I will weep when you are weeping.
 When you laugh, I'll laugh with you.
 I will share your joy and sorrow
 Till we've seen this journey through.
 
How very, very, good it was to journey with the Right Reverend Lucien D. Lindsey, Jr.  Before I share my own experience of that journey I want to turn to those of you who shared the greater part of the journey with this good man.  I first want to remember Lou as a husband, father and grandfather.
 
His romance with Jeanne began almost sixty years ago.  Over the years that romance matured and developed into a portrait that speaks of devotion, faith and love.  When Lou looked into Jeanne’s eyes fifty-six years ago this past August and said: I DO, he meant it with all his heart, mind and spirit. And things never changed.  You were the Christ-light to each other.  Through thick and thin, Jeanne you were a refuge for Lou.  You shared each other’s joys and sorrows.  And in this final, painful leg of the journey you were Lou’s source of peace and strength right up to his final hour on earth.
 
The Psalmist reminds us, “Seventy is the sum of our years, or eighty, if we are strong.” (Ps. 90:10) You were strong in the Lord, together.
Father Lou celebrated his eightieth birthday on February 22nd, but before going to glory, he wanted to wait for his beloved to reach the milestone also.  He hung in there until Jeanne’s birthday thirteen days later.  A tumor in his throat robbed him of the ability to speak but the last thing he was able to whisper to Jeanne was “thirteen.”  It was a number that was filled with such great love.  Theirs was a love for the ages.
 
From that sacramental love came three sons and a daughter.  In the Catholic Church we don’t have much experience of knowing what challenges so called preacher’s kids face but I have no doubt that whatever those challenges may have been Greg, Mary, Mike and John always knew that the bottom line was love – an intense, deep, all-encompassing fatherly love. And we see how well that love worked: four beautiful adults who with their spouses live their Christian faith and life with integrity and love. And in these months of their Dad’s illness, they have been ever so caring and devoted.
 
They made Lou a grandfather and what delight he took in being with his grandchildren, really enjoying their company and proud of their achievements. All of you were a special blessing to your grandfather.
 
Fr. Lou was a most special blessing to me.  In my priesthood, I’ve been blessed to work with many good priests, some are here today. But I consider my first Parochial Vicar, Fr. Charlie Hughes, a retired head of Glenmary Home Missioners, and one of my last Parochial Vicars, Fr. Lou, a retired Anglican Bishop, to be truly saintly men.  Now, Jeanne is too loyal and kind to ever admit this, but sometimes it’s not always easy to live with a saint.  For example, I thought Fr. Lou was a gifted preacher.  His homilies were well researched and well structured.  He delivered them in a clear baritone voice.  But I often told him that he had to stop preaching like an Anglican Bishop, meaning that his homilies were torturously long.  He’d look at me with those hound dog eyes and an impish grin and just shrug his shoulders as if to say, “I am who I am.” 
 
And speaking of being impish, can we be honest?  It is unusual for a priest to go to glory dressed in red vestments.  Yes, I know that there is a connection to his Native American Ministry and red, the liturgical color of the Holy Spirit, is certainly appropriate for a member of the Alleluia Community but most of us know what the real bottom line is.  They really are not red vestments rather I’d say they are crimson for his beloved University of Oklahoma.  Lou and I bonded over his love for the Sooners.  As a kid growing up in Philly, a college basketball town, I knew very little about college football, yet the first name I knew in College football was not Bear Bryant nor Ara Parseghian nor even Joe Paterno, the first star I came to know in College Football was Bud Wilkinson who coached the Sooners to three of their seven National Championships.   I learned so much about the game from his commentary on ABC.  I was awed that not only was Fr. Lou friends with him, but Bud Wilkinson recommended him for ordination.  
 
So, it was that Father Lindsey was ordained as a priest for the Episcopal Church on December 11, 1963.  On Sept. 28, 2001, Father Lindsey was consecrated Bishop of the Episcopal Missionary Church. As an Anglican deacon, priest and bishop, Father Lindsey faithfully tended the people of God for 49 years, from the plains of Oklahoma to the inner city of Chicago.  Then, on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, Bishop Hartmayer ordained him to the Catholic priesthood.  On that day this was Bishop Hartmayer’s charge to Fr. Lou.  “My brother, in the name of Christ and His Church – we need you to be good, holy and a faithful priest. Speak to us the Word of God! Point us to eternal life! And, in your life and ministry, remind us of the ministry of God’s grace!”
 
