In
Thanksgiving for Their Lives
Peace
United Church of Christ
Sunday,
August 24, 2014
Carol and Jim Toney were
Christians. I’ll forever miss their
warmth, their laughter, their curious minds.
And they were easy to like. But
most of all, I’m going to miss their generous Christian commitments, their
devoted Christian friendship, and their enthusiastic Christian hearts. The two of them radiated the ethic and spirit
of Jesus: it was in their eyes, it was in their words, it was in the choices
they made every day. Which is not to say that either one wore faith
as a bright, boisterous badge on a sleeve.
Or that either one pushed a particular theological or political
viewpoint too hard. No, what I’m going
to miss is Jim’s humility and Carol’s grace, and their gracious hospitality
together, even and especially when times were tough and the stakes were high. They were children of the church, our
friends, and Christians in every way.
Carol and Jim lived long, long
lives. Their sudden deaths this month
have stunned us and shaken many of us to our core. But we remember this afternoon that they
lived long, long lives on this planet. Good
lives, happy and rich lives. They loved
well and they laughed hard and they enjoyed one another.
And still, many of us here at the
church will remember best the tenderness and courage of these last difficult years,
years of frailty and declining energies, as Jim cared for Carol tenderly and
passionately. Day by day by day. We’ll remember Jim’s warm and always engaging
smile as he wheeled her through these doors and made life work for her here. And we’ll remember Carol’s courage in
greeting us, in asking after our families and interests. Right until the very end, the two of them
were shining, compelling, affirming examples of Jesus’ most important teachings:
“Blessed are the meek,” he said, “for they will inherit the earth.” “Blessed are the merciful,” he said, “for
they will receive mercy.” “And blessed
are the pure in heart,” he said, “for they will see God.” In Carol and Jim Toney, we were graced with
the living spirit of the living Christ:
Meek and merciful and pure in heart.
Treating each one of us, in turn, as the most important person on the
face of the planet. Believing in us and
in our dreams. The living spirit of the
living Christ.
***
I’m reminded by Mark, Mike, Jim and
their families, that there’s an even longer story here, an even richer legacy
of loving and serving and growing. For
Carol and Jim, both of them, were for so many years, for decades and decades,
two of the most active and vital and vibrant human beings around. They
were a sweet and gentle couple, to be sure, but they were a powerhouse too of
spirit and resolve.
Jim was a tremendously successful
and effective engineer and corporate leader; he was an avid outdoorsman,
learning to love the High Sierra as a child and passing that love on to his own
children and grandchildren. Carol was an
extraordinary homemaker, as well as a devoted teacher for sixteen busy years,
at a school for underserved pregnant girls in Oakland. Beyond the home and workplace, the two of
them invested their consistent, considerable energies in church life and
political life, in service to inmates in county jails and scholars and clergy at
the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. Mark and Mike and Jim and their families
remember Carol and Jim as creative, curious, dedicated parents, and eager
participants in community life and public service.
In talking to all of you this week,
I was moved by your profound appreciation for Carol’s and Jim’s commitment to
strong and lively relationships. And
that certainly rings true for us as well at Peace United Church. These two made strong relationships a
priority, within the family and beyond it.
They recognized that relationships grow through commitment and
deliberate care. In Oakland, they raised
three remarkable and remarkably different sons; and Carol and Jim cherished those
differences and made space for them in their homes and hearts. They were equally devoted to their four
grandchildren—Sarah, Bob, Katie and Liam—and you four remember with deep
gratitude the unconditional love, the profound respect you experienced with your
Granddad and Yaya. Family trips to Maui
every Christmas were sacred and fun and full of play: an unmistakable reminder
of Carol’s and Jim’s dedication to family and relationships within the family. And I reminded the family this week that
Carol and Jim would anticipate those trips months in advance, describing for us
here everything they hoped to do in Maui; and then they’d talk about Hawaii
through the winter and spring. Until it
was time to plan the next trip. They
loved those yearly trips with the family they cherished.
Relationships were everything for
them. Whether Carol and Jim had known
you and loved you for decades or whether they were just getting to know you,
you experienced with them an attentiveness and a devotion that made you wiser,
stronger, and more confident in their presence.
***
One of many memories I’ll treasure
is watching Jim work with our Finance Team here and befriend a new church
treasurer whose name is Martita Emde.
From the beginning, I could see that Jim valued Martita’s wit and her
brilliance with numbers and finance. But
when he learned that she and her partner were Stanford grads, and when he
learned that they too loved Stanford women’s basketball, well, that sealed the
deal. Right there on the church’s
Finance Team! A wonderful, kind,
supportive friendship was born. One that
enriched Jim’s life, Martita’s life and the church’s ministry as well.
