George Dickson

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