Mary Hunt Evans Weber Funeral
March 10, 2008 (died March 3)
Note: Mary Weber and her husband George were dear friends of ours in St. Louis. I was unable to return to St. Louis for George’s funeral in 2014 due to scheduling problems, but I was honored to officiate at Mary’s service in 2008.
Obituary: Mary Hunt Evans Weber died on Monday March 3, 2008. Beloved wife for 45 years of George Weber III; loving mother of Laura Weber Malzahn (Bryan), George ‘Skip’ Weber IV (Lori), Mary Weber Oglesby (Jimmie) and Susan Weber McMillan (Brett); dear grandmother of Jessica, Rebecca, Christina and Joshua Malzahn; Brittney, George V and Jordan Weber; Jimmie ‘Tripp’, Mary Evans, Abigail and Nathan Oglesby; Sandy and Katie McMillan; loving sister of Susan Brunsvold (Ronald) of Topeka, KS; dear sister-in-law of Emily Weber Schwarz and Marilyn Weber Griesedieck; aunt, great-aunt, cousin and tremendous friend of many. Mary’s strong Christian heritage shaped the lives firstly of her husband, children and grandchildren and has touched the lives of many of her friends.
Personal memories: Jan and I loved Mary Weber. She was a unique lady. So full of fun. So engaged with life. So fearless in confronting difficult situations. So elegant.
I want us to accomplish two things this morning: I want us to remember the special person Mary was to all of us, giving honor where honor is due, without at the same time portraying her as something she wasn’t. And I want us to consider what God says about the separation of death and what comes after. If we didn’t do the first, we would be shortchanging a remarkable legacy. If we only did the first, we would miss the greatest value Mary has to offer us–a glimpse into the remarkable grace of God.
I will never forget the many wonderful trips our family enjoyed to Door County, WI, due to the generosity of the Webers. Mary loved that place. Her parents were married there, and she visited there virtually every year of her life. In recent years George and Mary spent months each year in the little town of Ephraim in Door County. Mary loved to take her guests to Al Johnson’s Swedish restaurant, with the goats on the roof, even though she proudly noted she was Norwegian, not Swedish. Then to Wilson’s Ice Cream Store, to a fish boil at The Viking, to Tannenbaums, the Christmas store in Sister Bay, and to Washington Island. One time we took the ferry over to Washington Island, rented bicycles, and rode through the countryside. Halfway across the island I was shocked to find a little Evangelical Free Church, where a friend of mine from Kansas is now pastor.
I’ll never forget a trip to the Greek Isles in 1999. Mary and Susie went with a group of us on a journey we called The Footsteps of Paul. We visited Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Patmos, you name it. Mary was such a delight on that trip. She was fearless in bargaining with the shopkeepers in the bazaar in Istanbul. There are over 4,000 shops there, and I think she hit them all. She was the original Power Shopper! She reveled, as we all did, in the amazing archaeological ruins on the Acropolis and at the Bema in Corinth. Ever since that trip Mary has invited the Greek ladies to her home for a Christmas cookie exchange and to relive the wonderful times they all enjoyed on that trip.
One of my fondest memories of Mary is that every Christmas she would come up to me and hand me a stack of $100 bills and tell me to give them to whomever in the church had special needs. What a joy it was for me to go up to someone who had just lost his job and give him five crisp $100 bills, or quietly hand a couple of bills to someone who was behind on their house payment and just say, “this is from an anonymous friend who wants your Christmas to be better.” I’m not even sure George knew she did that. Had she given the money by check through the church it would have provided a tax deduction, but Mary thought it more important that it come from an individual.
By the way, Mary absolutely loved Christmas. Going to her house from mid-November through mid-January was an amazing experience. She had at least a dozen Christmas trees, each decorated differently, each one a classic. She had the Dickens villages all lit up. In early January Jan and I visited at the Weber home and enjoyed again, as we have many times in the past, the beauty of Christmas. Christmas just won’t be the same without Mary.
Mary’s greatest legacy is undoubtedly her children and her grandchildren. She instilled her own faith in Christ in her children. She believed strongly in education, and George and Mary sent all four of their children to Baylor University. Their name should be on one of the buildings down there, because they’ve invested enough in the school. Now the grandchildren have begun the trek to Baylor.
Mary’s children want to come now and offer tributes to their mother.
Message: Separation is Painful but Need Not Be Final
Mary Weber’s death leaves an immense void in the lives of her family and close friends. I would like to talk to you for a few moments this morning about separation. Separation is something we all struggle with at various points in our lives. Do you remember the first time you left your first child with a babysitter? How you didn’t quite enjoy the evening out because you worried about your baby, and the moment you got home you rushed into where the crib was and checked to make sure everything was OK?
