In
Memory of George Dickson
Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our
Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today’s
worship is full of Scripture and hymns and songs of praise to our God. There is no better way to honor and remember
George and to give praise to God than through the means that was so important
and meaningful to George.
Song was
his prayer – especially scripture songs: God’s Word and the music of angels
equaled true devotion for George. And he
couldn’t get enough of it. George would
sing every Sunday in the St. Luke’s choir, but what most of the people at St.
Luke’s didn’t know was that he had already worshiped at Emanuel in Stuyvesant
Falls each Sunday morning. It was like
he wanted to make up for all that lost time of his former years; not in
contrition, but in gratitude for once having been lost, God by such amazing
grace found him and saved him.
But it
meant so much more to George that all that.
While his faith may have been as simple and child-like as that, his
personal interests were complicated, profound and eclectic. And he certainly wasn’t afraid to expound
upon his thoughts and views, ideas and insights, over the radio; even as he
himself grew and changed with new awareness and new revelation.
In
planning for this service, Linda and the family shared with me many of George’s
favorite Bible verses, but left the choosing of the Gospel text up to me. That was good, because I already knew what I
wanted to use: John 3:16. Oh sure,
everybody knows John 3: 16 (“For God so loved the world that He have His only
begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have life
everlasting.”) But in the original Greek
language of the verse there is even deeper meaning. “For God so loved the world.” The Greek word for “world” is “kosmos.” Imagine that!
That was the full expanse of George’s faith – God loves the whole
cosmos! George believed that if you
expand your mind to the furthest limits – there is God.
And then
in the revelation of God’s total cosmological glory, infinite wisdom and divine
majesty, George knew that God loved the person of George Dickson in an
intimate, personal and unconditional relationship. So George believed that if you condense the
vastness of the universe down to just one person, to just you – there is God
also!
When, on
many occasions, George would sing “Where you there when they crucified my
Lord?” he would do so with full acknowledgement of that not being a rhetorical
question, but answering with a confessional, yet confident, “Yes!”
Yes, George was there because it was for
his sins that Jesus died on the cross. Yes,
in a metaphorical cosmology, George was actually there as a witness and
participant.
“Were you there when God raised him from
the dead?”
Yes,
Jesus rode from death and ascended to heavenly glory as a promise for George. Yes, George was witness, a faithful witness,
to the resurrection of his Lord and Savior.
And now George is really
there in heaven’s eternal glory. Not
just because the heavens are part of God’s universal cosmos, but because God’s
love in Jesus is so vast so as to include a mere mortal named George
Dickson. And if George, so also each one
of us.
With George and (as our
St. Luke’s people know) Everett Secor before him, we’ve now passed on two
tenors to the heavenly chorus. What can
we do, but keep singing God’s praises with every last breath that we have (as
George did) and keep the cosmic harmony of God’s love and grace sounding
through all the extremes of the universe and into each individual heart and
soul. That’s what George always tried to
do. AMEN.
May the peace of God which
passes all human understanding keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto
life everlasting. AMEN.
Rev.
James H. Slater
St.
Luke’s Lutheran Church
Valatie,
New York
June
18, 2012
