the Kingdom of God to all. Where was God when Loren suffered? Right there with him, in his wounds.

And as surely as Loren has been joined to a death like Jesus Christ’s, just as surely shall he rise! Just as surely does he live. “The Happy Hunting Grounds” is what settlers used to call it. Sounds like a good place for Loren, does it not? Sounds like his true, eternal home. And that man always loved to be at home.

“Truly, truly, I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Look at the fruit Loren has borne, O my friends. Just imagine the harvest to come.

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