How about the first time you sent your little five-year-old off to school, and you cried a little inside as you dropped him off at the kindergarten room and you couldn’t wait to pick him up at noon?
Or perhaps you remember the first time your child went off to camp and you faced separation for almost an entire week. You almost wished the camp nurse would call and say your child had chicken pox so she could come home early.
Then the time flew by until a more difficult separation came, as your son or daughter went off to college. They would come home at each vacation period, but you found every conceivable reason to arrange a business trip to the city where they attended college. Still the separation was hard.
Then came the wedding day when your son and his new life partner moved into their own apartment, or worse yet, to another part of the country. While you were very happy for them, you knew in your heart that this was a more permanent kind of separation. No longer would your child be dependent upon you. No longer would he be relying on you for his needs, for encouragement, and for advice. There was perhaps a void and a vacuum in your life that lasted for many months.
Why is it that separation hurts so much? Well, it hurts, first of all, because we are lonely. We miss the companionship and presence of the one from whom we are separated. It hurts also because we can’t share our love as before. We want to share, we want to communicate, we want to help, but we can’t. But most of all, I think separation hurts because we fear that our loved one may not get quite as good care as we have always given him or her.
Will the babysitter be as cautious as we would be?
Will the kindergarten teacher protect him from cruel remarks by other
children?
Will the camp counselor see to it that he gets the rest he needs?
Will the college roommates be a good influence?
And will his new wife do the little things for him that you, as his mom,
always did?
Death is a separation, too. But it’s infinitely more far-reaching than all the other separations we have talked about. And it hurts a lot more. There is, as in all other cases of separation, the hurt of loneliness, only more so. There is, as in all other cases, the hurt of being unable to share the deep love we have for our loved one. But in the case of our separation from Mary Weber, there need be no fear at all for her welfare. Whatever love we may have shared with her, God provides more. Whatever effort has been made to provide care and comfort in her illness, God offers more. Whatever concern we might have demonstrated for her spiritual growth and development, God has shown more.
I love the story which Charles Allen tells of John Todd, born in 1800 in Vermont. By the time John was six, both of his parents had died. When the children were parceled out to relatives, a kind-hearted aunt agreed to take John. He lived with her for fifteen years until he left to study for the ministry. Many years later, he received word that she was dying. When she wrote and asked him what death would be like, this was John’s reply:
It is now thirty-five years since I, a little boy of six, was left quite alone in the world. You sent me word you would give me a home and be a kind mother to me. I have never forgotten the day when I made the long journey of ten miles to your house in North Killingsworth. I can still recall my disappointment when, instead of coming for me yourself, you sent your colored man, Caesar, to fetch me. I well remember my tears and my anxiety as, perched high on your horse and clinging tight to Caesar, I rode off to my new home. Night fell before we finished the journey and as it grew dark, I became lonely and afraid.
“Do you think she’ll go to bed before I get there?” I asked Caesar anxiously. “Oh no,” he said reassuringly. “She’ll sure stay up for you. When we get out of these here woods, you’ll see her candle shining in the window.” Presently we did ride out in the clearing and there, sure enough, was your candle. I remember you were waiting at the door, that you put your arms close about me and that you lifted me–a tired and bewildered little boy–down from the horse. You had a big fire burning on the hearth, a hot supper waiting for me on the stove. After supper, you took me to my new room, you heard me say my prayers and then you sat beside me until I fell asleep.
You probably realize why I am recalling all this to your memory. Someday soon, God will send for you, to take you to a new home. Don’t fear the summons–the strange journey–or the dark messenger of death. God can be trusted to do as much for you as you were kind enough to do for me so many years ago. At the end of the road you will find love and a welcome waiting, and you will be safe in God’s care. I shall watch you and pray for you until you are out of sight, and then wait for the day when I shall make the journey myself and find you waiting at the end of the road to greet me.
God redeemed Mary with the priceless blood of His dear Son. And thus death can never separate her from the love of God. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 8: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
What a great promise! But for whom is it intended? It is clearly for all those who have acknowledged their sin before God and have put their faith in the forgiveness He provided by sending His Son, Jesus, to the Cross to pay the penalty for our sin. The Bible says, “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
But how can we be sure that our friend Mary has truly believed in Jesus and has eternal life? I think that’s a fair question, because as wonderful a person as Mary Weber was to those who knew her best, she was not perfect; she was not a saint, at least in the common street definition of a saint. Mary could be opinionated. OK, Mary was opinionated. She could be stubborn and argumentative. I like to put it this way: Mary didn’t suffer fools lightly. More than that, she probably had flaws most of us do not even know about. So do I. So do you.
