Preached on Tuesday, May 13, 2025 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Little Rock in memoriam Joseph Gregory Gerard (October 16, 1939–April 29, 2025).

“LORD, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways. Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O LORD, know it altogether. You press upon me behind and before and lay your hand upon me” (Psalm 139:1–4).

To Gail, Jenny and Jill, Layne and Michael, spouses and grandchildren and this whole family: this Psalm is for you. And to all of you who love Joe and this family: this Psalm is for you, too.

Psalm 139 gives us some questions to ask ourselves as we grieve today.

Question: “Where can I go from [God’s] Spirit? Where can I flee from [God’s] presence?”

Answer: Nowhere. There’s nowhere we can go.

“If I climb up to heaven, [God is] there; if I make the grave my bed, [God is] there also. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there [God’s] hand will lead me and [His] right hand [holds] me fast” (Psalm 139:7–9).

There’s not a thought or a feeling that slips past God’s embrace. There’s not a pain or a sorrow that is not felt by our Lord Himself. God searches us and knows us. His hand presses upon us here and now. And there’s nothing––not a thing!––that can separate us from His love for us, not even death itself.

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night,’ Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike” (Psalm 139:10–11).

The other day, Gail reminded me that Joe’s operative word was “wonderful.”

Question: How are you doing today, Joe?

Answer: Wonderful!

It was one of Joe’s favorite words. It’s one of the Bible’s favorite words, too.

So goes our Psalm: “I will thank [God] because I am marvelously made; [His] works are wonderful, and I know it well” (Psalm 139:13).

God’s works are wonderful, aren’t they? We know it well.

A good man, a decent gentleman: wonderful.

Smart bow ties, white handkerchiefs neatly pressed, always dressing to the nines: wonderful.

A liberal arts education in the good, old-fashioned sense; the kind that sets you free with a life-long love for learning: wonderful.

Reading books of all kinds––glasses off, face up close, sitting somewhere in the stacks of the Law School Library or in later years in Fletcher Library: all of it just wonderful.

Rounds of golf with friends, in Arkansas and Virginia, in Scotland, and England, and Ireland, even if you knew your short game was a bit lacking: simply wonderful. (Gail tells me that we’re hoping that heaven is nothing but holes-in-one.)

Life in Washington, D.C.: always bustling, and always wonderful.

Here’s a story from Jill: She and her dad were heading to church one Sunday, and they saw the presidential motorcade go by––which is, in itself, a bucket list item for any new Washingtonian.

Question: “Jill, do you want to go to church, or do you want to go to church with the President of the United States?”

Answer: “With the President of the United States.”

On went the turn signal. They went to church with the President that morning.

Work worth doing, a good career with twists and turns and challenges and surprises and countless blessings: wonderful.

A life full of adventure, some of which was unexpected, most of which was not only expected, but sought out and meticulously planned for: just wonderful.

Living on the East Coast meant that Joe had easy access to adventure. Here’s a story from Jenny: To celebrate her high school graduation, her dad took her on the train from Washington up to New York for lunch at Tavern on the Green, Tiffany’s for some shopping, A Chorus Line on Broadway for some “wow,” and then taking in some works of James Whistler to round it all off. Adventurous and memorable and just downright wonderful.

Trading in the rush of the District for retirement in your hometown: wonderful. (Here at Trinity, we have been particularly blessed by that decision of Joe’s and Gail’s. I know it was a blessing to Joe.)

And yet, going back to Washington for the summers, sitting on a back porch on 36th Street, sharing a glass of wine with your bride, listening to the Cathedral bells from up on Mt. St. Alban: refreshingly wonderful.

You can probably tell from this homily, if not from Joe himself, that the most wonderful thing of all, more than anything else, is his family. A loving and strong father, step-father, grandfather, and husband: all unbelievably wonderful.

Gail, when you and Joe married in this Cathedral, this community prayed that God would “bless [you] in [your] work and in  [your] companionship; in [your] sleeping and in [your] waking; in [your] joys and in [your] sorrows; in [your] life and in [your] death” [1]. God made good on our prayer from that day—wonderfully so.

We are here today to grieve, and we grieve today because we know that God’s works are wonderful. Indeed, we know it well. We know that we have lost something in Joe’s decline and in his death––something beautiful, and good, and altogether wonderful. That experience of “loss” is what we Christians call grief, and that’s why we Christians say that we should never be ashamed of our grief. We grieve because we know that God gave us someone and something wonderful but for a time.

And we Christians would say a bit more. We would say that all these wonderful things in life point us toward something and Someone more––to our Wonderful God Himself. Even standing on our tippy toes, we can hardly reach our Wonderful LORD. That’s how our Psalm puts it: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain to it” (Psalm 139:5). But the wonders in our life––including those we have known in Joe, especially those––point us upward, point us toward Almighty God, the Giver of every good gift. As the theologian Karl Barth once put it, “the statement that God is ‘God’ is the most wonderful thing that can be said” [2]. All of these earthly bits of wonderful point us to our God Who is the very definition Wonderful.

So, let’s try to reach toward Him, even if on our tippy toes. Just think of all these wonderful works of God and then think more. I’m remembering what one of the characters in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead has to say: “…just think about the splendors of the world and multiply by two. I’d multiply by ten or twelve if I had the energy. But two is more than sufficient for my purposes” [3]. So, just think of books and bow ties and holes-in-one adventure and friends and family and the love we share with others, and then multiply it all by two—or ten or twelve if you can attain to it—but two will do the trick.

That’s our God. That’s our God Whose works are wonderful, delighting us and pointing us to Himself. That’s the God Who embraces Joe this very day, and Who draws near to each of us here and now. That’s the God Who “raised up Jesus from the dead,” and Who “will also give life to our mortal bodies.” That’s the God Who “shows [us] the path of life; in [Whose] presence is the fullness of joy, and at [Whose] right hand there is pleasure for evermore” [4]. That’s the God Who is our hope, and in Him, “we shall never hope in vain” [5]. Amen.

[1] Book of Common Prayer, 430.

[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957).

[3] Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 147.

[4] Book of Common Prayer, 485.

[5] Book of Common Prayer, 98.