Address
Address by Resident Minister of Albury, Andrew Pearson, at the funeral of Robert Baden-Powell, 3rd Baron Baden-Powell
15 January 2020
The Bible reading, by Ed Baden-Powell, was 1 Corinthians 13 from the Authorised Version.
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1 Corinthians 13 King James Version (KJV)
13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
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I didn’t have the privilege of knowing Robert for very long. That wasn’t his fault; it was mine and sadly when local friends had tried to invite us to the same gathering, I’d been committed elsewhere, or I would have got to know him earlier. When we did finally meet, we seemed to get on. He was excellent company; Robert seemed to have the gift of sustaining a conversation almost by himself; but he wasn’t boring. He was very engaging, and his wide experience, in the navy, in finance, in entrepreneurial business, in politics, in Scouting, with the arts, and in many other things, meant that there was almost always an interesting tale to be told on almost anything, and there were several points at which our experience crossed.
I did get to know enough of Robert to realise that when Anthony described him, in his fascinating Tribute, as “strong-willed, stubborn, impulsive and forever inquisitive”, that was very well put.
And as I thought about today, I realised that friends of the Apostle Paul might say that about him, too. Paul is the one who wrote the Bible passage we’ve just had.
Paul was a formidable intellect. When he wanted to preach about Jesus in a city where he’d just arrived, his chosen style was to go and visit the synagogue, and engage in single-handed debate. In Athens he found himself doing that with the entire city council. But he also had a pioneering spirit, he was always seeking out fresh ground, and once he had a purpose, you were lucky if you could push him off it.
Lots of phrases in Paul’s letters went into English usage, courtesy of the 17th century Bible translators: ‘the quick and the dead’; ‘suffering fools gladly’; ‘the letter of the law’ – and more. And… ‘through a glass darkly’, in our passage today. “… now,” Paul wrote, “we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face”.
When we hear ‘through a glass darkly’ today, the first thing that pops into your head might be a grimy window. Our window cleaner comes round about once every six weeks. He saves us from looking through a glass darkly – as long as we remember to clean the inside.
But the Greek word actually means mirror. When the English translators of the Bible put down ‘through a glass’, they meant a looking-glass. And the Greeks themselves didn’t even use glass. They used polished metal. It was difficult to get flat, it lent its own colouration to the image, and it was easily spotted and dented. So if you were looking in one of those, then you got an idea of the image, but perhaps not a lot more.
Ed mentioned the ‘through a glass darkly’ phrase to me as we were thinking about what Bible passage to use today. And it seemed very right to have the passage in which it crops up. Robert told me about the way he’d never questioned faith, until one day suddenly he did. And I think from that point he still believed there was something there but he’d lost his certainty about what it was. He knew he was looking through a glass darkly.
I’m a Christian minister. I will give you my take as a Christian on life, the universe and everything. And what I believe about this phrase as Paul used it is that he was preaching hope, not despair; promise not pessimism. When we talk about looking through a glass darkly, we can choose: glass half-full or glass half-empty. Sorry for mixing the metaphors and over-using the word ‘glass’; Paul is not to blame for that. If you’re a glass half empty person, you’ll say that when we wonder what’s waiting for us, we can see nothing clearly. If you’re a glass half-full person, you can say ‘One day it will be clearer than we can possibly imagine.’
And the glass half-full person can go even further than that. Remember this was Paul writing, Paul, who had thrown over a promising career, thrown over the prestige he had as a thinker, a teacher, an enforcer of the orthodox – to proclaim Jesus, who he had originally had down as a dangerous fraud. When Paul wrote this, he wasn’t really saying ‘we’ve got too little to go on at the moment’; he was saying that we have a life-changing truth now, but when we get to see the full reality it will be like looking at someone’s real face after only being able to see a bad reflection.
Every Christian funeral fastens on hope at its core. And the hope is this: that one day we shall see face to face a God who loves us, who always calls us to him; who puts up with our uncertainties and doubts.
He doesn’t ask us to pass exams in sound doctrine to gladden his heart; what he asks for is our trust and our willingness to love. Paul spent three quarters of the wonderful passage read by Ed, explaining what love is and why it’s so important. He meant the kind of love that is not just warm feelings, but a sober decision to make the good of the other our priority – we can all do that for certain people; the difficult call for us is that God asks us to do it indiscriminately.
That is the God into whose hands we entrust Robert today. If you believe otherwise, I accept that; you do not have to pretend you believe something you don’t in order to be here and say farewell, and honour the man we knew. But if you can believe what I have just said, may it be a truth that gives you hope too, and grips your heart and mind as we move forwards.
Amen.
