As we conclude this service I just have a couple of thoughts I want to add. Promise not to keep you much longer. Just wanted to leave you with this...
First and foremost, I want to thank this community for all the ways they've come together. All the Shawnee students who have been praying, taking time to visit, light a candle, let loose a balloon, write a #6 on their wrist, wear red, leave memorial flowers at the soccer field..... I know that you have been a tremendous blessing to the Andrews family during this most difficult week.
And all the students from the area high schools who have shown their support... wow! All I can say is wow! The pictures of students at LCC, Lima Senior, Wapak, Bath, Elida, other WBL school, and schools from all over wearing red in Jon's honor... you have no idea what that's meant. The teams that came last night. The football team on it's way to O-G. The Shawnee soccer team dressed to the nines last night. All the area high school soccer teams who came in their jerseys yesterday evening. The swimmers... there were literally hundreds of swimmers, coaches, and officials from all over the region who came to pay their respects. Thank you all.
Thank you to the administration - Superintendent Lamb and Principle Cox - faculty, guidance counselors, and staff at Shawnee. Thank you for leading this school with a grace grounded in love for your students.
Thank you to all the clergy and church staff in the community. Thank you to Pastor Shane Crites of Shawnee Alliance Church, who as Chaplain to our "First Responders" tended to these brave heroes, as well as those grieving last Sunday night. Thank you to Angie Soules, Director of Life Teen, the youth ministry for the area Catholic churches for all the work you've done with students this week. For Father Dave Ross and Father Steve Blum and their good work and support. Thank you to those first responders, as well as the West Ohio Crisis Team who worked with the Mental Health Board to come serve the students and staff.
Thank you to all the parents... all the adults. to any adult who has done anything to help or comfort others, the family, I know, appreciates everything all you have done during this most trying, difficult week.
And just to take a moment of personal privilege, I just want to thank this congregation I serve. I have the most amazing staff. All they wanted to do was help in any way they could. And our lay pastors and all our servants... I'm so thankful to all of you. You proved to me once again that "Serve Like Jesus" isn't just a tagline or hashtag at Shawnee United Methodist Church. I want to personally thank all of you.
Once again, thank you, everyone, for everything you have been doing, especially praying, so Shawnee could stand strong, and show the Andrews how much their family, and in particular, Jon, meant to you. You have truly loved your neighbor, and served as the hands and feet of Jesus.
I hope that covered all the thank you's. If I missed someone, my apologizes.
As I sat down to put this together, there was only one question I had on my mind. Why? Why are we here today, mourning the loss of Jon Andrews?
I mean he was gifted in a multitude of ways. He was a good student. he had good grades. He understood the material. He was known to help other students with their studies.
He was a gifted athlete. You heard Coach Quatman. He was a leader on the soccer field who fought for every possession. A captain of the team. And did you see the pile of swimming medals out there in the hallway? Even as a little kid swimming for Sherwood Jon just cut through the water. He was fun to watch. A tremendous athlete.
He was well-rounded. As a hunter, he bagged a buck the very first time he ever went deer hunting. His dad had to beg a pickup truck on the fly to go pick up a deer that by the time he arrived Jon had already skinned. The mounted duck you might have just seen in the hallway? Jon got it the first time he ever went duck hunting. It literally fell out of the sky into his uncle's arms.
He loved wildlife. As a child he kept reptiles as pets. Snakes. Didn't make his mom too happy when she'd be folding his laundry in his bedroom and his pet ball python, would hang on the mirror and give her an unexpected jolt. I bet they could hear Julie scream all up and down Lochloman Way. Jonathon Scot Andrews!!! Put that snake away mister or there's gonna be trouble. Trouble!
As an artist he had quite a flair. There's a whole table of pottery here that's Jon's. Pottery. That's a skill that takes years to master, and Jon's work, as a teen, is just outstanding.
Why?
Certainly it wasn’t a lack of love from his family. Scot and Julie adored Jon, they’re youngest. They went to games and meets. They chuckled when they saw him, up early, reading the paper and drinking his coffee like a little old man. Jon’s parents loved him and did everything they could to help him. Everything. Stephen and Sarah got to enjoy their younger cute-but-annoying little brother turning into a great friend with whom they could have adventures… the stories of which someday they may have the courage to tell their parents.
I think the family has a million Andrews and Greenes, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins upon cousins abounding. Plenty of dinners to enjoy together. Someone always stopping by. It’s a big boisterous, loving family who loved watching Jon grow up from a tiny ring bearer to a handsome homecoming date.
It wasn't from a lack of friends. Certainly he had a tight circle of good friends, but I can't count all the stories I’ve heard this week of people who said Jon helped them with this, or Jon did that with them. You were either this friend, or if you saw him walking down the hall or across the field or driving his beloved truck, you wanted to be his friend.
