Seminary Journal 2008 (August) - Virginia Theological Seminary

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A Sermon for Maxine Shelly Turner (1985-2007) April 27, 2007 Church of the Holy Comforter, Vienna, Virginia The Rev. Dr. Robert Prichard Professor of Church History and Friend of the Turner Family “His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” Luke 2:41-51 The passage that we have heard from Luke’s Gospel is about Jesus’ childhood. On fi rst glance it is not an obvious choice for this occasion. When one considers not only the content but also the circumstance in which it was written, however, it begins to make more sense. These words, the only New Testament passage about Jesus between infancy and adulthood, were written after Jesus reached maturity, after his public ministry, after his violent death, and after the persecution of his followers in Jerusalem. Luke, who was probably a convert to the Christian faith after the resurrection, frames the account with an acknowledgement of his source of information. He knows what he knows about Jesus’ childhood for only one reason, because Jesus’ mother Mary has treasured all these things in her heart. A number of years ago the mother of a good friend died suddenly. The mother had been a take-charge kind of person who was not shy about letting her opinions be known. When my friend and her sister met at the family home in order to put things in order and to prepare for the funeral, they discovered that their mother had written short notes of instruction everywhere: in the pockets of her clothes, in dresser drawers, in closets and shelves. The daughters could not help but laugh. Even after death their mother had a way of sending them messages about the way that she wanted things to be done. 80 VIRGINIA SEMINARY JOURNAL AUGUST 2007
Not many of us have the foreknowledge and the foresight to plant notes among our possessions so that, in the case of tragedy, they will be seen by those whom we love. But in a far more profound way, many leave messages by touching the hearts of those around them. Maxine Shelly Turner—Max to many of her friends—certainly did. She was a young woman who was full of life, with all the wonderful contrasts of a growing, vibrant person. She delighted in the violin and chemical engineering. She was tiny in stature and yet exuberant as a swing dancer and a practitioner of Tae kwan do. She had an organized career path set out clearly before her, but she was incapable of keeping her room in order. (If she had left notes, it would have been diffi cult to fi nd them.) She was serious about what she wanted and needed to do, and yet could be playful and foolish. For some reason the lyrics of a song about an earlier event have been running through my head in the last few days. The song is about the victims of another tragedy, the loss of 70 seamen and offi cers from the American warship Reuben James, which was torpedoed in the North Atlantic in October of 1941, in the months in which America was still theoretically neutral and had not yet entered World War II. Folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote a song about the tragedy that fall. The refrain to that song—the words that keep running through my mind—is this: Tell me what were their names, Tell me what were their names, Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James? VIRGINIA SEMINARY JOURNAL AUGUST 2007 Our hearts have been torn apart by violence and grief. And part of the insult and injury of the moment is the danger that the lives of real, living, loving, vibrant, precious people will somehow be crushed in our common memory into a single number and single moment of violence that will hold our memories captive. Luke’s little story of Mary’s heart holds up for us the hope that it does not have to be so. People do matter. We can treasure the notes that Maxine leaves in our hearts for our lives long. Like Mary passing on stories of her son to Luke, we can pass on and keep alive the story of Maxine’s life. That good news is founded on another far deeper and far more profound hope, a hope hinted at by the fact that this terrible tragedy took place in Easter season. It is the hope that it is not only in our hearts that the memory of Maxine is kept alive. The hope given to us in Jesus Christ is that we as individuals are all precious in the heart of the God who created us, the hope that God not only remembers Maxine, but will show to her the extravagant love that he has demonstrated in Christ our Lord, and raise her up again on the last day and give her life. As we have heard from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, that hope buoys us up in the midst of sorrow: “We do not lose heart . . . For the slight momentary affl iction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen. . . For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” In the late 1960s Jesse Trotter was the Dean of the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, where I now teach. He had a wonderful, intelligent, athletic, college-aged son, who played varsity sports at an Ivy League college. His son fell into deep depression and took his own life. His parents, his friends, his classmates were all totally devastated. As chance would have it, his father was scheduled to preach in our chapel soon after the death. When the day came, many assumed that the father would pass off his responsibility to another member of the faculty, but he did not. He climbed into the pulpit, despair and sorrow and grief written on his face for all to see. His message was brief, a sentence long, but to the point. “I have been to the bottom,” he said, “and the bottom holds.” No matter what the world throws at us, no matter how deep the injustice, how violent the sin, how wrong the circumstance, in Christ we have the conviction that it is not Sin and Death, but God who has the last word. “For I am convinced,” says Paul in the eighth chapter of Romans, “that neither death, nor life, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” And until the day when we too see Christ’s fi nal victory over death, we will treasure in our hearts the memory of Maxine Turner. “His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” Amen. 81
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VTS as our next Dean and President.
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ing this commemoration on the day o
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“I am convinced that the moral ar
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“If you continue in my Word you a
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speak—that silence was complicit.
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while Gandhi gave us the method.”
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and said, “Where is Burundi?” [
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A Refl ection on the VTS Racial and
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Isaiah 40:6-8, 21-24, 28-31 Psalm 7
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The prophet Isaiah acknowledges tha
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I met Martha Horne in front of Aspi
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This has been a very wonderful fami
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“There should be something in the
Page 32 and 33: A Celebration in Thanksgiving for t
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Page 36 and 37: The Water of Life 34 VIRGINIA SEMIN
Page 38 and 39: “Designer water at $100 a bottle
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Page 44 and 45: The Need for a Theology of Water: T
Page 46 and 47: “Who gets the water is a matter o
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Page 50 and 51: deal with than surface water, after
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Page 54 and 55: Preaching is a privilege. I thank y
Page 56 and 57: changing of direction. I went back
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Page 60 and 61: When the Rivers Run Dry: Water, the
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Page 76 and 77: COMMENCEMENT 2007 continued The Rev
Page 78 and 79: Isaiah 25:6-9 Psalm 121 Romans 8:14
Page 80 and 81: and I know that even now God will g
Page 84 and 85: Michael Battle and Stephen Edmondso
Page 86 and 87: Betty M Glover Priest-In-Charge Tri
Page 88 and 89: Dr. Chris McConnachie, who is an or
Page 90 and 91: Good morning. Separation of church
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Page 98 and 99: Seminary, sharing their life storie
Page 100 and 101: ANNUAL GIVING Annual Giving is a co
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Page 106 and 107: The Rev. Ronald G. Abrams The Rev.
Page 108 and 109: Dr. and Mrs. William G. Thomas III
Page 110 and 111: The Henry St. George Tucker Society
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Page 114 and 115: The Rev. S. F. James Abbott, ‘66
Page 116 and 117: The Rev. Catherine M. Thompson, ‘
Page 118 and 119: The Rev. John R. Frizzell, Jr., ‘
Page 120 and 121: Anita Wheatcroft The Rev. G. Richar
Page 122 and 123: The Rev. A. Moody Burt The Rev. Dr.
Page 124 and 125: The Rev. William H. Burk The Rev. J
Page 126 and 127: The 14th anniversary of my ordinati
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Page 130 and 131: St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Ne
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The Rev. and Mrs. Gary L. Abbott, S
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Mr. and Mrs. James C. Hamilton, Jr.
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Mr. Emil M. Sunley The Rev. and Mrs
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volume weave together the familiar,
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and in “Throwing the things away,
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and American Evangelicals: Friends
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The Center for Lifetime Theological
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Seminary Journal 2008 (August) - Virginia Theological Seminary

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