Saturday, December 13, 2008

Sermon at the Funeral of Marvin Dwayne Collins, December 12, 2008

Sermon at the Funeral of Marvin Dwayne Collins

December 12, 2008

Isaiah 49:13-15 (NRSV)
13 Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;
break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the LORD has comforted his people,
and will have compassion on his suffering ones.
14 But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me,
my Lord has forgotten me."
15 Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.

Psalms 23:1-6 (NRSV)
1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
3 he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name's sake.
4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff--
they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
my whole life long.

John 16:16-24 (NRSV)
16 "A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me." 17 Then some of his disciples said to one another, "What does he mean by saying to us, 'A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me'; and 'Because I am going to the Father'?" 18 They said, "What does he mean by this 'a little while'? We do not know what he is talking about." 19 Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, "Are you discussing among yourselves what I meant when I said, 'A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me'? 20 Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. 21 When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. 22 So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. 23 On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. 24 Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

Kindergarten has changed a lot since Dwayne was in it some twenty-nine years ago. In those days, the poor kids were required to sit in rigid rows of desks lined up across the room. At nap time, the only places to put the kids on the floor were on either side of those long, straight rows, the girls on one side, the boys on the other.

Of course, Dwayne was not about to lie on the floor quietly during nap time. So when the teacher wasn’t looking, inch by inch, he would make his way under the long row of desks toward his friend Ellen Simpson, who also would inch her way toward him. And there under the desks they would meet and whisper to each other.
I didn’t know Dwayne, but I wish I had. It’s obvious to me that his family and huge circle of friends are deeply grieving his loss. I’m sure Dwayne would appreciate it. Some of you remember that when you’d get angry with him, he’d always say, “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

How right he was.

But I think it’s equally obvious that, given who he was, he would hope that when we gathered to remember him, that we would laugh. If he were here, he would be the first one to say just that perfect thing that would make us all smile.
Wayne had a wonderful sense of humor. Whether he was gathered in the back row of some high school class or at some interminable science fair or taking the family on a vacation or working a team on a stressful project, Dwayne could make you laugh.
As a kid, Dwayne dreamed of being tall like his grandfather, a dream we all know came true. His sense of humor was in evidence from very early in his life. When he’s get in a little trouble at school, he’d always come to his mother Ann and say, “I’ll tell you before you hear it.”

Annette, as I’m sure you have heard Dwayne say, was his “much older sister.” He’d kid her that way, but just as often he’d tell others that Annette was his “other mother.”

Some of his high school friends report that not only could Wayne make you laugh, he could make you laugh so hard there could be messy accidents. I understand he was not known as Dwayne, but at “Maw-vin.”

Dwayne himself had a special laugh, a big guy laugh. One summer night when he was hanging out in the Simpson’s yard with Emily and Sean, the three of them got laughing and he let go with that trademark laugh. As the evening got later and they got laughing harder, Emily’s dad, Earl, hollered out the window “All right now boys, it’s time to go home now!” Everyone quieted down, but of course nobody went anywhere. Then, sure enough, a few minutes later they were laughing again, and Earl was back at the window: “All right now boys, it’s time to go home!”

Dwayne excelled at practical jokes. He was in Latin class in high school and probably due to financial restraints the class was taught by remote television broadcast. At certain points during each session, classes would be invited to call in using phones installed in the classrooms in order to interact with the teacher. Dwayne was appointed to manage the phone, probably a big mistake on the teacher’s part. His favorite thing to do was to call a 900 number and then hand the phone to a freshman girl.

Dwayne’s family, and probably a number of his roommates, will tell you that there was a private side to Dwayne. So a lot of people don’t know that Dwayne had an extensive comic collection. I had one too, when I was a teenager, and one of my greatest regrets is that my mother threw them all out before I went to college. I’m hoping I get a chance to see his. He also had a real fascination with the Star Wars.
Despite all the humor, Dwayne was an honor student in school and excelled at just about everything he put his hand to.