So the circle of life goes round,
right? This past Tuesday, Martita gave
birth to a healthy, strapping baby girl, a girl Martita and her partner Nicole
have named Hailley Drew. Jim was hugely
responsible for creating a church up here that not only welcomed Martita and
Nicole, but cherished them, honored them and loved them. When Martita tells us—as she told us this
week—that she’s been blessed by this church and that her two daughters are
blessed by this church, she’s talking about Jim and Carol Toney and the
generous, warm spirit they shared with her and her family from the
beginning. (And let’s be honest: the Stanford
tickets didn’t hurt!) You see, the
circle goes round and round and round.
And this leads me to take a
theological turn. And it leads me to
speak of the resurrection. It’s a
strange concept these days, I know, and even stranger in the company of mixed
backgrounds and traditions. But
resurrection is a big part of the story we tell in this place, every week. And it’s a big part of the story we shared
with Carol and Jim in the latter years of their lives.
There’s a verse that Jim and I
often read, with the men from Unit E at the county jail. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth
and dies,” Jesus says, “it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it
bears much fruit.” It’s one of those
teachings with layers and layers of meaning.
And Jim would use it to remind troubled men in jail that God could use
their trouble to bring healing and growth, that God could lift them from
suffering and addiction to new life.
Jim started visiting the jail with
us in his 76th year. He taught
from the bible and he served communion; it was a ministry for him. And he shared openly, on Tuesday afternoons, of
his own spiritual and personal struggles.
Time and again, he invited inmates to pray for dear Carol. And time and again, they did. Most importantly, Jim showed up. Over and over again, over many years, he
showed up and reached out and shared his very special spirit with men who
hungered for just that kind of friendship and love. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth
and dies,” Jim would say, “it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it
bears much fruit.”
He believed these words; he lived
in the promise of these words, when he was among us. They both did. And today, we believe for them. We believe that Jim and Carol are raised up
on the wings of Love, lifted high by the grace of Jesus, gathered at last in
the arms of God.
***
Both of these dear friends, we
know, were challenged and changed by life.
Dear Carol was once an accomplished civic leader, a devoted advocate for
underserved girls, and a gifted and brilliant homemaker. As we watched, she lost that edge in the last
years of her life; the vagaries of time and mortality caught up with her. And this woman who was once a supreme
caregiver, a remarkable organizer and tender friend became dependent in a whole
new way on the grace and love of others.
And Jim was (in his younger years)
a hardworking businessman; indeed, his sons tell me he was something of a
workaholic in those years, a remarkably skilled and successful leader committed
to his craft. He was the family
bread-winner, the Toneys’ go-getter, and as adventuresome a man as there was in
the world. Nothing held him back.
But Carol’s frailty changed all
that. And Jim too was changed and
challenged, disoriented and re-oriented by life’s unexpected twists. In the last years of his life, he became the
consummate care-giver, the attentive partner, even the loving homemaker he
needed to be. For Carol. For the one he loved. For the one he promised to love in sickness
and in health, to death do them part.
In their vulnerability—she in her
chair and he hovering around, taking care of things at home, even egging her
on—in all their vulnerability, Jim and Carol turned their lives over to
God. Day by day by day by day. In their devotion to one another, in the
suffering they shared, they chose love and grace and learned to take up the
cross together. “Blessed are the meek,”
Jesus says, “for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” Carol and Jim lived fruitful, abundant lives
over many, many years. But in these last
years, their grace bore the special imprint of resurrection and everlasting
life. God did for Carol and Jim what Jim
promised the men in jail God would do for them: God used their trouble and
frailty to bring strength, healing and wholeness to their hearts.
***
Last spring, the gardening group
Jim loved so much reclaimed an old cross from a tower we had to dismantle some
years ago. That group spent hours and
hours imagining a new home for the cross and then planning its installment just
outside the sanctuary here. Looking out
over the neighborhood. As I see it, that
cross is so much more than a symbol; it’s a way of life. It’s a way of life that invites sacrifice and
kindness, compassion and generosity.
It’s a way of life that chooses kindness even when frustration comes
first, even when despair overwhelms the heart.
I’ll think of Carol and Jim Toney
now, every time I come to church, step out of the sanctuary and see that
cross. I’ll remember that they took up
the cross in public life. I’ll remember
that they took up the cross in family life.
I’ll remember that they chose to bear the cross for one another. Right to the end.
They were Christians, Carol and Jim
Toney; and they’ve made us all better people because of it. May God be praised and may the church
remember their faithfulness forever.
Amen.