He had a great sense of humor. He wasn't above the occasional practical joke. Whether it was an escalating TP war with a friend,or eluding the township 5-0 during an evening of hijinks with friends in Indian Brook he was up for some fun. On the first night, for example, he and Avery went out he brought her to his home, asked her to stay in the kitchen and be absolutely quiet. In the next room was his mother, so he rounded the corner.
"Hey mom, I'm home. I finally got rid of that Avery Shirk girl."
"Jon, what was wrong with Avery?"
"Oh, I don't know, she just talks too much. She's really annoying."
"Well, I thought she was sweet."
"That's a good thing, cause she's here and standing just around the corner. Aren't you glad you didn't call her a witch?"
Yeah, he really did that. He could make you laugh.
And he wasn't one to give up. Jon wasn't a quitter. His dad remembered a baseball game when Jon was little. A 3rd grader pitching to 5th and 6th graders, and he was just getting shelled. Eventually little Jon put his glove up over his face began to cry. So Scot went to mound to see if he was OK, and since there weren't any more pitchers, he asked him if he could grind it out. And he did until he got out of the inning.
Jon could grind it out. He was grinding it out.
So, why?
Have you ever been lost? I remember - maybe my earliest surviving memory - when I was a really little kid, three years old, our family moved to Charleston, West Virginia from Columbus. My parents were helping get all the stuff moved into the house with the movers, and I wandered off. Soon I realized that I had no idea where I was. I started to scream and cry, thinking I’d never see my parents again.
Now, I was standing at the end of our driveway, about 50 feet away from the house. I wasn’t actually lost, but I thought I was. Feeling lost is terrible.
All of us, from time to time, feel lost. We struggle to make sense of this world we live in, with all it's complexities. Life can often scare us. It’s hard, difficult, chaotic... and we're supposed to be able to make sense of it...
crack the code...
figure out the answer...
not burden others with our problems.
And when we can't, it's exhausting. It's humiliating. It's defeating, and we forget that we are a precious child of God. We believe lies that echoing in our head, that if we said them out loud to others who know and love us, would be rebuked.
This is not a rational, understandable, predictable world we live in. It is beautiful and it is broken, just as we are beautiful and broken. Broken even as the world's brokenness is thrust upon us.
Why are we here today? Because life is difficult, doesn't come with a clear-cut road map, and we get lost. And being lost is no fun. In fact it's terrifying. Lost leaves you scared and angry and frustrated.
Which is why I love Jesus. The One who seeks the lost. The One who'll leave the ninety-nine to go find the one out in the wilderness. I mean, that's the point of John 14. Not even death, apparently, keeps Jesus from seeking us out, seeking out the lost.
I am coming to you, to take you to my Father's house, to a place I've especially prepared for you. And if you've experienced the love and grace that is mine, that is at the heart of why all things have been made, then you will know my voice, and you will know you're home.
I wish, with all my heart, that the love and grace Jon Andrews was so capable of extending to others, the love and grace of Jesus that is at the heart of all created things, he could have extended to himself.
Love and grace greater than all our sin. Greater than all our flaws. The love and grace which binds us together as a community. Love and which seeks to serve first, and judge later.
When Jesus came seeking Jon, that love and grace washed over him like rolling waters of a flowing stream, and he knew it was his. It always was his, It always will be his. It’s just hard, from time to time, to figure that out on this side of paradise.
So as we prepare to leave this place, to rebuke the darkness, to chase away the chaos, to crucify the lie that we are no more than our shortcomings, we must engage in practicing love and grace to one another. Love and grace which allows for honesty among us in the community. Love and grace which allows us to admit our flaws and seek those willing to walk the journey with us. Imperfections and all. Love and grace which rebukes the tempter, who seeks to deceive us into believing we are isolated and alone. Rebukes the author of lies, who would seek to distract us from the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who has come to bring us peace.
Whatever the demons are that haunt us, that haunt our homes and our families, let us seek to make earth more like heaven, like we pray in the Lord's prayer, and confess our shortcomings, our sins, so as we find the Lord's forgiveness as we forgive each other. It is in that divine forgiveness we might find new ways to defeat the tempter, and be delivered from evil that would deceive us into falsely believing that we deserve to feel isolated and lost.
May the grace and love of the Living God rain down on this community. May it rain down as you tell others that you love them. May it rain down as we step out of a feeling of helplessness and ask others for help. May it rain down in our willingness to listen. May it rain down as we embrace the gifts of those who are skilled healers, as we continue to pray for healing. And may it rain down as we understand that if we are to love our neighbor as yourselves as an expression of our love for God, that fundamentally we need to love ourselves. Flawed, mortal, imperfect, and yet still capable of being loved.
And may grace and love rain down on Scot, Julie, Stephen, and Sarah in the form of our continued prayer and concern. May it rain down as we refuse to let one dark moment define the life and meaning of Jon Andrews as we remember his friendship, his gifts, his humor, and love he had for others.
May you find hope in the Risen Christ, who nails our sins to the tree standing on Calvary, so that we may rise again as new people, ready to overcome evil with good.
Amen and amen.
