Nsanya Otis Kapya suffered major head injuries in a car crash on April 15, 2012. He wasn’t in his native land of Tanzania, but was working in Nairobi, Kenya. A few days later, he died there in the Intensive Care Unit. Although he was twelve hours from home, he wasn’t alone. Not only was he surrounded by medical staff who were attending to him with compassionate care and family who had traveled to be at his side, but the same love and breath of God that pulses in and out of your lungs as you read these words surrounded him in his final earthly moments.
A few weeks later on the other side of the world, two dozen of us gathered to celebrate his life in the sanctuary of Reformation Lutheran in Wichita where I was serving. Otis was a cousin and nephew to some of our African members.
The Christian funeral and memorial service do powerful things. Whether held in a church sanctuary, the chapel at the funeral home, or standing graveside in the cemetery, this ancient ritual crosses time and space to name our need and hear words of reassurance grounded in the enduring promises of God.
In the opening words of his memorial service, we announced, “We are gathered this day to remember before God our brother, to give thanks for his long and full life, and to commend him to our merciful redeemer. In our baptism, God claims us and promises that nothing can separate us from the love of God – not even death. We also gather to proclaim Christ crucified and risen and to comfort one another in our grief.”
Re-membering. Isn’t this what happens each time we are gathered for worship? God draws us from our many places of living and working, literally reassembling us as the body of Christ. If we are on vacation in a seaside town or on a business trip in a bustling urban center on another continent, these moments of Christian worship gather us, feed us with the Word and meal of God, and then send us out as agents of hope.
God is busy with the business of re-membering us on other days, too. From our fragile lives, fractured by the impact of sin, we are daily being re-membered as our loving Creator puts the broken pieces together again.
If you recall the children’s rhyme, Humpty Dumpty, “all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again.” What a sad end to the shattered life – no hope of being put back together. But as followers of Jesus, we believe otherwise. Thanks to Pastor Bill Yonker for the bold declaration that “all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again... but the King can! The King of kings knows how to do it!”
This bold declaration makes it possible for us to sing with hope on a day of sorrow and loss. With the opening lines of “Shall We Gather at the River” on our lips at Nsanya’s memorial service, we weren’t thinking about the shoreline of the Arkansas River that winds through the south central plains of Kansas or the Rufiji River pushing east through Tanzania and into the Indian Ocean. No! Instead, we were celebrating that Living Water that provides healing and life, recreation and renewal, nourishment and promise – the River of God where we are re-membered.
It was beautiful the way the Christian community around the world came together to celebrate Nsanya’s life and grieve his death. As we stood engulfed in the resurrection promises of God, we couldn’t deny the reality that in our living and dying, we are not alone.
Meet you at the water’s edge,
Pastor Lowell