Meditation for Rev. Dr. Bernard Hawley

My father died on July 19, 2010. I have been away from the blog since that time attending to various duties, among which was my father's memorial service at the First Presbyterian Church in Salina, Kansas. My father was the Senior Minister of that congregation from 1965 - 1987. The following is the meditation I offered at that service. I hope to get back to blogging--- maybe after school starts?

Romans 8:31-39; 1 Corinthians 15:51-57; Luke 13:10-17


It is hard to know where to start when talking about my father’s life. It is impossible to know where to end. I should start by acknowledging that he probably does not want me to talk about him at all—at least not much—given that this is a worship service. Ours is a Witness to the Resurrection and our attention is properly directed toward the worship of—and thanksgiving to—God.

And we will do that—we are doing that. But we also acknowledge that we are in a sacred space where, for twenty-two years, my father brought a word of grace to those who gathered. Here the young and old were baptized, the bread broken and the cup shared, the hopeful married, the forgiven mourned and remembered. Here through the succession of years the palms turned to ashes and back to palms again. The greens were hung, the Spirit of Pentecost blew anew and the voices of song and prayer reached up to heaven. And through all of that time my father made a tremendous difference in the lives of those who passed through this sanctuary—those who lived in this community—those who are part of our nation. I admit that I am not a neutral observer. But by any standard of excellence there can be no question that we have a tremendous amount to be grateful for in the life of Bernie Hawley and it is our sadness but also our privilege and joy to express that gratitude this afternoon.

I have had what many do not have on such occasions as this—almost three weeks to reflect upon what I would say in the brief period available this afternoon. Time, in this case, is both curse and blessing. It is a blessing to be able to spend so much time remembering, talking with family and friends, organizing one’s memories. It is a curse as well, for all of this remembering and talking and organizing leads to an overwhelming amount of material, of directions, of vectors, if you will. So choices had to be made, and I have chosen to talk of two things which I believe best illustrate my father in his vocational life and as a family man. These two things are the humanity of the Gospel and the centrality of mystery.

What do I mean by the humanity of the Gospel? Our reading from Luke is meant to be illustrative. Throughout the Gospel narratives Jesus and the Pharisees spar over scriptural interpretation. Jesus champions the cause of the socially despised, the sick and infirmed, the politically and religiously oppressed, in the name of the Kingdom of God. The Scribes and the Pharisees defend the Torah as they interpret it with an emphasis on purity and ritual sacrifice. But Jesus smelled something fishy. And in this encounter—one of many really—Jesus brings the problem to the surface. The law is valuable, but its purpose has been subjugated by the Pharisees to their own specific interests and advantage. As Jesus says elsewhere, the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. When confronted with human need, with an evident need for human liberation, there was nothing in the law to forbid it. Only the human heart stands between this woman and liberation. Will that heart be hard or that heart be turned? The hardened hearts of the Pharisees had turned—they had turned “right religion” into a tool of oppression which Jesus fought at every turn. In Jesus we see the humanity of the Gospel. Human beings—their needs, their sorrows, their fears, their hopes, their welfare—are at the heart of Jesus’ message. Jesus’ message concerned the new reality he called the Kingdom of God. This is grace, and grace is what my father was all about.

In every sermon there came a moment when my father’s words reached out to speak to the existential condition of his congregation. He taught us how to worry wisely, how to let go of the second sock, how to forgive and be forgiven, how to grieve and by thankful. He emphasized the gift of freedom that was inherent to the Gospel. He encouraged us to be good stewards of God’s creation as well as good stewards of ourselves. And each at every turn he preached a word of grace, for grace is the beginning and the end of our relationship with God. The real needs of people are first, even when the people are not always "just like us."

In January, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded a little more than one minute into its flight. In the days that followed there was much national mourning. A national memorial service was scheduled and my father was invited to offer prayer. The Challenger’s crew was not only ecumenical—a Baptist, an Episcopalian, a Methodist—it was also inter-faith. So the families in attendance represented various traditions of Christianity as well as Buddhism and Judaism. It is not easy to craft a prayer that was sensitive and inclusive of these traditions and at the same time said something of comfort that could be universally understood. But my father managed it. This is how his prayer began.


O thou Whom we call by various names, approach by several paths, and yet all acknowledge as the Source of Life, Thy greatness is seen in this vast and wondrous universe. We turn now to Thee because we need the assurance of a love that is equally great and wondrous, to feel that underneath are the Everlasting Arms and to know that the hand that holds us is a hand we trust.



When my father returned to Salina he discovered that, among the many responses of appreciation, there were a few Pharisees who grumbled with indignation that, when given such a national stage, my father threw Jesus under the bus. Where was the evangelical moment, they demanded. Where was the Christian emphasis? Why did he shirk in his duties to confront those gathered with the universal particularity of Jesus Christ? But, of course, Jesus was there. He was there in the form of a man who understood that the Sabbath was made for human beings and not human beings for the Sabbath. He was there in the form of a man who understood that healing was needed regardless of the day or the hour or the religion. Dad truly believed that to be Christian was not so much to talk about Jesus so much as to be Jesus as much as it was possible. The message of Christianity was not merely the message that was Jesus but also the message that Jesus brought which was developed and adapted by Paul in the middle of the first century and remembered and recorded by the evangelists by that century’s end. A message powerfully encapsulated with these resounding words from Romans: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, 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 our Lord.

My father spent his ministry in service to the humanity of Jesus Christ. The Gospels make in abundantly clear that love was at the heart of the Kingdom, and that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son, not to condemn the world, but so that the world—the Cosmos in the Greek text—would be saved.

