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The Rev. Frank Logue
How’s Your Dash? Though we gather in a time of grief and loss, we are not here merely to mourn. We are also here today to celebrate life. Life that is all about that dash. A friend of Bill’s pointed out, something he saw that showed a birth date and a death date and then there was the dash in between and it asked, “How’s your dash?” The whole of your life summed up on a tombstone with just that little mark. But I’m here to tell you that Bill Ehrhardt had a heck of a dash. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, born 51 years ago. Died nearby as a resident of Camden County, Georgia. And in between came the dash. His Mom said, “Bill was a mischievous little boy and I’m not so sure that went away when he grew up.” And his wife Patti quickly added, “No, it didn’t!” His Mom spent a lot of time in the principal’s office at the elementary school waiting to talk with the principal, yet again, about the latest incident. It was for little things like shooting cottage cheese through a straw, but it was always something. Later he went to a military high school and got a lot of exercise walking the flag for minor infractions, like streaking through the cafeteria. Bill was very close to his brother Jim who remembers that Jim always had a fort. Once he built one in the woods, but his choice of wallpaper for that one was something that just won’t preach. Another time they built a fort by digging out under the crawl space of a friend’s house until the younger brother Jim could stand under there. So much for the structural integrity of the house above them…they had a fort. This desire to build stuck with Bill. He loved to take junk and make something of it. His son Joshua recalls his dad saying on many an occasion, “Why buy something new when you can buy something to fix,” which at least partly explains the time he came home from the dumpster with a boat. His wife Patti recalls that when he would bring back some find or another, Bill would say, “It’s a treasure. You don’t know what it’s going to be worth one day.” Like the time he bought a boat off eBay while serving in Afghanistan. Speaking of which, Patti arranged for a joke online ad to go in the Tribune & Georgian where she works while Bill was in Afghanistan. Just to get a prank in on the prankster himself, she advertised “Patti’s Treasure Sale” with text to make it look like she was selling off his stuff while he was away. Patti knew Bill watched the local classifieds via the web and sure enough he saw it and called. Of course he was fine with the joke, because while he could dish it out, Bill could take it too. He was so big on making those sorts of deals that his family called him “Trader Bill” because he could and did trade for everything. Did I mention that he traded for his house? His instinct to find things to fix came because Bill had a natural mechanical ability and a work ethic that was unmatched. Take the walkway at his house. I don’t know how long it is exactly, though I’m sure Bill could tell me. It leads from the back of the house to the river he loved stretching for what must be over 100 yards through marsh. Meticulously built on pylons of PVC pipe filled with concrete through a nasty patch of muddy silt to work in, that project would have tested the will of many a man and found him lacking. But Bill finished the project beautifully. As his brother-in-law Guy says, “That walkway tells you everything you need to know about that man.” That dedication to a project undertaken served Bill well during his four years in the Navy, then during his civil service. And since 1989 he applied that same work ethic to the Georgia Air Guard. It was through the Guard, in a post 911 world, that he would go to work on communications in Kuwait, Afghanistan and Qatar. Having known Bill here in a different setting, I find it odd that he served so long and well as a citizen-soldier. I mean, let’s be honest here, Bill was too much of a rebel for his military service to define him as a man. And Bill’s brother Jim remembers that for his older brother there were two ways to do everything, “His way or his way.” That doesn’t exactly sound like the makings of a Guardsman. Yet, he is described by those who served alongside him as a team player and a great guy to go overseas with. But Bill had gifts to bring to the Guard, other than technical ability. Bill was funny. His sister-in-law says, “He could always make you laugh.” And those who have served with him agree. Steve Yawn notes that Bill earned the nickname “Bubbles” because of a sparkling personality. He was the guy who kept morale in check by finding humor everywhere. Not a reputation easily kept when serving in the mid-eastern desert in a time of war. But this is where the Bill he had been as a boy continued to find a way to smooth off the rough edges with humor. Major West said, “He was mischievous. He was an overgrown boy in a way. He found a way to make everything fun.” Everything? There was that night in Kuwait that Artie Fletcher remembers with crystal clarity, because he thought it was about to be the night Bill died. They were coming back to the base at night driving semis. Following the protocols, they slowed the trucks way down, cut the headlights and turned on dome lights. Bill was in the lead truck when a young, wiry third country national came running out of the checkpoint screaming, wild eyed and pointing an automatic rifle with a big clip hanging out of it right at Bill. Bill kept cool. Just when it got to the point that Artie expect the flash and the sound of gunfire, an older man came out yelling and took the rifle away from the enraged young man. But Bill kept his sense of humor in the face of such danger and in hardships