Esther Naomi Hines

My grandmother, Esther Naomi Hines, died on December 4th.  She was exactly one month shy of her 92nd birthday.  Yesterday I officiated at her memorial service.  Esther was a wonderful grandmother and I cherish many fond memories of our time together.  Thanks be to God for Esther and all the saints in light!

Proverbs 31:10-29, Luke 1:26-38, 46-55

Memorial Service for Esther Naomi Hines

Delahunt Funeral Home, Loves Park, IL

Katie Hines-Shah

It is good that we can all be here, together today.  In an ideal world perhaps it wouldn’t be funerals that would gather us.  In an ideal world perhaps we would be gathered to celebrate happier occasions.  In an ideal world we be able to be together not here, in icy Illinois, but in the warm summer sun at the farm in Minnesota.  I know that’s what we would have all liked to do to celebrate the life of Esther Naomi Hines, our mother, our grandmother, our great grandmother, and friend, but for all kinds of very good reasons we can’t.  But I know that Esther would understand.  She was a very practical person and she knew how to make do.

Growing up on the hardscrabble farms of Northern Minnesota knowing how to make do was a necessity.  Everyone had to do it.  But what was special about Esther was that she also knew how to have fun at the same time.

Esther had a marvelous sense of humor.  She knew how to tell a funny story and she savored a good joke.  She never told a joke to hurt someone’s feelings.  Once when Grandpa’s pants fell down around his ankles at the ice cream social Grandma said nothing.  Late that night Pam found Grandma sitting at the dining room table, crying she was laughing so hard.  “I had to wait to laugh until he had gone to bed,” she explained. 

Esther’s sense of humor was something that would stay with her.  Even in her later years in the bonds of dementia, she still could be funny. 

The last year that she celebrated Thanksgiving in her own home Joan, Jill, and Tom had done everything possible to make things nice for her.  They set up the house; they made the turkey, the noodles and all the trimmings.  My father told me that his sisters made eleven pies for the assembled party.  Grandma was brought back from the nursing home, she was seated in the place of honor, her daughters fixed her up a nice plate of food.  Everything looked perfect.  But after grace, Esther wasn’t eating.  “Mom,” Joan asked worriedly, “is there anything you need?”

“Well,” said Esther pleasant as pie, “my teeth would be nice.”

Everybody laughed.  That is, of course, the best part of family get togethers.  That is the best part of celebrating the holidays.  The food is good, the stories are important, but the jokes are what hold us together. 

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas in a few weeks, perhaps we ought to be mindful of the importance of humor like Esther’s.  I can hear refrains of Esther’s jokes in the mouth of another poor girl out of a hardscrabble existence.  The Angel Gabriel in the Gospel for today comes to visit young Mary to tell her that she’s going to give birth to Jesus, and what does she say?  Is she profound or wise?  No – she makes a joke.  There’s just one problem, much like Esther’s lack of teeth at Thanksgiving.  “Me have a baby?”  Mary asks,  ”Well it’s going to be hard, because I’m a virgin.”

But this isn’t a problem for God.  God is always taking small things and making them grow. One small mustard seed, two fish and five loaves, a little bit of yeast, become fodder for Jesus’ greatest parables.   One family, one people, one nation, becomes the bearers of God’s promise.  God will use Mary, even in her smallness, and make her great.

I think that this is also a truth about Esther.  Esther knew how to take a small thing and make it great.  She knew how to make something out of nothing.  A little scrap of fabric could be doll clothes, a bulb or a cutting could become a garden, a little bit of shortning and flour could be a piecrust.  And if something went wrong, well, you could, in Grandma’s words, “Just go and bury it in the garden.”

But more that that, she knew how to make even the littlest things into delights.  Little things like baby ducks or an empty matchbox or a plastic biting alligator toy delighted her.  And she taught her children and grandchildren to be delighted by them too. 

I remember once coming to the farm with my sister late after a whole day’s drive.  “Girls,” Grandma said eagerly, “Look behind the stove.”  Behind the stove was a thermos lid.  I looked up at Grandma quizzically.  “Look inside,” she urged.  And when I did I saw there a hummingbird, stunned by a late summer cold snap.  Under her watchful eye, Allison and I fed the little hummingbird, and when, the next day he had recovered enough to zip around the living room, we opened the window and let him go.  It was a wonder to be so close to something so small.  It was always the smallest things that Grandma shared and bloomed largest in my heart.

Tiny shells from Florida.  Clothes for Allison’s toys sewn at midnight.  A ketchup packet sent through the mail to Joan and Tom and Jill to show them what big city life was like.  A china cabinet full of tiny treasures.  Grandma delighted at all these tiny marvels of God’s creation.

The marvelous works of God delighted Mary, so much so that she wrote her hymn of praise, the Magnificat.  We heard today Mary’s vision of God who lifts up the lowly and the humble.  We heard of how God values the seemingly small and simple.  We are reminded that people as overlooked as young virgins or ordinary housewives are the people God uses for God’s work.

