for Ryan, a gift
John 14:1-6, 16-19
Jesus said, ‘Let not your hearts be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. And ye know the way to the place where I am going.’
Thomas said unto him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’
Jesus said, ‘I AM the way, and the truth, and the life.’
And Jesus said, “I will pray the Father, and he will send you another Counselor, the Holy Spirit, to be with you for ever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you desolate. I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me, Because I live, you will live also.
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In prayer, we are in prayer, let us pray.
Most gracious God, we know that you understand our desolation; you blessed us with your love in sending Jesus Christ your Son to come among us as a Human Son, born of a human mother, to live among us as one of us, and to sanctify the Way of the Cross as the way of life: now send your Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to give Ryan’s family strength and courage and determination to overcome this desolation that life has become. Amen.
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The world is upside down. No one in Heaven or Earth should bury a son. Little girls should never lose their Daddy, nor wives their young husbands. The darkness, this black tunnel - - this dark cave where it seems that light may never shine again. This is where life has come, and yet you whom Ryan loved so dearly, You Will Make It because you CHOOSE to make it.
I hesitate to be theological with you, but hear me: German pastor, scholar and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has it right: Our cross to bear is not the pain and grief laid on us that we did not choose, and over which we have no control.
Our cross to bear is the pain we choose to endure and go on living into, and to laugh again, because of love.
Ryan’s Death is not the cross you have to bear; life has laid this on you, perhaps by a moment’s inattention while too cockily and without experience, driving a new and exciting and powerful machine; bringing you inconsolable grief, pain so indescribable at Times that you cannot bear it. Where your cross to bear is that you choose to bear it, to go on, and live into life as it has become.
Your cross to bear is one of honor and integrity and love - - that, in choosing to endure this change in your life, you choose to love yourself, to love each other, to love Allison; above all to love Stella and Nora, and for Roo; to love and bless and honor Ryan’s own life by growing into this pain and grief, because you choose love over self. And because God is good, and Life Itself is Good - -
It’s Bonhoeffer’s theology of the cross.
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This is a memorial service, and we each bring memories. My earliest memory of Ryan Yessman goes more than a quarter century back to when Allison and my Kristen were in pre-kindergarten at Holy Nativity Episcopal School - - Allison calling Ryan “my Bubby”
My Bubby.
It was totally possessive, with a hint of awe, adoration. A little girl saying “my Bubby”.
Mary called me and told me about Ryan, and then she asked me to call Beverly. I said I would. But I was horrified, because I’ve known Beverly McDaniel with the School more than thirty years, and I know how Beverly loves every kid, every child, and remembers their parents and grandparents. And never forgets! When I told Beverly, she broke down in tears, and we cried together; and then Beverly began to reminisce about life with Ryan his eleven years at our school, and to laugh as it all came back: Ryan Yessman was a handful all his years at Holy Nativity School.
Beverly said, “Ryan’s grandmother warned me beforehand about what I was getting into, and I assured her, ‘I can handle him.’" Beverly said, "That was before I knew Ryan.” Beverly only pulled it off by never taking her eye off of him. Ryan Yessman, totally loved all his years in our school and forever. A handful.
For me as friend and priest and pastor, it starts from there in the years of my relationship with this close, and loving, and beautiful family, working with Mary on the school as our children grew up in the school together, Kristen and Allison in the same grade, and my grandson Ray Kelly a year behind Ryan Yessman. And watching Ann frantically helicopter these children.
God is good, and Life is Good, and every day is a beautiful day; and Life is Short, and we haven’t much Time, but Life is never supposed to end when you are thirty-five years old, loving two beautiful daughters who adore you.
Ronnie, and Ann, and Phyllis: for parents and grandparents, this is never supposed to happen. This is never God’s will. To bury a son blasphemes all that’s holy, creation turned upside down, nothing ever again as it should be, dreams that will never come true.
There is no way under heaven to make this right. Nothing we say this morning. No matter how long life endures, a shadow: darkness we cannot control.
And yet something about the love of God. Hear me: God surrounding us, the Spirit of God hovering, moving over this chaos as in the beginning of creation. The Holy Spirit filling us to drive away despair.
Jesus says "I will not leave you desolate, I will pray the Father, and he will send the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to be with you." Ryan’s family, you are not alone.
Life is a gift. God who does not control our decisions and movements, God who frees us to choose the roads we travel, God creates each of us to be what we will be. God loves us as we love each other. God rejoices in our joys. God suffers with us, God weeps as we weep: maybe you don’t know this: properly translated, a verse of Psalm 116’s timeless Hebrew poetry reads in English, “How painful it is to the Lord when one of his people dies.” How painful it is to the Lord when one of his people dies: truth realized with our own pain: this was not God’s will or God’s dream for Ryan Yessman.
Ryan was his own person, traveling his own road, riding his own Harley Davidson Sportster, which my son said was a fair choice for a novice biker to start and learn on. A son on a motorcycle puts his parents’ life and very existence forever on edge: my own son has loved and owned and ridden motorcycles since his teens, in high school, and there was never anything I could do to stop him or change that. You can be angry because Ryan rode off into the sunset before properly learning his new motorcycle, but you cannot fault Ryan for the Harley that got in a young man’s blood.
Ryan grew beyond us to become his own person, Staff Sergeant Ryan Yessman, a non-commissioned officer in the U S Army; a photographer; a love and a lover, a husband; a father: an adored and loving daddy to Nora and Stella; a biker, an adventurer, a man of his own who was into life.
Finally this: another human being never belongs to you, Ryan was never yours, he was a gift, to creation. A handful. A gift. It’s the way creation works. Life itself is a gift. And Ryan Yessman was a gift, a handful.
