With Thanksgiving for the life of Dolores Juanita Gust
September 7, 1933 + May 17, 2024
Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23; John 14:1-6; 1 Corinthians 16:13-14
It’s an honor to be back here today celebrating Dolores. I used to be a pastor here, but I’ve been gone for a while—more than eight years now.
Given my absence, the third-to-last time I got to see Dolores was also the previous time I preached here, for her granddaughter Emily and Nick’s wedding. Dolores was rehabbing from a bowel obstruction, and so it was really special and important that she was able to make it to the wedding. Of course, she wouldn’t miss it.
And, being Dolores, you could expect the feeling that even for Emily and Nick’s wedding, still the festivities were about her, the center of attention, the life of the party, holding court in her way.
The second-to-last time I saw her was a funeral here last spring. At the luncheon after, she was telling me about the plans for her 90th birthday party and she kept saying, “I’m going to be 90! Do you know anybody else who is 90?!” I kinda tried to tell her that I know a lot of 90 year olds and my congregation has a whole crop of people in that range, but still Dolores had to be the only one: “I’m going to be 90! Do you know anybody else who is 90?!” I hear the party was great.
So the last time I saw Dolores was a couple weeks ago at St. Mary’s hospital, not long after the cancer diagnosis in this recent rapid whirlwind. It had left her unable to talk how she wanted, struggling to get the words out. Although she showed frustration about speaking and still was trying to absorb all the hard news, her eyes said a lot and that familiar smile would cross her face occasionally. (But it was strange not to have her talking nearly as much).
As a first thing, she managed to notice my haircut was different. I later wondered if she’d be able to come up with words for something familiar like the Lord’s Prayer or Amazing Grace. Instead she sang “Dan, Dan the shithouse man.” (Sorry, Dan.) I was still hanging out when Pastor Elisa came in for pastoral care and was trying to offer some nice prayers, while Dolores just kept wanting to react to Elisa’s eyelashes.
So…Dolores. This is who she was and what she was. Just Dolores. So much love. And so much love mixed with snark or strange observations or backhanded compliments or direct criticism or even offensive prejudice. Sometimes laughable, and sometimes just sting. Mixed with love, or alongside love, or maybe as she felt it still because of love. Her love language, Kim said.
And for our parts, we loved her for it, or sometimes through it. And maybe we were still able to feel loved by her in spite of it.
We heard a little Bible verse from 1st Corinthians, “Let all that you do be done in love.” We can feel, or hope, or maybe wonder that being the case for Dolores, that it was all done in love. We can strive for such constant love in ourselves, including times when it can be challenging even to want to be very loving, especially if we’re not feeling loved. Certainly none of us is able to do it perfectly, to love perfectly.
And we probably don’t even feel perfectly loved by God, but we do proclaim that the love of God in Christ is unconditional, not interrupted by any conditions or any circumstances. For us, sometimes in spite of us. With us, even when we wonder. Never stopping, ever.
And so we trust that love of God for Dolores. God loved her because God is love. So it wasn’t just when she was particularly loveable—whether we’d think of that as funny or friendly, or relaxed or working hard, or when her hair was looking good.
I have to say, I’m never sure about the phrase of God loving us just as we are; there’s plenty about me that I’m pretty sure God wishes were at least a little different, and that was probably true about Dolores, too. But God loved her just as God is. God couldn’t help but love her, through all of it. It’s who God is, what God does.
That fits our 23rd Psalm, of loving accompaniment for green pastures of abundance, and beside still waters—maybe calling to mind the cabin, and guiding in right pathways when we’d stray, and tables that are full in the presence of friends and those who are not so friendly, and through valleys shadowed by death. It’s a whole arrangement of life’s moments and possibilities, and Dolores could’ve pointed to any of them through her 90 years. And so for those 90 years, God’s love persists through it all.
And more. In John, we heard Jesus promising that he was going through death for us, so that he could bring us into life. While we celebrate memories of Dolores and even on this sad day still laugh at some of her extremes, death cuts off from her love now. So Jesus went through death to bring us together again, so that the promise of his love would not end even then. That’s how we’re brought to the fullness of God’s love.
I started by recalling the final three times I saw Dolores. Moving to the end, I want to recall what Dolores asked me most frequently over the years. It was if I knew her husband Larry. It came up often. I arrived in 2004, so missed him by about 6 years, but Dolores was regularly asking “Did you know Larry?”
I’d say she missed him these 25 years. And I’m sure others who didn’t make it as long as she did, when she was the only one left. (“Do you know anybody else who is 90?!”)
And so I hold hope that this, this is a good moment, that even as we gather together grieving no longer having her love and all the rest with us here, that we anticipate she’ll be arriving toward the long-awaited promise of reunion in the life to come. With Larry, with friends, eventually with us. Tears are wiped away, death will be swallowed up, all in rejoicing and love. Yes, Kim, it will be fun.
In the Bible, this long-awaited grand re-gathering and culmination is frequently portrayed as a banquet, like the prophet Isaiah envisioned of tables spread with rich foods and good wine, maybe like the foretaste example at our lunch today. We can be sure that Dolores will be received as the guest of honor at that banquet (along with each and all of you, though we may not be able to tell her that she’s not actually the center of attention). She’ll be seated at the right hand of the host Jesus. And she’ll probably be telling Jesus he has nice hair but needs to trim his beard.
what do we say about these things? 