In God’s greater vision the work of a wife and mother is praised.  I don’t know that Esther every really knew how important her work was, but we knew.  We knew that the cooking and cleaning and clothing, the gardening and growing were vital.  We knew that her efforts that keep a family running smoothly so that she needn’t fear, as the poet says, even if it snowed, made all the difference.  In this Christmas season, Esther’s work will be remembered.  By my fireplace hangs the stocking she made for Tom.  In our kitchens there will be noodles and pies.  In our gardens raspberries and tiger lilies sleep, dreaming of a spring to come.  We will tell funny stories and share found memories, just as she did with us in years gone by.  In these seemingly small ways Esther’s memory will remain with us.  It will inform and bless future generations, Erin and Lauren, and John and even those who come after them.

Our small service here in Illinois perhaps is not an ideal one, but from it larger hope can grow.  God always uses such small things to bring light and life to a cold and hurting world.  In this Christmas season we remember how Jesus came as a small an insignificant child who would one day grow to be the light of the world and the savior of us all. 

Jesus is the light of the world.  Jesus promises that those who know his light need fear no darkness, not even the darkness of death itself.  Esther knew the love of God and in death she shines eternally.

Until that great day when we join with Esther and all those we love in the light of heaven, let us keep the light of Esther’s life warm in our hearts.  Let us grow the light of her life through our works and deeds so that the little things she taught us might be lights to others.  May our kitchens, our gardens, our stories and especially our jokes be a credit to her life.

Thanks be to God for the life of Esther, our mother, our grandmother, our great grandmother, and friend.

Amen

Promises in the Snow

The first snowfall has finally come – so what better thing to do on a Sunday than celebrates our Swedish heritage?  John and I head for Ebenezer Lutheran Church in Andersonville (a neighborhood of North Chicago) and afterwards to the Julmarkrad at the Swedish American Museum.

Now aside from Swedish Chicago and our first real snowfall, there are two more things you ought to know about Ebenezer and this week in Illinois.  First, Ebenezer is well known in Chicago Lutheran circles for being a church where gay and lesbian people and their families are welcome.  And second, this week in Illinois the legislature voted to allow civil unions of same gendered couples and the governor of Illinois has vowed to sign the bill.

On with the story.

This Sunday at Ebenezer the couple sitting immediately in front of John and me (Matthew and Brian) came forward to have their marriage blessed.  The interim pastor at Ebenezer commented on the civil union law, saying that while it was a step at progress, it wasn’t all the justice we seek.  We blessed Matthew and Brian’s marriage (who cares what the state says!) and the service went on.

On the second Sunday of Advent we hear the words of the Prophet Isaiah.  He speaks in God’s voice promising that a messiah will come, one who will judge with “righteousness.”  Under his reign, Isaiah proclaims that there will be peace. 

But the people are in despair.  They look around and know that the messiah isn’t in their midst yet.  Isaiah tells them not to worry about how things seem now; something new is coming: “A shoot will come our of the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” 

I thought about Matthew and Brian and how there isn’t justice for them yet.  Civil unions in Illinois do not fix marriage law in our country.  They do not fix Don’t Ask Don’t Tell or stop the bullying of gay teens in schools.  But it is a start – a shoot, a branch, a promise.

At the Swedish American Museum John and I were reminded how the growing of a shoot takes work, and how promise does not come easily.  We looked at exhibits on Swedish immigration to America in the 19^th century.  How people left behind farm and family for a new life.  They took with them noting but their trunks, 20 salted herring per person, and a bag of potatoes.

And when they got to America they did not find streets paved with gold.  They did not find good jobs and warm homes.  Instead they started from nothing, working as domestic servants and common laborers.  Holding on to their faith, they believed in the promise of new life, for themselves and for their children.  They worked to make that promise grow.

Each of us has a stump of some sort in our lives.  A place that seems abandoned by hope, a place where new life seems unlikely to bloom.  The Gospel promise, the promise of Advent, is that God grows life exactly when and where it seems most unlikely – in a Swedish immigrant community in a new land, for gay and lesbian people where justice seems far off, in a manger in Bethlehem in your life and in mine.

This Advent watch for signs of life and work to help them grow.

Thanks be to God!

Snowflakes

As St. Paul says, there are a variety of gifts, some are called to be preachers or teachers, others are gifted in healing or speaking in tongues.  My gift?  Cutting paper.

I discovered my gift back in third grade when my teacher noticed I had a slight lisp and sent me to speech therapy.  For some reason, speech therapy included a craft element.  I remember making thanksgiving turkeys, Christmas ornaments, and, most importantly, snowflakes.  Perhaps crafts were really my therapist’s strong suit, because, as you may well have noticed, I still have my lisp.  But boy can I cut snowflakes. 

I cut snowflakes every Christmas for the windows of our house and for the windows of the farm.  I cut snowflakes and used them as templates for spray painted Christmas cards.  (Note – while red is a perfectly appropriate Christmas color, on a spray-painted Christmas card it tends to look a little Fargo-esk.)  A couple of years ago I cut over 100 snowflakes (and laminated them all on fishing line) to decorate the church.  But I have never made snowflakes for any of the homes Jay and I have lived in.  Pastoring is busy work.

So this year I am making snowflakes for our windows.  It’s a good project that forces me to sit down and take a break from unpacking.

And look – this morning, there was snow!  John says, “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this,” which actually may well be true.  We’re really in Chicago now!