I think there are certain experiences that are so life-changing, you feel as if you were the first one ever to experience such a thing. I think falling in love is one of those experiences, or maybe having your first child. I have just had one of those experiences: my wife's father died last week. I feel as if I've joined a Great Sad Tribe whose sufferings I never fully understood until now.
A few years ago I gave the eulogy at another funeral, and he (my father-in-law) was there. He thought I did a good job and said he wanted me to do his funeral. At the time I was merely flattered, but when the time came (two days ago), I could barely hold it together.
Here is the eulogy I delivered at his funeral two days ago:
I heard it said once that success is when those closest to you admire you the most. I think this is true, and I can tell you from personal experience and observation that Ted Smart was a wildly successful man. We are met this morning to celebrate his long and fruitful life.
Ted made it clear that he didn’t want a lot of malarky said about him at his funeral. I’m not sure what he meant by that, but I do know that it’s hard to speak of this man without speaking with the deepest affection and genuine respect. If that’s what he meant by malarky, I hope he’ll forgive me for what I’m about to say.
Ted Smart was a remarkable man. No one ever met him and walked away without his having made a strong impression. And for those of us who knew him so well and loved and admired him so deeply, the impression he made on us was life-shaping.
Ted was a remarkable man in the way he loved his family: Clarice, Diana, Kathleen, Nanette, Anita, and Ted. He loved having his family around him, and we were around him a lot. He actually put an addition on his house to make room for a longer dinner table, to accommodate the family that would come there to eat.
It was a regular habit for folks to drop by on Friday nights for dinner. Ted and Clarice never knew how many places to set or how much food to prepare. There might be a few of us or an entire table full of kinfolk on any given Friday night. After supper, after the dishes were cleared, Ted would sit down to a game of Scrabble with two or three of us at one end of that long table, while others would stay at the table with magazines, iPads, newspapers, and laptops, always accompanied on his stereo by some of the great music Ted loved: Beethoven, Dvorak, and Handel (especially the Messiah). In the living room, a few others would be watching the Reds.
Most Sundays we were all back again, usually in larger numbers, for a late Sunday dinner. And the same scene afterward: Scrabble at one end of the table and others sitting around with the Sunday paper and coffee and the rest. I think those were among Ted’s favorite moments, with his house full of his family. What he loved most about special occasions -- the birthdays and Christmas and Thanksgiving and the annual cook-outs -- what he loved most was never the gifts or the food. It was the fact that the family had gathered. Those were his golden moments.
But there was no clearer picture of Ted’s love of his family than what we all observed in his love for Clarice. It was mutual with the two of them, the way they took care of each other. When she was hospitalized in December after a fall, he was at her bedside constantly. And over the past weeks, as he spent time in the hospital, she was there at his side at virtually every possible moment. The love and loyalty and compassion and tenderness the two of them have shown for one another has been remarkable.
Ted led a remarkably simple life. For him, there were only a few things that really mattered -- his faith, his family, and the Ohio State Buckeyes -- and he simply refused to let life get complicated. He didn’t see the need to go anywhere except for work or church, or a special family occasion. I remember in the 1970s when I was a young adult and everyone was in a panic because of a shortage of natural gas, Ted wasn’t worried. He said over dinner one night that as long as he had the wherewithal to put gas in his car and drive to work, to put food on the table and to heat his house, he had all he needed. Ted lived his life by a set of remarkably simple, straight-forward priorities.
Ted was a remarkable man in his love for the Scriptures. He made it a habit to read through the Bible once a year. He told me once he usually finished Revelation sometime in September, then he would go back and re-read his favorite books -- the Psalms, the Gospel of John -- until year’s end. Then he would start again with Genesis in January.
I suppose he read through the entire Bible dozens of times during his lifetime. As a result, he possessed a truly encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible. I can remember many times when we would be talking -- over dinner or maybe a game of Scrabble -- about some biblical account and he would say to me something like, “You remember what King Hezekiah said to Isaiah, don’t you? Surely you remember!”
Of course I didn’t remember. I was the one with the seminary degree, and I didn’t know, but he knew. He seemed genuinely surprised that other people didn’t know the details of biblical stories as intimately as he did. But he knew it not just because he had read it so much, he knew it because he loved it so deeply.
And Ted took the Scriptures literally. He believed the Scriptures were not just to be read, they are to be obeyed. He said that Jesus taught that if someone asked you for help, you should help. He gave generously to many ministries and Christian organizations and to people in need... not because he had money to spare but because he believed that was what he should do.
Ted’s love for the Bible was indeed remarkable.
Ted would surely deny that he was a remarkable man, but the truth is that what made him such a man was his remarkable love for his Savior. He was truly amazed at the grace of God. He had put his faith in Christ while he was a young child, and he knew that God had changed the entire trajectory of his life in that moment. Not just this life, but the next as well. I remember when we would gather on Easter Sunday, we would always sing one of his favorite hymns, “Up From the Grave He Arose.” He didn’t need to see the lyrics, they were inscribed not just on his mind but on his heart. And he always raised his left hand and closed his eyes to sing that last refrain. Anyone who knew Ted knew he loved Jesus.
That’s why Ted was ready -- when the time finally came -- to go home. Ted made his peace with God not because he lived his life so well but because he had placed his entire confidence in Christ and His sacrifice. And now for Ted, the struggle is finally over, and he is with the Savior he so adored.
There are people who will tell you that death is not to be feared, that death is as natural as birth, just a part of the natural order of things. But all of us sitting in this room right now know at some deep level that this is not true. We know that the death of a human being -- at any age -- is not at all natural; it is absurd. Death is a vicious intruder, an outrage, an obscenity. We somehow know that we were made for more than this, that this cannot be all there is.
Ted knew that this short life is just the beginning of life. The Scriptures that he loved so much teach that Christ destroyed the power of death by rising from the dead Himself. As a result, those who have put their faith in Christ can think about death differently. We do grieve, “but not as others, who have no hope.”
For us, the grief is profound. But for Ted, the words of the Apostle Paul have finally come true, and he is overjoyed.
“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death...
The body is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory:
it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power...
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality,
then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?”
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