of deployment. That’s why the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd in our Gospel reading for today speaks so strongly. Jesus told his disciples, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away.” For the citizen-soldier who has faced death to serve his country, this is an appropriate image. Not the one who ran away, Bill was the one who served and served with honor in the 224th joint communications squadron. So seeing the wolf coming and standing firm is an image that makes a lot of sense today. But of course, we remember that as faithful as Bill was in serving his country, he was not the good shepherd. Jesus is. And the reason we can gather and celebrate Bill’s life instead of only beating ourselves up at his loss, is that we are trusting that Bill was a sheep of Jesus’ own flock. Bill was, after all, a baptized Christian who had put his faith in that very shepherd. Jesus said in that same reading, “I know my own and my own know me.” What we know is that the Bill I have been reminiscing about is the Bill Jesus knew. He knows all of that and Jesus knows plenty more about Bill. Now I preach in Camden County. I don’t preach in heaven. And so I don’t get to preach the funerals of saints, but just of sinners like myself. And while I have been busy telling about Bill, there is more to tell. I mean he might have had the perseverance to finish that walkway out to the river, but that wasn’t only because of his work ethic. It was also because Bill was stubborn. A pit bull. His son Logan remembers “There were no buts” with his dad. Bill was always busy. He always had something to do. Put another way, “If he was up in the morning. You were up in the morning.” Remember the two ways, “His way or his way.” So lest you think I have gone too far and painted a too rosy picture, let’s settle back and remember that we are talking about a real man here—someone you are here because you love, but not because you forgot that he was stubborn and that he had other faults. The reading we had earlier from the First Letter of Peter said, “Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.” And so there it is. I’m preaching about a sinner who trusted Jesus with his life and we trust that was enough and that the real love Bill showed for those of you here today covers all. What did that love look like? Well it took many forms. His love for his mother who he enjoyed traveling to the Caribbean with earlier this year. His love for Patti and for his brother Jim and sister Jayne. His love for his motorcycle buddies, and the guys in his Guard unit and his co-workers on the base. But it goes well beyond that. Y’all know what I mean. Bill was the most accepting person you could meet. He was inclusive, looking to bring in the person left on the outside. And Bill’s love shows most in his boys—Joshua, Logan and Jay. Bill’s parents were divorced when Bill was young and so he didn’t grow up with a father around. It was a mistake he would not repeat. Sitting around the table in his home this week and talking with family, it was clear that Bill’s greatest accomplishment was his boys. Joshua says, “I am the luckiest person because I can call him Dad.” Logan agrees. He didn’t meet Jay until he was 25, but when he found out he had another son, he took him to his heart as well. Our reading from First Peter also says, “God has given gifts to each of you from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Manage them well so that God’s generosity can flow through you.” Bill’s great gift was a love for life and for other people shown through his accepting nature and in making life better through finding the humor in everything. And God’s generosity flowed through him so clearly that we filled the church today with people who know what I mean when I talk about the love Bill had. Remember I began by talking about that dash between the birth and death dates? The heck of a dash that Bill experienced was one of finding the humor in everything and never meeting a stranger. And so while we celebrate his life, we also know that in passing from this life to be with his savior, our lives are diminished by the lack of acceptance and humor that Bill brought with him. His death leaves loss as we wonder why it happened. Bill had himself been hit hard back in February by the death of his fellow Guardsman Larry Main. They had served together in Afghanistan and become quite close. Some of you would have been there for that funeral and now you are gathered again for another man taken too soon it seems to us. I wish I could sort it all out for you. Instead I’ll trust God to do that. It’s hard to make sense out of an accident you can’t quite understand. Bill had loved bikes for a long time. He got a mini bike at age 14 and soon had his Mom riding on it. That long time love of riding a motorcycle was how he died. His mother said that he died, “doing what he liked to do and he was with people he liked to be with.” And that’s not so bad for Bill. For those of us who are left, we trust in the words of the Psalm for today that, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” The Psalm goes on to say, “Be still and know that I am God.” And if you will be still and listen to your heart, you will feel that God is right here, right now present in the midst of grief and loss. We lean on the everlasting arms of the Good Shepherd, Jesus, who laid down his life for Bill and for you and me. And we take up the example Jesus showed perfectly that Bill reflected as best he could. We continue to show deep love for one another, trusting that our Lord and that love will make saints out of us sinners yet and that we’ll see Bill on the other side of death when we rise to the life immortal. Amen.
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