April 29 is a very special day in my life. I want to share why that is true with you.

April 29, 1953 was the day on which my grandfather entered life expectant and I had my first real acquaintance with grief and with the blessed assurance that in Christ we have everlasting life.  I was thirteen years old.  I had spent much of the previous summer with my grandparents and I mostly hung around with my grandfather at his engineering firm offices and at the family farm.  My grandfather, who had been a professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois, helped me a lot that summer so that I could face algebra the next school year and in that summer we grew very close.  His death hurt a lot.

April 29, 1995 was the day on which my mother entered life expectant.  Lynda and I were in Florence, Italy  where I was the guest preacher at St. James Episcopal Church.  I went ahead and preached as scheduled and then we flew home for the funeral.  After the funeral I returned to my parish in Odessa, Texas and promptly had a heart attack.  Grief can do unexpected things to a person. I recovered and went on with life but without the regular earthly contact with my mother.  The last thing I said to her on the telephone just before catching the plane for Florence was, “Mom you know I love you,” and she responded, “Sure, I know that but I like to hear you say it.”

April 29, 2008, just a few days ago, was the day on which my mentor, friend and bishop entered life expectant.  Bishop Hassan Dehqani-Tafti was born and reared in Iran as a Muslim.  He became a Christian as a young man and eventually went to Cambridge to study theology and after serving as a priest for some years became the first native Iranian to be the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Iran.  When I went there in Peace Corps it happened that I lived one block from him and he and I became friends, we were both fond of long distance hiking.  On the First Sunday of Advent, 1967 he confirmed me.  My wife, Lynda and I were appointed missionaries of The Episcopal Church to Iran and the bishop made me the diocesan youth director in which capacity I helped found the Inter-Church Youth Summer Camp on a mountain slope overlooking the city of Hammadan.  We could see the domed tomb of Queen Esther and Mordechai from the camp.  Eventually the revolution overtook Iran.  The Bishop’s house was broken into by a band of revolutionaries.  They pumped his bed full of lead from their assault rifles and fled.  The Bishop was uninjured but the pillow on which his head rested was riddled with gunshot, however a pattern that exactly coincided with the outline of his head was untouched.  He then took everyone’s advice and got out of the country.  However his son, with his new degree from Georgetown University stayed in Iran where soon after he was executed by a firing squad.  A couple years ago Lynda and I spent the day with the Bishop and his wife in their home in exile in England.  He still ached for the loss of his only son. Now that ache is assuaged and he, with his son, is where “sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing but life everlasting.”

The cloud of witnesses I have of my life, expanded again on this past April 29^th  and I am blessed for those who have gone before me on that date.  I know this in my heart and mind, but still I am very human and my eyes betray me with a few tears.  Father Gordan +