How well he gave himself to that charge, not only in the last four years but throughout his life.  His life was full of God’s grace.  I can’t speak to his ministry before 2013 but I know he loved being a priest for this faith community. He and Jeanne felt so welcomed by this faith community. And I am sure this was true throughout their lives, but they were powerful prayer warriors for us.  So much so that I turned to them three weeks ago.  I had emergency surgery on Fat Tuesday and so my Lent began in great pain.  I asked Lou to anoint me and Jeanne got his oils.  He got up off his bed and looked at me deeply and steadily with those eyes of his and said a very simple prayer of healing over me as he anointed me.  It was a deeply emotional moment and then the pain was gone.
 
The great truth which we celebrate today and which we hear proclaimed in the Gospel is this, “Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”  Today we celebrate the life of a man who did believe this and who embodied it – and built his whole life on that promise, and who in an extraordinarily gracious way was able to help so many of us to believe, to trust, and discover our own truest lives, through that great promise.
I would say that all Fr. Lou’s passion for Christian unity had its source in that promise.  He believed that it was God’s plan that all peoples were invited to share in eternal life.  He saw that every single individual had been wonderfully created in the image of God, and anything which stopped them becoming more fully the person God made them to be, from reaching their full glory, was not just unjust but sinful.  And in his ministry in race relations, and among native peoples and those imprisoned, Fr. Lou fought such sin with courage.  He believed that the gates of the Kingdom of God opened wide for everyone and it was sinful to exclude anyone because of that person’s race, gender, class, vulnerability or disability.  Long before we heard Pope Francis encourage the clergy to reach out and be with the folks on the peripheries of life, Lou was already there. 
 
Lou’s spirituality was deeply incarnational.  He was awed by the humanity of Christ.  As the second reading today reminds us Jesus “did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself;” he took on humanity in all its fullness. Lou had the same attitude as Christ; he did nothing out of vainglory. He rose to the Episcopacy and yet was one of the most humble men I have ever known. The capital sin of pride was not in him, whether he served as Parochial Vicar or Bishop, he worked for the salvation of all people and the honor of the Church of God.  Whether in the confessional or at the altar he did all for the glory of God.
 
Fr. Lou had his Good Friday these last few months and so the first reading, which is traditionally read in many Christian Churches on Easter Morning, seems appropriate for this moment.  Though it is from the Hebrew Scriptures, it points towards the Eucharist.  In this reading the prophet Isaiah has a vision of a heavenly banquet for all peoples.  At this banquet God destroys death forever.  There will be rich food and fine wines. There will be no more mourning.  We here and now get a glimpse of this heavenly banquet in this Eucharist.  So even in our sadness we rejoice and are glad because we know that Fr. Lou will sit at that heavenly banquet with Christ forever.
 
We gather this morning to counter the Mystery of Death with an even greater Mystery, the Mystery of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  In Jesus, God comes to stand with us where we need him the most.  In Jesus, God has won the victory over sin and evil and even death itself.  Because of this victory it is our Christian conviction that Fr. Lou Lindsey whose death we mourn is at this moment alive.  Not merely in our memories.  Fr. Lou is more alive now than any of us could ever hope to be.  He is as alive as our Christ is alive - alive with the risen life of his Christ - forever.  So, fair warning to all of us dawg fans, the path to the National Championship game next year might be just a little harder if we must pass through the team from Norman, OK.  They now have a very special intercessor.
 
Well, of course you will accuse me of trying to preach like a Bishop, and rightly so.  I’ll finish then with a final thought and a request.  The request is to sing the final verse of the Servant Song, hymn number # ________.  The final thought is this:
 
There is grief in this farewell, and nothing in our Christian faith asks us to deny our grief.  In his Grace, the Right Reverend Lucien Lindsey, we have all known someone who through his great love has touched us deeply.  We thank God for having blessed us with his life.  And we ask God for enough strength to handle our grief until that day when we shall all meet with Fr. Lou in that place where Jesus has prepared an everlasting reunion for us all.  Until that happy day we continue to support each other in love and faith.  And we pray for this good man: Eternal rest grant unto Lou, O Lord.  And let perpetual light shine upon him.  May Fr. Lou's soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen!   
 
We sing now with thanksgiving in our hearts for the life of this good priest.  We love you Fr. Lou.  It has been a wonderful journey.
 
When we sing to God in heaven
 We shall find such harmony
 Born to all we’ve known together
 Of Christ’s love and agony

Fr. Jerry Ragan