But so what? Did you know that character flaws have NOTHING to do with where you will spend eternity. If eternal life depended on how well you measure up to perfection, friends, there’s not a person here who could be confident of going to heaven. In fact, we could all be confident we were not going there.
But I want to tell you today that Mary Weber’s eternal destiny does not depend upon her character or accomplishments or faithfulness. It depends only on the character and accomplishments and faithfulness of Jesus. He who was without sin died on the cross for Mary’s sin and provided her the gift of eternal life.
That doesn’t, however, mean that everyone will go to heaven, for many people fail to put their faith and trust in Him as Mary did. She took Jesus at His word when He said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father unless he comes through Me.” (John 14:6)
You see, the Bible portrays mankind as spiritually separated from God. And this separation is far more extensive and traumatic than the physical separations we talked about earlier. In fact, there is a vast gulf between sinful man and a Holy God, according to Luke 16. The whole history of human religion is the story of individuals or groups of people trying to figure out how to bridge that gulf–through enlightenment or good works or religious rites and rituals.
I’ve got some bad news for you–it’s impossible for us to bridge that gulf. The gap is simply too great for us to span it. But I’ve also got some good news. Two thousand years ago God built a bridge across that gulf. The bridge is narrow–in fact, it’s as narrow as a cross. This is essentially what Jesus taught when He said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14)
For those who fail to take God’s bridge, the result is a separation far more significant than the separation of physical death. In the New Testament it is called the “Second Death.” It involves being separated from God for all eternity. Those who experience the second death will discover that God is who He said He was and yet will be unable to communicate with Him or enjoy His presence.
Friends, if the separation of the Second Death were as vivid in our minds as the separation of physical death is this morning, not a person would leave this sanctuary without making a personal commitment of his or her life to Christ. Well, it may not be as vivid, but it is as real. God’s Word says it, and I believe it. “He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” (John 3:36).
In that same chapter we read the story of Nicodemus, a religious leader who sought Jesus out. Jesus told him, “You must be born again.” To be born again is a popular notion today, but it is also misunderstood by many. It presupposes that people are born into this life with a basic problem–sin. Sin, in turn, leads to separation from God. Though physically alive, we are spiritually dead, and we need to born again, born anew, born from above.
Here is a fundamental truth we desperately need to understand today: If you are born only once, i.e., physically, you will die twice–physically and spiritually. But if you are born twice, physically and spiritually, you will only have to die once.
Mary Weber has experienced the only death she will ever have to suffer–physical death, because she was born again by faith in Christ.
I want to say to Mary’s family, I cannot tell you why this evil cancer has taken Mary from us, when she was able to beat it twice before. I can tell you that our God is a good and merciful God, that He loves you and desires your simple trust in Himself. I can say with the Apostle Paul, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out.” (Romans 11:33) And I can quote the words of our Lord to His disciples: “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” (John 13:7)
In less than two weeks we will be celebrating the greatest day in the Christian calendar–Easter. I trust it will take on new meaning to you as you affirm your belief in a Savior who conquered death and rose from the grave. Because He lives you can face tomorrow, knowing your dear wife, mother, grandmother, sister, and friend is alive in the presence of Jesus and one day this earthly tent of hers will be resurrected. You will see her again in her glorified body, free of cancer and all pain. Thanks be to God!
Prayer: Our heavenly Father, we approach Your throne of grace in sorrow but not in anger; in grief but not in hopelessness. We do not grieve as those who have no hope. We have every confidence that Mary is with you and that those who are members of your spiritual family shall see her again when Jesus comes.
We ask for a special measure of your strength and comfort in the lives of George, Laura, Skip, Mary, and Susie. We pray also for the grandchildren, the nieces and nephews, the in-laws, and the scores of friends Mary has left behind. Cause them to feel your presence surrounding them and sustaining them. Minister to all of us, we pray, and may this time of sorrow cause us to cast ourselves upon you and draw us closer to Yourself. Father, thank you for precious memories, of looks given, of words spoken, of songs sung, of kindnesses done.
Thank you for sweet promises in your Word that the separation of death is not final for believers, because our Savior rose from the dead and will in like manner raise us up that we might spend all of eternity together in your presence. We ask it in the precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Benediction: “Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in His sight …. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus, to whom be glory forever and ever.” Amen.