Norberth, My Son Death in a Hang-glider Accident
Sermon
We Are The Lord's
AN ANTHOLOGY OF SELECT FUNERAL MESSAGES
They had come as immigrants from Germany about 1950 - Isa, strikingly beautiful and capable; Horst, a skilled workman, quiet and solid. Their small house was carefully kept inside and out. But the focus of their lives was their only child, Norberth. In every way, Norberth was worthy of their love and work, their pride, their hope and ambition. Three months from his twenty-first birthday, he stood six-foot-two, one hundred seventy-five pounds. With his broad shoulders and narrow hips, he was a strong, classically Nordic physical specimen. He excelled athletically. In addition he was an "A " student at the University. Hang gliding was in its early days. Norberth and his friends had made a hang glider. They would tow it behind a Jeep bouncing over the open fields of the farmlands outside of town, gradually winching out the line as the flyer rose a hundred yards or more. One Fall day, while Norberth was engaged in the excitement of this primitive flight, a gust of wind surprised, and the glider lurched up, cracking its main strut. With the glider flapping over his head like a wounded bird, Norberth plummeted to the ground and instant death. The funeral was attended by family, a goodly number of members of the congregation and a large contingent of Norberth's college friends.
There are times when death comes and we are moved to ask questions of "Why?" At other times it seems the bare tragedy of the situation drowns out such questions. That seems to be the case here, and so I chose that text of David's grieving over the death of his favorite son, Absalom.
Absalom died in battle after trying to take the throne from his father, and obviously there is here no paralleling that circumstance. Yet in another way of looking at it, there were parallels. It could be said that Absalom and Norberth both died through little more than that exhuberant foolishness that is so typical of youth. One of the most loved and envied characteristics of youth is the way the young glory in their youth, thrill at being alive. The ways they devise to express that joy in being alive - well, sometimes you don't know whether to laugh with them in their exuberance or wring their necks because of the foolishness, When we were twenty years old, most all of us did crazy things like that. I survived my exercises of exuberant foolishness - so did all of you here who escaped your twenties. Norberth did not. His exercise in the joy of being alive ended in death.
And that death of his tends to leave us with little difference from the shocked grieving outcry that David gave for his son. "O Absalom, my son, O Absalom, would that I had died instead of you." Yet for David, life did go on. David once again picked up his duties. Certainly he carried an empty spot, a place of pain, in his heart for the rest of his life. But life did go on. So it must go on, because so it is in the will of the God who gives life, that life is to go on.
Those of you here who are young, you who are Norberth's friends, I suppose you will be made a bit older by this experience. It is to be hoped, as life goes on for you, your foolishness will be tempered somewhat without, I hope, affecting too seriously your exhuberance in living. But you will be made a bit older by this.
And those of us who are older, parents especially, Horst and Isa, for you it remains over the years to be most deeply affected, most given to deeper thoughts and more permanent pain as the years go by.
To you I can only offer further words of David, those we already read in the Twenty-third Psalm. The most important part of life is not in our math or science; the most important part of life is in the relationships we form with each other: husband and wife, parental bonding, friendship. These are not explainable in any formulas of our devising. These are too deep, too profound, too complicated, too mysterious for formulas. For me it is impossible to understand how all that can exist, apart from the kind of God David describes in the Psalm - the Lord who is my shepherd, who accompanies us in the green pastures, beside the still waters, and through the valley of the shadow of death.
It is in the presence, in the all-pervading Spirit of that Shepherd, that all of our relationships grow and breathe. For you, a very central one has ended. As the years go on for you, in the others that remain, may his goodness and his mercy follow you all the days of your life.
There are times when death comes and we are moved to ask questions of "Why?" At other times it seems the bare tragedy of the situation drowns out such questions. That seems to be the case here, and so I chose that text of David's grieving over the death of his favorite son, Absalom.
Absalom died in battle after trying to take the throne from his father, and obviously there is here no paralleling that circumstance. Yet in another way of looking at it, there were parallels. It could be said that Absalom and Norberth both died through little more than that exhuberant foolishness that is so typical of youth. One of the most loved and envied characteristics of youth is the way the young glory in their youth, thrill at being alive. The ways they devise to express that joy in being alive - well, sometimes you don't know whether to laugh with them in their exuberance or wring their necks because of the foolishness, When we were twenty years old, most all of us did crazy things like that. I survived my exercises of exuberant foolishness - so did all of you here who escaped your twenties. Norberth did not. His exercise in the joy of being alive ended in death.
And that death of his tends to leave us with little difference from the shocked grieving outcry that David gave for his son. "O Absalom, my son, O Absalom, would that I had died instead of you." Yet for David, life did go on. David once again picked up his duties. Certainly he carried an empty spot, a place of pain, in his heart for the rest of his life. But life did go on. So it must go on, because so it is in the will of the God who gives life, that life is to go on.
Those of you here who are young, you who are Norberth's friends, I suppose you will be made a bit older by this experience. It is to be hoped, as life goes on for you, your foolishness will be tempered somewhat without, I hope, affecting too seriously your exhuberance in living. But you will be made a bit older by this.
And those of us who are older, parents especially, Horst and Isa, for you it remains over the years to be most deeply affected, most given to deeper thoughts and more permanent pain as the years go by.
To you I can only offer further words of David, those we already read in the Twenty-third Psalm. The most important part of life is not in our math or science; the most important part of life is in the relationships we form with each other: husband and wife, parental bonding, friendship. These are not explainable in any formulas of our devising. These are too deep, too profound, too complicated, too mysterious for formulas. For me it is impossible to understand how all that can exist, apart from the kind of God David describes in the Psalm - the Lord who is my shepherd, who accompanies us in the green pastures, beside the still waters, and through the valley of the shadow of death.
It is in the presence, in the all-pervading Spirit of that Shepherd, that all of our relationships grow and breathe. For you, a very central one has ended. As the years go on for you, in the others that remain, may his goodness and his mercy follow you all the days of your life.