Paul wrote to the Romans that neither death nor life would be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. This was comforting, no doubt, but perhaps, for some, hard to believe. So Paul also wrote, albeit to a different church, “Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” Although practicing the practical application of ministry with people, my father never lost sight of the mystery which both called him into service and sustained him throughout. Scripture is full of mysteries, both large and small, not the least of which is the mystery embedded in the universe God created that is so rich and vast we will never finally exhaust these mysteries it contains. And there is the greatest Christian mystery of all: that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

My father did not consider mystery the enemy of Christian faith. It was an element of faith. In 1Timothy we read “great is the mystery of our faith”, and it is true. Appreciation for and wonder of such mysteries are surely one of the things I share in common with my sister and brothers.
I have spent the greater part of my life with the following dialogue. “What do your siblings do?” I respond that they are highly decorated scientists—one a professor of chemistry interested in molecular biology, another a former NASA astronaut who now teaches Astronomy and a brother who has written a college textbook on cosmology which is now in a second printing. “Oh,” comes the reply, “so what happened to you?” This does not bother me—anymore. Clearly in my case the apple did not fall far from the tree. I, like my father, dabbled in radio before entering the ministry. I, like my father, and his father before him, have an interest in history and literature and the arts which are true compliments of a Reformed Theological understanding of the world. But there are those who look to my siblings—these highly decorated scientists—and wonder, "Why would they pursue science if their father was a preacher?"

To ask this question is to misunderstand many things, but clearly it is to not understand the centrality of mystery. If faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, then the things hoped for and the things not seen are the things of mystery. And the ultimate mystery, the mystery at the heart of my father’s theology, is the Incarnation, which winds its way through his sermons like a meandering river. The American writer Flannery O’Connor said it well. The Incarnation is the concrete expression of mystery—mystery that is lived. My father was concerned with mystery as it is incarnate in human life.

And we all should be so concerned, each in our own way. As to me and my siblings, we are so concerned because our father taught us to be this way. Our home was filled with encouragement to explore, to uncover, to discover. Our parents encouraged us at every turn to try everything, learn everything, and question everything. That my siblings are scientists is, to me, not surprising at all. All of us live with and pursue mystery—not for the purposes of its capture and incarceration—but for the excitement of the discovery, tentative as those discoveries may be. And the motive behind the search is the benefit to humanity, for knowledge is always a benefit, and mystery its own reward.

Krista Tippett hosts “Speaking of Faith” on National Public Radio and has recently published a book based upon interviews conducted with a variety of scientists with the work of Albert Einstein as the common thread. Her book is entitled Einstein’s God, and in the preface, Tippett offers a quotation from Einstein with which my father would have resonated: A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude…enough for me is the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality. Einstein was by no means a Christian. And to be certain my father was. He believed mystery had a name—and that name was Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of the Word of God. But my father would have agreed with Einstein that there is an appropriate attitude to maintain when speaking of such lofty things, an attitude toward this mystery which is so important—however we name the mystery. It is an attitude of humility and hope, a commitment to know what we know and claim no more, to always seek to learn more, and to apply what we learn to the improvement of human life.

One branch of Christian theology is known as apologetics. Apologetics is interested in conversation, in dialogue, in finding the common ground with philosophy, science, and culture, for the purposes of establishing Christianity’s legitimate place. My father considered himself an apologist for the Christian faith, much after the example of Paul as recorded in the Book of Acts. Paul visited Athens and, after examining the cultural evidence of religious practice, including the altar to the unknown god, Paul addressed the Athenians. "People of Athens! I can see you are very religious people. What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth...In him we live, and move, and have our being." My father proclaimed this God to both the confidently faithful and to those who could only sense the unknown god. He desired to meet people where they were, honor what they knew, and expand their horizons with the possibility of the grace of God and the mystery of redemption.

My time is nearly up and I know there is much I have left unsaid. No life, my father’s or anyone else’s can be reduced to a twenty minute meditation. For this reason receptions were invented so that the conversation could continue. I will make two more observations. Near the end of his life my father was despondent. His Parkinson’s was cruel. His memory was fading like a balloon let loose into a deep blue sky. He was not afraid to die. He had no reason to be afraid to die, although he did confess that he wasn’t quite sure what the arrangement was on the other side. But that was fine. My father believed that death was letting go into the hands of the God who loved him in his life. Why would the God who loved him in his life not love him in his death? But he did have one request. He wanted to be appointed guardian angel to his two grandchildren. That this has happened I have no doubt. No one, and I mean no one, was better qualified for the job.

And, finally, these words. Not mine, his. This is how he concluded his sermon to this congregation from this pulpit on February 2, 1986, with reference to the Challenger’s tragic end. They seem appropriate to this day, appropriate to him, and his text that day was the same Romans passage we heard today.


But we do weep, for mourn we must; but let us also rejoice in the human spirit that chooses the zest of the unknown, to advance human knowledge, to brave the universe. Let us rejoice in the One whose grandeur and whose power we cannot comprehend, but whose love and care we can never escape. Even the sea of space is but the hollow of His hand, and nothing can snatch us from it ever.

Amen. And amen.


Let us pray:
Gracious and ever-loving God. We give you thanks for the life of Bernie Hawley. We thank you for his commitment to human good. We thank you for his embracing of mystery and of handing on to us such awe and wonder. We thank you that pain and loss are no more for him, that every tear is wiped away, and that he has entered into the rest which you have prepared for him and for all whom you name as your own. All of this we pray through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.