Dwayne did two years at RCC and did a number of the usual student type jobs before he was hired by Capitol One. The story is told that a number of his friends going home for the holidays asked him to take care of their pregnant cat while they were gone. While they were enjoying the holidays with their families, they got a call. Dwayne said, “Right now, I am watching the cat give birth, and it’s really gross.”
Despite the gross factor, Dwayne apparently midwifed the kittens with real care and kindness and took care of them all till his friends came back.

Care and kindness, along with the playful sense of humor, are two other qualities I hear about from everyone who knew Dwayne. Someone said he was the last of the real Southern gentlemen. One of his female friends from work reported that he insisted on going with her when she was walking her dog at night to ensure her safety. When Ellen Simpson was in France, Dwayne was the only one of her friends who sent her a care package, including her favorite Big Red gum. He was also a great dancer. Amy Faulkner said that he could do the Tootsie Roll like no one else.

At Capitol One, Dwayne excelled, garnering award after award and promotion after promotion. The practical jokes continued to be his hallmark, although his friends at work sometimes played some on him.

Nevertheless, he became a consummate professional, very good at what he did. He used to tease his much older sister about her accent, which he had lost. “I’m a city boy now,” he used to say.

Yet he didn’t forget the people back home but brought back his many blessings to share with those he loved and with those in need. Allison and Jennifer could always count on him to provide them with everything Mom and Grandma denied them, and were always ready to call on him to help make peace in the family.

I’ve heard that making peace was one of Dwayne’s special talents. He managed to build a circle of friends around him and helped them get along with each other. Someone called him “our hub.”

He loved to travel, even kept a map showing where he’d been, places like India and Ireland, and where he yet wanted to go.

Dwayne was also passionately devoted to helping his fellow human being. He worked long hours to raise money for cancer research and treatment.

Those comic books and that interest in Star Wars got me thinking. Dwayne seemed to have a particular interest in heroes. The stories of all great heroes follow the same pattern. Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero With a Thousand Faces and identified that pattern. And that pattern was the basis for George Lucas’ entire Star Wars series.

Every hero starts in a small out of the way place where everything is pretty boring. Sounds like Deltaville, doesn’t it? But they don’t stay there; they answer a call to go on an adventure, usually in some armpit of decadence and danger. Could that be Richmond? And off they go, making friends and allies, overcoming obstacles, changing and growing as they go.

Invariably they come to a place where everything seems lost. In some great hero stories, like when Jonah was swallowed by the whale, the hero seems even to have died.

In Star Wars, the first movie, you may remember the moment when the heroes are trapped in the bowels of the Death Star with all the garbage, and the walls begin to close in. That was the Star Wars version of that terrible moment.

I wonder if in his secret heart, the hero’s story might not have been Dwayne’s inspiration. He even had a shaggy sidekick—well maybe not as shaggy as a Wookie—but Yager was at least covered with hair, and spoke in a similar vocabulary.

At this moment, we feel as if all is lost. Our friend is gone, never to return. But in every hero’s story, there is an amazing return, a spectacular rescue or lucky accident. In Star Wars, you may remember that Luke grabs a big pole of metal and jams it between the walls, stopping them long enough to allow him and his friends to climb to relative safety.

But even then the hero’s story is not over. After emerging from the darkness, the hero is transformed in a powerful way and goes on to achieve everything he had set out to do, often gaining a great prize in the end, a prize he shares with all those whom he loves.

So we must not give up hope at this moment in Dwayne’s story, just as we never give up on any other hero.

No matter what we each may believe, I invite you to hope with me. I invite you to hope that Dwayne will yet emerge in victory. I invite you to expect it.

I invite you to expect to feel his presence. I invite you to expect to sense him in your life from this time forward. I invite you to expect a day when the impossible will become possible and you will be with him again. I invite you to expect to someday meet a new Dwayne, transformed, renewed and blessed with great gifts that he will be ready, as always, to share with you.

In the meantime, I invite you to think of him now as being on the greatest trip of all, a journey to a place where the sights to be seen are truly out of this world.

Amen.

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