Legacy

Every Sunday of my childhood, I would rush out of the church service and line up to shake our pastor's hand. He would smile a warm greeting, and as he took my hand I could feel something round and hard transfer from his palm to mine - a red-and-white striped peppermint candy.

Sunday afternoon we gathered to remember this man, Albert G. Edwards III, and the tables at the reception were decorated with peppermints and Al's trademark bow ties. What was missing was his warm smile...and a pun or two or three.



Al was a gracious and humble man who had devoted his life to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He asked that there be no eulogizing at his funeral. He wanted the focus on Christ, not on him, and it was. As my dad said in his prayer, the way to honor Al is to honor what Al stood for - Christ. And yet, as Al's son-in-law delivered the message, he said there was one person Al couldn't stop from eulogizing him - God himself. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," God says (Revelation 14). Al was in the Lord, and the Lord calls him blessed.

The weekend wouldn't have been complete, though, without sharing stories of Al - but we had plenty of time to do that as we gathered with his family. His sister showed me pictures of him growing up in Iraq; his brother told me about the time he rigged an old telephone to a firecracker to spook a cat; the friends we drove out with shared how he had made a match between them; I shared how he once took me home from church (when I had been left behind accidentally) in his police chaplain car - a highlight of my childhood.

As I thought about it, though, I realized that the memories I have of Al are only a minuscule part of his influence on my life. He came to us in 1980, when our church was only a few years old and had recently had a conflict with its first pastor. He left a well-to-do church in New Jersey and took a 50% pay cut. It is Al who set our church on a solid foundation, trained up our leaders, and preached the gospel to us for 12 years, then helped find a strong replacement when he retired (that successor has now pastored us for 19 years and counting). It is impossible to trace the "trickle-down" impact of his ministry. The influence he had on my parents certainly affected me. Rocky Mountain Community Church has been the single most important component of my life, and what would it have been without Al Edwards? I can't imagine.

Al left a legacy even in his last days. One of his caretakers told me how no one she has ever cared for has said "thank you" so much and so sincerely until the moment he couldn't speak any more. Of all the deaths she has seen, she said, Al's was the most full of joy. And I know why. This is what we sang to close the service, at his request - Al's message to us:

Jesus lives, and so shall I.
Death! thy sting is gone forever!
He who deigned for me to die,
lives, the bands of death to sever.
He shall raise me from the dust;
Jesus is my hope and trust.