Sermon text: 1
Martin Luther instructed Christian theologians to "call a thing what it is," which is to say, to name or acknowledge the points of deep despair and suffering in our lives and not to gloss over them. And so today we call a thing what it is. Our deep sorrow does not simply flow from the fact that Logan has been taken from us, but that it was his choice to do so. We are struck with pain that we will never fully understand why Logan did what he did, but the truth is that there is a part of everyone that we cannot know, a part that we keep hidden from everyone else -- and sometimes even from ourselves.
But what Logan kept to himself pales in comparison to what he shared with the world. It was as if his physical self could not contain all of who he was. From the time he was born, Logan was a wild, reckless child. Whether he was skateboarding, sledding, boating, or riding a motorcycle, his command was always the same: "Faster!" His love of adventure wasn't without its injuries, however -- so many, in fact, that the staff in the ER knew Logan and Tracy by name. There was the time that Logan decided to take advantage of an enormous, city-excavated dirt pile by strapping into a snowboard and heading downhill, only to crash-land on and seriously injure his elbow. Or the time he fell off a four-wheeler and, as he understatedly told his mother on the phone, "Got a cut on his arm," -- a cut that snaked from hand to shoulder blade and required seventy-seven stitches. He would soon tell everyone that it was a shark bite.
Logan, affectionately known by those close to him as Bubba, Loganberry, Hogan, and Logey, was a young man characterized by one thing more than any other –- more than his quick-wittedness, his sense of adventure, and his famous, flowing hair. As I sat with his family and friends this week, I explained to his grandmother Deb that although I didn't know him as well as others, it only took a few minutes of being in Logan's presence to understand who he was. Grandma Deb -- G-Unit, as Logan called her -- nodded her head, looked me in the eyes and replied, "He was love."
In the Scripture text we read, "Anyone who does not know love does not know God, because God is love." God is love. That is God's great and gracious gift to humanity: Abundant, unending love. Whether he knew it or not, Logan was both a witness to and a vehicle for God's love in this world. Anyone who interacted with him could feel it -- you could almost reach out and touch it -- God's love flowing in and through Logan.
When he was younger, Logan's mother suffered frequently from awful asthma attacks. Despite his age, he felt compelled to do something about it. So one day, his heart overflowing with love, Logan brought his mother a glass of water. "It's 'magic water'," he told her. I have no doubt that she knew, that the rest of us know, that it wasn't the water that was magic. It was Logan.
Logan, who rests safely now in God's hands, spent his life providing everyone he knew and anyone he interacted with a magical glimpse of the gift of God's love – that is why we grieve his death. Yet we are reminded constantly in scripture that we are never left simply to despair; there is always hope. Where there is sorrow in the night, joy comes in the morning. Where there is darkness, there is a flickering ray of light. And where there is death, there too is resurrection.
So in our confusion, may God meet us with his peace. In our anger, may God meet us with his mercy. In our sorrow, may God meet us with his consolation. And may we be inspired, like Logan, to be vehicles in this world for God's gift of love. As the writer of 1 John reminds us, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."
Amen.
- This sermon has been posted with the permission of the family. [↩]
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